Patrick Bateman from ‘American Psycho’ is Misogyn, a hyper -capitalist and, even after 25 years, still hyperactually.

The film has not yet started or the blood drops are already splashing on the screen. But wait. They are very stylized. And they fall very nicely synchronously with the rhythm of the pizzicatos on the soundtrack. Is that ballet of splashing blood? The ultimate alienation.

It turns out of course raspberry sauce. This is completely draped on the board with studied nonchalance according to the rules of the Nouvelle Cuisine of the eighties and nineties of the last century. Twenty -five years later, the opening images of Mary Harrons are filming of American Psycho Still perfectly the tone: she made refined satire of the shock croman of bret Easton Ellis of the same name.

At Mary Harron and in the interpretation of Christian Bale, main character Patrick Bateman de Dr. Jekyll/mr. Hyde from the Yuppen era: during the day Wall Street-Bankier, serial killer at night. That also immediately summarizes the plot of American Psycho: an accelerating parade of hate and lust murders, sometimes hardly distinguished from each other in terms of motive.

Moral sketch of the new rich

Self -proclaimed satirist Easton Ellis established his name in the late 1980s with restless ethics of the new rich by Los Angeles and the New York Upper West Side. His obsession with Hollywood, money and glamor and at the same time are distant and hyperbolic, and sometimes downright heartless style caught the spirit of the times. With his third novel, American Psycho (1991) According to many, he went too far: essential, poorly written and especially too violent and misogyn to be able to continue for spot. What Harron did with his book was visionary. She dared to turn Ellis’ linguistic nihilism into ‘over the top’ and campy Images. She’s dragon with American Psycho.

The after -history of the film made him a hero, instead of a pitiful ‘creep’. Just as with other Millennium films like Fight Club (1999) and The Matrix (1999) loose scenes, quotes and facial expressions were out American Psycho Popular as internet memes in the online Manosphere. That is the social media substitute where young men are dragged by extreme right -wing influencers and lifestyle coaches into toxic masculinity, hatred and suicide. This is the group that identifies itself as ‘Sigmaman’ – a position between the alphas and the betas on the monkey rock. In Bateman they recognize a heroic hard -working loner who derives his status from the fact that he does not care about social norms.

Bateman could become the Über-Sigma because with his tailor-made suits and Platinum credit cards it was also the model of that other cliché: the Wall Street-Hustler.

Über-Sigma

Search #Sigma on Tiktok and especially Bales Grin has become an iconic image. Bateman, The Guardian rightly signaled does not exactly represent the first thing you think about with such a lonely wolf: he puts everything in everything to belong to. The worst thing that can happen to him is when he is mistaken for one of the Allens, Davissen and Halberstams with whom he hangs around and competes, which he hates because they look like him. Or he on them. But Bateman could become the Über-Sigma because with his tailor-made suits and Platinum Creditcards was also the model of that other cliché: the Wall Street-Hustler, who earned money by only sticking to his own laws.

Where in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde perhaps was a search for the ‘evil nature’ of man, Harron portrays a character that has not even been alienated from his nature, he no longer has ‘nature’ at all. Bateman immediately assures at the start of the film in voice-over that he has no ‘me’, no inside. He is all outside, and evil is the last bit of drek that squeezes itself outside. And there was no other elixir to that than the green of dollar bills. The ‘experiment’ that Bateman dehumanizes is simply called: hyper -capitalism.

Obsession with Trump

Prophetic for 2000: Batemans Obsession with Donald Trump. He thinks he sees him everywhere. In the timeline of the plot it is that the Trump just after the publication of his orderer The art of the deal (1987). In the timeline of the historical context of the film, he had just announced his first presidential campaign at the end of 1999. A nice example of how the film has gained meaning.

It is precisely the feminist filmmaker Mary Harron that dropped her eye on the book aroused surprise. After all, she had just been debuted with I Shot Andy Warhol (1996), an indie film launched in Cannes in which she radically feminist ‘male hatred’ Valerie Solanas rehabilitated. In 1968, Solanas gained her fifteen minutes fame with a failed murder attack on pop art artist Andy Warhol.

Harron, too, was also blamed for having made a misogyne film. Soon recognition from Feminist corner followed, in which her satire was understood and it was appreciated that she did not (only) sexualized or objectified the violence against the female victims. Through light, style and cut -up camera corners, she made it clear that she was not glorified Bateman but criticized. Just pay attention to the sweat that starts to pearly pearl during the film. He starts to shine in such a way that this can mean nothing but she holds a mirror to us.

Instagram esthetics

In an interview with the ‘Magazine’ of online film platform Letterboxd, Harron recently told that what appealed to her in the book that Easton Ellis had written as a gay man, a parody of the women’s hatred, homophobia and ‘gay panic’ (violent fear of being feased by heterosexual men) that he) Street bankers and financial nerds of the eighties.

In the film we see that, for example, in the classic scene with the business cards, in which the young bankers raised each other with fonts and scooped paper. And in the stereotype ‘feminine’ face care rituals of Bateman, to keep looking as young and healthy as possible. That obsession bordering on narcissism with eternal youth, the yuppies of Wall Street then of course immediately go to the Tech broos of Silicon Valley of today, who go a step further with their transhumanistic dreams in which they want to become immortal with the help of technology and implants.

Now that the film is celebrating its 25th birthday, you can conclude a few things: without the film, ‘American Psycho’ would not have become a cultural understanding, and the film has resisted the spirit of the times than the novel. The book is pretty tough. But the sleepy advertising style of the images, with their sterile overexposed interiors on the one hand, and their alienating sweaty camera broeks on the other, is strongly reminiscent of Instagram esthetics and AI images of today: unreal.

Take all those grin from Bateman – the film is an ode to the ‘smirk’ – does it not look like he has an extra row of teeth in his mouth? Too wide, too much. In short, just like your favorite image generator did not know what to do with it. While Bateman is viewed in the manosphere with a wink, whether or not.

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