American Psycho Meanings

Submitted by: anonymous
Added: 2008-11-24 04:45:14     Rating:

This is based on the book by Brett Easton Ellis. I think it is partly meant to be a satire of 1980's culture. Materialism, power, and greed were a big part of the 80's and considered to be very desirable things. This film mocks that lifestyle. Bateman's world is superficial, as is he. His psychotic and murderous behavior is an escape from a world he both loves and hates. Bateman has everything, looks, money ,hot girlfriend ect. and yet is unsatisfied. It's a gilded but dull and meaningless existence. Murder and/or fantasies of murder give him excitement; make him feel powerful ect. Some question the ending of this film, were the murders real or not. Personally, I don't think they were, that makes interpreting even better. It's really about boredom and insanity, and how one could lead to the other in a darkly comical way. Great film by the way, pretty violent but I recommend it to anyone.

This film is all about the yuppie culture of the 80's. Bateman is suave, charming, and seems to have it all, yet is completely insane and no one would ever notice because everyone is so self-obsessed. People in the film constantly call each other by the wrong name, just emphasizing how alike all the yuppie men are; they can't even tell their own apart.

I feel the basis of the film (80's yuppie culture) is fairly obvious, so I'll give my interpretation of the ending. Many think the murders did not actually happen, and I disagree. So what about the apartment at the end? Well, again, this directly parallels the meaning of the film. They found the gorefest that was Paul's apartment, cleaned it up, and attempted to sell it in an effort to not cause property value to go down for possibly the whole building. This explains why the realtor was so rude to Bateman, she didn't know who he was but probably assumed he had SOMETHING to do with the bodies so just wanted him out before he ruined her sale. Remember the moral of the story, these people only care about themselves.

Another point brought up to dispute the murders actually happening is the man saying he recently saw Paul in Europe. This is simply explained throughout the film when men call each other by the wrong names. Bateman even posed as Paul for an entire night, it is extremely plausible that the man was mistaken and even further shows how quickly these people are to miss that a colleague was murdered because of how self-involved they are.

Obviously, interpret how you'd like, this is just my take on things.

Submitted by: anonymous
Added: 2010-05-13 13:56:20     Rating:

Either he didn't kill anybody and it's a commentary on how the strongly materialism and superficiality overwhelm even the most deviant personalities. OR he killed all those people and it is an attempt to illustrate how a society of clones can't comprehend deviant behavior.

Obviously it was deliberately ambiguous as to what happened, but both interpretations attempt to highlight faults in herd mentality among yuppies by exaggerating the characteristics of that subculture.

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