Since the appearance of American Psychothe controversial novel published in 1991 by Bret Easton Ellis and, especially, after the premiere in 2000 of the film of the same title, directed by Mary Harron and with the protagonist in the skin of Christian baleIt seems that the character of Patrick Bateman has always been present, in one way or another, in the Western cultural imagination. The murderer is almost the least of it: yuppieclimber, misogynist, drug addict and consumer, Bateman serves as a reflection of so many things that are wrong in the world that, more than a character, he is almost a symbol.
However, his image has not always been present in Internet forums solely as a parody of ultra-capitalism. At times Bateman has been a role model without any irony. An example of the latter would be the long obsession of the most regulars in the gym to achieve the muscular and sinewy body of Bateman, a difficult challenge to achieve that forced Bale himself to follow an incredibly strict diet and a severe routine in the gym. At the beginning of 2020, a youtuber named Will Tennyson underwent the same routine as Bale to achieve it. even since Men’s Healththe bible of normative male bodies, they warned their readers: “We don’t recommend you try this too.” And it was right there, in 2020, when Bateman’s conquest of a new generation began to take shape, which, in full confinement, saw themselves reflected in him. But first, let’s review a bit of contemporary history.
A superficial sadomasochistic crap
Bateman aroused passions even before the publication of his novel. In an article published in EL PAÍS in March 1991, the journalist Jordan Elgably detailed, from Los Angeles, the protests that had broken out in the United States prior to the launch of the book. Women’s groups and members of the publishing industry rated American Psycho as “shallow sadomasochistic crap” and accused Ellis of writing a book that amounted to a “how-to guide to the torture and dismemberment of women.” “The writer,” wrote Elgably, “replies: ‘I have tried to capture the violence of a wicked decade.’ He was referring, of course, to the eighties.
Neither the author nor his critics were far off the mark. The novel is, in part, all of that (also the film), although it is presented as a first-person account in which, with a devilish, hyperactive and repetitive style, we have first-class seats to see how the mind of a man works. Wall Street investment banker in the late eighties who is also a serial killer (or so he believes, since both the film and the novel offer the possibility that all of this was a mere hallucination of the protagonist).
Before us parade all his hobbies, his hatreds and his obsessions: Armani suits, cocaine, Brooks Brothers shoes, luxurious business cards, the city’s trendy restaurants like Dorsia or Le Cirque, his daily routine of beauty or the music group Huey Lewis and the News. His horrible crimes committed against men and women (in the novel there is even a child, the film did not dare to go that far) are described without sparing a single detail, probably the element of American Psycho that made her so famous (or so infamous).
The fact that when the protagonist confesses his crimes, the world around him laughs at him or even acts complicit with him, makes this story one of the best metaphors for the savage corporate world ever written. This is how Bret Easton Ellis wanted his book to be understood: as a great metaphor. “I think that what the protagonist of my book has is what many would like: a fit body, a lot of money and expensive tastes”, told EL PAÍS in 1991. This last phrase, uttered by Ellis more than 30 years ago, is curiously prescient knowing everything that he has ended up representing Patrick Bateman, especially in recent times.
A sexagenarian comes to TikTok
Bateman would be about 60 years old today (1962 is his date of birth in fiction). He would probably view TikTok with suspicion, as a youthful exoticism. But his figure began to become very popular on the internet since the birth of this technology and reached a peak of fame in some forums and social networks such as 4chan or TikTok during the first weeks of confinement in 2020. Suddenly, a series began to circulate of memes starring him in which we could see him walking while listening to music on his walkman, talking on a huge wireless phone exuding self-confidence, with a shiny ax in his hand, or having sex while looking at his muscular body in a mirror.
In those bewildered days, the image of Patrick Bateman became for many, especially young men who spent too much time online, a byword for the purest masculinity, for militant capitalism, for some sort of ideal man. In this sense, the character fit perfectly into the imaginary of the sigma malea concept similar to that of the alpha male, and which according to what Günseli Yalcinkaya wrote in an article in the magazine Dazed & Confused, It is a new socio-sexual identity that has spread in recent times on the Internet, especially among young men.
The term defines a guy who, unlike the alpha, lives outside of society, oblivious to the conventions of our environment, but who is equally powerful. Examples? Some characters like Keanu Reeves or Clint Eastwood, actors like James Dean, visionaries like Steve Jobs or Elon Muskand fictional characters like Sherlock Holmes or almost all superheroes, from Batman to Peter Parker: loners, outsiders and rare, but at the same time successful and capable of conquering.
Millions of young people frustrated with a world that seems to make it difficult for them (during the pandemic it prevented them from leaving home), feeling misunderstood, secondary, isolated, but at the same time still eager to feed their egos, have embraced the ideal of the sigma male, which allows them to exist as a contrast to the alpha males, embodied for them by the popular kids in high school, those who often made them the target of their ridicule.
How do Bateman and American Psycho? According to wrote journalist Shaurya Singh in the newsletter The Digital NativeBateman’s main characteristics—his sexual insecurity, insensitivity, shallowness, and obsession with money—are directly connected to some of Gen Z’s (and abundant members of a few others) obsessions during those strange times.
The media and social networks continued at that time to exert the same pressures on this generation as always: the cult of the body, the obsession with sex, with money and the comparison with the other, but the pandemic and confinement multiplied their effects. . Those shots of Patrick Bateman looking in the mirror with vanity, either just out of the shower or having sex with a woman, are not too far from the type of videos that can be seen on Onlyfans, the platform that has revolutionized the way in which it is produced. and pornographic material is consumed, which has created a new type of specular eroticism (the mobile works as a camera, but also as a mirror for a type of man who adores his own body) and that during the pandemic increased their revenue by 553%.
welcome to the white house
From an aesthetic point of view, the fashion of the film also made millions of eyes fall in love with it. Especially thanks to the resurgence of the taste for aesthetics old money (It would be said in Spanish “old money”, that is, that indisputable wealth already established in a surname for many generations) that dominates production. Even the design of Bateman’s apartment, luxurious and minimalist, fit with the most fashionable decorative aspirations of the day. Let’s remember that it was at the beginning of 2020 when AD magazine published a famous report about the minimalist mansion, almost with the air of a futuristic funeral home, that Kanye West and Kim Kardashian had had built in Los Angeles for an, already then, uncertain future that never happened.
By the way, Kanye West once said in an interview to Ellen DeGeneres that she had found “inspiration” in Patrick Bateman, “who I really identified with while watching the movie”, while the audience giggled. The video has been liked a lot on TikTok, obviously.
Perhaps, among all those that we have just mentioned, the aspect that contributed the most to the non-ironic use of the Bateman character (which, let us emphasize, was created as a parody), was the obsession with money that characterized those beginnings of the pandemic. Pasta became the concern of almost everyone at that time for obvious reasons. It was a moment in which whoever else was sent to unemployment, submitted to an ERTE or was left halfway in a selection process. Making money, and particularly in an easy way and without leaving home, became the main interest of many, who unceremoniously embraced the philosophy of crypto bros, which in record time flooded networks such as TikTok or YouTube with its martial and illogical optimism. Investing in those risky assets became almost a form of religion and “hold with balls” in a new commandment.
It is possible that the media glory days of the crypto bros They have not been many, but they have been very intense. Today, Patrick Bateman is not a metaphor for them, despite the fact that his creator’s goal was to ridicule or represent in the crudest possible way precisely what they glorify. As explained by journalist Brad Esposito in an article for the Australian edition of the magazine Vicein the idol gallery of these sigma males are also the Tyler Durden’s Fight clubthe joker of Joaquin Phoenix or Jordan Belfort of The wolf of Wall Street. Guys who are outside the system and play “by their own rules”, broken toys who are outside of society and learn to live in a perpetual battle against a world that is alien and hostile to them.
These Patrick Bateman worshipers range from modern-day stoics to habit-control freaks, militant misogynists, trolls of the internet, inhabitants of 4chan, Reddit or Forocars, anti wokes, voters of far-right parties or staunch critics of Marvel’s attempts to diversify its audience. They often use the image of Bateman to represent themselves without worrying for a second about the true meaning of Ellis’s work, who, in a display of intelligence and irony, saw all this before anyone else. “what happened to american psycho it was a very detailed novel”, he declared to ICON at the beginning of 2020. “Everything was told about Patrick Bateman, about his clothes, his diet, his physical exercises… somehow, Patrick’s life is what you can see today on many social networks: foodies, runners, influencers… if someone turned american psycho on an Instagram account, it would be practically a novel”.
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A psycho comes to TikTok: why is the social network of generation Z obsessed with ‘American Psycho’?