American Psycho

we live in a society where American Psycho is remembered and praised as aspirational masculinity instead of a two-hour wet dream. but this movie is absolute cinema. it's a razor-sharp satire about everything wrong with men. and althought it mocked the 80's, unfortunately, it still holds up today. the opening morning routine scene is such an important scene because it tells you everything about him right from the start. how patrick experiences his own identity as something assembled. it's the little details about this movie that make it so great. firstly, how Patrick feels like a commercial you're watching. because he's not a human being—he's a human brand. everything about him, from the suits, the restaurants, the manners, it feels like he's presenting a lifestyle package. that's because commercial culture tells people what to want, wear, and admire. Bateman seems assembled from those instructions. his tastes never feel personal. and that's the point. many ads promise fulfillment but are hollow underneath. Bateman is the same contradiction: immaculate surface, vacant interior. second detail i noticed is that you realize quickly that nobody actually gives a fuck; they are too busy performing their own brand to notice a monster in their midst. in this world, looking the part is a "get out of jail free" card. as long as you’re wearing the right valentino suit and dining at the right table at Dorsia, your actual soul is irrelevant. another is how brittle his masculinity is. he's built himself out of money, his career, and how other men percieve him. so when someone reads him differently as he wants, he loses his shit. i mean, a secure person wouldn’t be so threatened by being perceived in any particular way. and the idea of his hell not being flames or steel bars and a warm bed, but the condemnation of being an unseen, unfulfilled, and unreal Patrick Bateman. for someone who thrives off attention and the desperation to be seen, invisibility is fucking torture. he is stuck inside the machine he worshipped and built with his own hands. there is no catharsis, no punishment, and—most devastatingly for Patrick—no recognition.