Why ‘American Psycho’ Has Never Been More Relevant

When Jaz was in Dubai for December, he asked if I wanted anything from the world’s largest book store. I did: American Psycho. Specifically a copy with the covers Picador had designed for the reissues they released when Imperial Bedrooms came out back around ’05 (I’m a book cover design nut, you guys). American Psycho came out back in 1991 and it was, for obvious reasons, both controversial and a revelation, but take a look at the world around you and I don’t think it’s ever been more relevant.

Most people I run into know of American Psycho from the 2000 film adaptation starring Christian Bale and while that captures some of what makes the story so great, it is also better known for the visual gorefest its viewers are treated to. Specifically that scene where Bale takes an axe to Jared Leto’s head while screaming about getting a table at Dorsia. It remains pretty amazing even when it makes the novel’s already absurd violence seem cartoonish to the point of almost becoming a pastiche of the source material.

But the novel isn’t really about gore. In fact, the book’s brilliance lies in its deconstruction of late 1980s and early 1990s yuppie culture, focusing on the unending materialism and banal interests of the United States’ most privileged young people as they enter the work force in high powered positions, taking home ludicrously high salaries, and having not much taste to go along with it. Everything becomes a game of one-upmanship between high-powered stock brokers and executives vying for the interests of the same vapid women or for seats at the same dull clubs and restaurants. Despite its gut-wrenchingly detailed descriptions of gore and violence, some of the hardest sections to read in the book are the long diatribes lead character Patrick Bateman provides on subjects like music, fashion and his business cards. It’s precisely because all these largely insignificant things are all that matter in the world of the yuppie that they are so difficult to digest for your average middle class reader (so, me).

Author Bret Easton Ellis has described how he would often assemble Bateman’s description of the other characters’ outfits by flipping through fashion magazines and catalogues of the time, choosing expensive items at random. He once remarked in an interview that, if you were to do the same, you would see that most of what the characters are wearing doesn’t actually work as an outfit and most of them would probably look like clowns in the outfits as he’s described them.

Recalling that interview now, I remember an acquaintance pointing out to me a year or so ago exactly what I was wearing and where I’d bought it. To the part of me that cared about looking good, about dressing well, it was simultaneously impressive and horrifying. That someone had their eye so firmly buried in a world of catalogues, fashion and trend analysis – that they were so focused on that consumerist lifestyle that they could identify where each item of clothing I was wearing came from, that was disturbing.

But in many ways, the 2010s have been a lot like the 90s. Even as messages of pseudo-spirituality permeate the mainstream, with brands and festivals banking on everything from an appreciation of the human experience to environmentalism in order to sell-sell-sell, I see and feel the people around me slipping further and further into a consumerist coma. It’s a lifestyle that seizes on insecurity and perpetuates it, telling us that the more we have the better we will be, and that the ‘better’ the brand one invests in, the more likely they are to be seen as the best in their social circles.

The “best”, of course, also gets to be the “happiest”.

One of the most famous scenes in American Psycho (engrained in our consciousness by Bale’s performance but engineered to be just as claustrophobic by Ellis in the novel) sees Patrick and his colleagues sitting around a boardroom table, comparing business cards in a pissing contest that reveals how small they all feel in front of one another even as they compare minutiae like the font or paper grade of each others’ cards.

At times I have been privy to many similar conversations about equal nothings-in-particular that have formed the backbone of arbitrary contests of ranking one another’s significance. It’s like staring at a line graph that has axes connecting your head to your asshole.

Not that these don’t happen in matters not involving consumerism, but it seems that the returning Zeitgeist of insecurity helps foster the bottomless pit of consumerism. A lull in consumer interest means a movement toward entertainment and experience. That means more of an interest in live music, dancing, spiritual awakenings and philosophical texts. There’s a big love for history (read: nostalgia) to go along with this sort of movement. It’s interesting that when people become less interested in consumerism, sales patterns also become more consistent, which is not always what brands or advertisers want. The advertising industry in particular is built on artificial spikes in sales and market value, working thrice as hard as any industry to manufacture a sense that big numbers and high volumes equal success; they often do in the short-term, which also means that they are often unsustainable.

It seems like no coincidence then that the markets built on spending artificial and inflated amounts of money on artificial and inflated products like stocks and bonds then also take a hit during this period of tangible engagement, and that leads to situations like the recession.

With something as big as a recession or a depression (which is what we’re really going through now), possessions suddenly go up in value because they become so difficult to attain for the average person. America was so badly hit by the current Depression that Detroit has basically closed down. They are literally giving houses away to writers and other creative types in order to manufacture some sort of cultural and artistic renaissance where the manufacturing and motor industries can no longer sustain themselves.

But what happens to people who already have a lot when objects become unaffordable? Well, they become desirable. If bread costs a lot of money then having bread becomes meaningful and reflective of great success, right? The same goes for clothing and furniture and homes. And if you’re the kind of person who cares about asserting value through possessions, through monetary success, you’re inclined to follow a trend towards consumerism. And the thing about trends is that they’re marketed by the financially successful to the consumer – the lower class, the poor, the middle class, etc.

If it’s cool to have things, because having things is so hard to achieve, then the rich catch on to this trend and then perpetuate that message to everyone through screeching ad campaigns. If the rich tell you something is important, the middle class often want to ape that behaviour too. If they do, then the cycle begins again, and consumerism takes root all over again.

And artists? Artists reflect that in the work they make. Perhaps that’s why there’s been renewed interest in high class serial killers like Hannibal Lecter or that guy from that dumb show The Following? Maybe that’s why Patrick Bateman may be showing up on our TV screens as a middle-aged replacement for Dexter Morgan, or why outgoing Doctor Who Matt Smith has taken up his role in an American Psycho stage musical (no fucking joke). We’re interested in these ideas again because we’re seeing the world become like this again.

And that means that American Psycho has never been more relevant than it is right now. If you haven’t seen it, or even if you have, why not check it out again? Or better yet, pick up the book.