Patrick Bateman In American Psycho

Have you ever had a discussion with someone person and the first thing you hear, that person is a psycho? What the individual is really describing is a person who is believed to be insane or crazy based off of the way the person interacts with others or along. The movie that I chose to watch is American Psycho. This movie is about a materialistic, wealthy Wall Street investment banker who has a double life in which one of the lives he lives is as a serial killer.( Harron, M Director ,2000, April 14). He is addicted to drugs, sex, and conspicuous consumption. He is obsessed with designer clothes, business cards, alcohol, and music such as Whitney Houston, Robert Palmer, Huey Lewis, and many other artists. Most people think they know the answer after watching this movie but director Mary Harron's answer might surprise you there is a long list of evidence supporting the claim that Patrick Bateman has to be imagining everything.

Murder, willingly taking another human's life, is considered a heinous crime in the United States, and from the sociological perspective, breaks an important more. Serial Murder, therefore, is a sociologically deviant phenomenon where a person kills two or more people in distinct events, and an FBI overview of serial killers states “No single cause, trait, or even a group of traits can differentiate or identify serial killers … from other types of violent offenders” (FBI). We can, however, use sociological perspectives to identify potential factors in these cases. As a boy, Jeffrey Dahmer was described as being a loner and a poor student- and had been sexually abused by a neighbor. He is homosexual, and all of his victims were males- which

Fifty years ago, a person breaking the law would either be called crazy or a criminal. Today, the mental health community has much more specific diagnoses. However, the explanation of certain behaviors may be difficult because there is much overlap among mental conditions. In Bret Easton Ellis’ American Psycho, the protagonist, Patrick Bateman, is apparently simply a psychopath. However, Bateman can be diagnosed with other mental illnesses such as Asperger’s syndrome, obsessive-compulsive disorder, schizophrenia, narcissism, and antisocial personality disorder. In both the book and film adaptation, Bateman’s actions can be understood more accurately when analyzed in light of modern psychology.

“Women cannot be murderers.” Even though this was not explicitly stated in the newspapers, The Boston Herald in its article “Lizzie Borden” conveys the perception that the feminine ways associated with women would make it impractical for women to commit murder. Lizzie Borden, a young lady accused of brutally killing her stepmother and father with multiple blows to their heads with a hatchet was described as a religious, sincere, and modest human being in The Boston Herald’s article covering Lizzie’s life before and after the murders. During Lizzie’s youth, she suffered from isolation because of her reserved personality and belief that nobody appreciated her presence, but in womanhood turned her life around and attain friendships who vouched for her good character during the time of the investigation. The Boston Herald’s article “Lizzie Borden: Her School and Later Life - A Noble Woman, Though Retiring”, successfully persuades the reader of Lizzie Borden’s innocence with the focus on her femininity through diction and logic.

In today's society, men are held at high expectations. Men are taught from an early age to be tough and bottle up their emotions. The character Macbeth, from Shakespeare's play, is influenced by his wife to forget his morals and learn to be alright with murder even though he knows it is wrong. The Mask You Live In states, “94% of mass homicides are committed by males”. This is mostly

In addition, these criminals have affected our public perception to view them as popular figures rather than for the violent acts they have committed (Schmid 4). By buying their merchandise, watching their movies and treating them as celebrities, society no longer sees the killer – they see the mask, hence alternating our perception to judge if a killer is 'good' or 'bad'. That is to say, serial killers are psychopaths that shouldn't be idolized. Although some serial killers react to social changes, society has a reaction to all serial culture.

American Psycho is a movie adaptation directed by Marry Harron released in the year 2000 that was based off of the 1991 novel of the same name authored by Bret Easton Ellis. The movie focuses on the main character Patrick Bateman who is an investment banker in New York in the era of the early 1980’s. Patrick is a perfectionist whose life by day seemingly rotates between his picture-perfect job, his superficial relationship with his fiancée Evelyn, and his shallow interaction with his co-workers and peers. By night, Patrick is a textbook Psychopath and a serial killer.

Imagine waking up every morning, the sun is bright and faintly letting itself in through your window past the curtains, going to comb your hair elegantly, working on your posture to look presentable to others, then taking the time to iron press your pants and collared shirt. Now, once you're out and are seen from a far you are a handsome devil but no one in the right mind has the thought about you or your true and darkest innermost demons. The Milwaukee Murders by Don Davis offers a chilling remark, “Many people killing many other people is one thing...one person killing many people can be terrifying” (Davis 1991, 167). You need not to look like a crazed maniac with a twitch in your eye to be deemed a serial killer; looks don't matter, in this case but, psychology and the mind does.

Psychopathic killers fit in with social normalities because of their ability to mimic others people’s actions. They seem more charming than the average person, and know how to play with their victims’ emotions and heads. Ted Bundy, for example, stood on the side of the road with his arm in a cast to lure women into helping him.

Many serial killers suffer from a mental illness or incapacity of some type, and more specifically, many serial killers suffer from Psychopathic Personality Disorder, or PPD, a mental disorder that causes the inability to empathize with others (Forensic Science 563). It is believed that infamous serial killer, Ted Bundy, suffered from Psychopathic Personality Disorder because he “…looked upon others as objects, not people to be loved or hated, just objects” (American Decades). People with PPD are very highly manipulative and intelligent, exceptional liars, and feel as if they are superior to everyone else and therefore disregard rules and laws. However, they do not have the capacity to feel emotional remorse even when they know their actions were wrong (Forensic Science 563), just as Perry knows he should not have killed the Clutters, but he does not feel sorry for doing it (Capote 358). Basically, a psychopath’s “main aim [in life] is self-gratification,” no matter the cost (Forensic Science 563). Serial killers suffering from Psychopathic Personality Disorder usually do not start their lives of crime with murder; they often start with small acts, such as systematic lying, animal cruelty or vandalism, as children (Forensic Science 563). Jeffrey Dahmer, a serial killer thought to have killed hundreds, collected and dissolved road kill in acid as a child

“I feel lethal, on the verge of frenzy. I think my mask of sanity is about to slip" (Harron) thought Patrick Bateman as he contemplated his growing feelings of emptiness and need for bloodlust. American psycho is the story of a greedy, materialistic, self obsessed businessman who transforms into an unstable and violent sociopath. Abnormal behavior can be defined by four patterns deviance, distress, dysfunction, and danger (Comer 2). Deviance is exhibited as unusual, or extreme behavior. Throughout the movie, Bateman was very blunt and would casually say violent, graphic comments. The only time Bateman experienced distress was towards the end of the movie when he couldn’t stop killing. He began to panic, called his lawyer to confess, and didn’t go into work. However, most of the time Bateman said he enjoyed the rush of a kill. Typically, abnormal behavior interferes with the person's ability to conduct daily activities (Comer 2). As a result of Bateman’s abnormalities he could not sustain a healthy relationship. The most extreme characteristic of Batemans abnormal behavior was that it caused him to put others in danger.

In “Natural Born Celebrities: Serial Killers in American Culture,” serial killers are defined as clean cut, normal, All-American people. Some interviewees shared in chapter five state that the reason why it takes so long for the culprits to be apprehended is attributed to the ability to carry on with a normal life. One even offered that in one instance, his victim actually thought he was joking when he kidnapped her to eventually murder her. In “Mr. Brooks,” Earl again is a very successful person. He is an ordinary, suit wearing, clean shaven, clean cut, successful Portland, Oregon businessman. I imagine that his killing addiction would shock even his closest, everyday coworkers. Hannibal Lecter is a former psychiatrist. I can’t even begin to imagine the amount of schooling that he endured and numerous certifications, both federal and state, that he must have attained. Yet, he did not like arrogant and obnoxious people, therefore, he murdered them.

In this piece I am looking at Terrence Howard’s performance as Cameron Thayer in Crash, in the scene where Peter and Anthony attempt to steal his car and he resists and is pursued by the police. In the beginning of the scene when Howard uses his actor’s tools and is able to immediately establish the mood of the scene using his face. His eyes are staring off camera into the distance, which immediately suggests to the audience that he is reflecting on the previous events. He has his mouth slightly open in a frowning position, which clearly indicates to the audience that he is upset. It is also clear from this initial portrait that the audience is given that Howard has taken all the circumstances of the character’s life into consideration.

“The serial killer ‘is an entirely different criminal,’ ”The term serial killer is misleading on the ground that each murder is intended to be the last.” We see them as a figure of “the dark side of human potential,” but they believe they’re “on a heroic quest for the biggest score possible” They believe they are “the archetypal figure of impurity, the representative of a world which needs cleansing.” However, society knows that serial killers are not heroes, and they’re not cleansing the world. “The figure of the serial killer is violent impurity personified, and it is a construction that necessitates figures of violent purity to confront it.” While it can be argued whether having mental disorders should prevent a serial killer from being capitally punished, it is proven that many serial killers suffer from “paranoid schizophrenia, manic-depressive psychosis, or psychopathology.” It’s even said that “this crime is actually a form of disease. Its carriers are serial killers who suffer from a variety of crippling and eventually fatal symptoms, and its immediate victims are the people struck down seemingly at random by the disease carriers.” Serial killers usually have a stressor in their life that makes them start killing, and when they do “homicidal mania becomes ‘a necessity… linked to the very existence of a psychiatry which had made itself autonomous but needed thereafter to secure a basis for its intervention by gaining recognition as a component of public

The killer had a modus operandi in all the murders. The killer murdered only women. Women were brutaly murdered. They were not just stabbed but were butchered.