WMG for American Psycho. Here be spoilers.
The book and movie are in large part a critique of yuppie culture and the rampant capitalist 80s. Patrick’s status in the company is the result of nepotism. His entire life is the result of nepotism. Patrick commits crimes, but his dad is waiting in the wings bribing whoever needs a bribe to cover it up because he is just like Patrick and also doesn’t want the family name dragged through the mud. Patrick’s expertise isn’t the result of massive personal self-education, nor is it in his head. He was raised by someone just like him who only bred to have a new interesting toy to play with. Think about it in late 2010s terms: an ultra rich man who inherited his wealth and became a major player in his own right obsessed with power and control who flagrantly violates the law with no punishment. It’s not fantasy or delusion, it’s the realty of wealth.
- Bateman killed a police officer. Ain't no way in hell the NYPD are gonna let that slide. I doubt all the money in the world could've saved him...then again, that's assuming the shootout happened as show on screen.
- Unless the NYPD receives some huge bribe money as a means of shutting them up. At the end of the day, it's about the money.
- ...No. The NYPD might not exactly be free of corruption (especially in the 80s) but even a couple million dollars in the pockets of a few high-ranking people isn't going to stop an entire American police department from pursuing a cop killer, unless maybe the killer was another cop with more seniority. Even if every person of authority could be bribed to not pursue the case, the dead cop would have a lot of friends in the department who would want to go after the killer.
- Unless the NYPD receives some huge bribe money as a means of shutting them up. At the end of the day, it's about the money.
At least not purpose. He was fully willing to "nail" her, but the nail gun itself wasn't ready to fire because it wasn't connected to the compressor. When Bateman realizes that reality won't let him perform the fantasy of murdering someone with a nail gun, he had to abruptly and coldly end the date because his entire murder plan was in vain.
- Alternatively he could just be a Marauder. Which is pretty equally terrifying.
- Expanding on this theory, Kimble is his Avatar, opposing him and dragging him toward Descent, by breaking him down. It explains why no one else really sees him.
- Alternatively he could just be a Marauder. Which is pretty equally terrifying.
- Jossed on Heroes, Sylar doesn't eat brains.
- Evidence in support of this from the film - the 'feed me a stray cat' sequence is not explicitly shown to be a fantasy there as it is in the book, implying that the other murders are similarly fictitious when it becomes clear that this sequence never happened. Also, it's implied in the film that Paul Allen is alive and well in London. By this theory, he genuinely did steal a lock of the model's hair, but he did not kill her to get it.
- Further evidence: in several sequences, Bateman gets out a nail gun and uses it on victims. Nail guns are NOT self powered. Almost all nail guns are fired by compressed air. A very few are electric, but only some small ones, not the huge framing guns that he describes using. To use a nail gun, Bateman would have to have a good-sized commercial air compressor and a great big long hose in his apartment. Not only are these never mentioned, if they were actually present, he would have found a way to use them. New York Yuppie Bateman wouldn't know any of this. Secondly, to make a nail gun fire when it isn't pressed up against something requires fairly elaborate modification to remove the built-in safety features. Patrick Bateman is never presented as having any sort of technical/mechanical knowledge that would make this possible.
- Or, as someone once put it, Patrick Bateman hasn't killed anyone...yet.
- On a similar note, chainsaws have safety mechanisms that stop them running when dropped. A throttle trigger and a lock-out switch on the handle that must both be depressed in order for the chainsaw to run. The chainsaw would have immediately stopped running when it was dropped from the top of the stairs.
- Further evidence: in several sequences, Bateman gets out a nail gun and uses it on victims. Nail guns are NOT self powered. Almost all nail guns are fired by compressed air. A very few are electric, but only some small ones, not the huge framing guns that he describes using. To use a nail gun, Bateman would have to have a good-sized commercial air compressor and a great big long hose in his apartment. Not only are these never mentioned, if they were actually present, he would have found a way to use them. New York Yuppie Bateman wouldn't know any of this. Secondly, to make a nail gun fire when it isn't pressed up against something requires fairly elaborate modification to remove the built-in safety features. Patrick Bateman is never presented as having any sort of technical/mechanical knowledge that would make this possible.
A big theme of American Psycho is that very few recognise him at all, and several confuse him with other people or refer to Patrick Bateman as a different person. For instance, at the end, his lawyer congratulates him on the prank but notes that it was a flawed joke because no one would believe that dorky Patrick Bateman would be capable of murder; he seems to be referring to Patrick Bateman as a different person. Assuming the above two WMGs are correct and the main character is quite insane - literally! - this implies that he's dissociating beyond the point of doing crazy things and truly doesn't know who he is and simply believes himself to be Bateman.
- Further evidence of this is his introduction. He begins by describing where he lives, and then says his name. Most people would start by saying their names.
- Or, It's a subtle nod to his obsession with social status. It's more important to him that people know where he lives than what his name is.
- It should be noted that false identification is a recurring theme in both the novel and the movie; individuals mistake their acquaintances for others at the drop of a hat. Everyone is so self absorbed that they are literally incapable of remembering the names of people around them; it is exaggerated to a hilarious degree. The reason his lawyer referred to Bateman as some other person was because he mistook Patrick for someone else.
- It's made worse by the fact that every single banker-yuppie wears identical clothing and haircuts (truth in television, especially in the 80s) and goes to great lengths to look as good as possible, converging on identicalness.
- Patrick has a split personality. People don't recognize him because most of the time (perhaps all the way to the end) he isn't Patrick Bateman. This alternate personality is slowly taking over the real Patrick; the real Patrick may be aware of this. This is seen when he notes that his confession is worthless because he never committed any of the murders. He, as a person, will soon cease to exist once his alternate personality has totally overshadowed him.
- Well, there is a part in the novel where Patrick is at a U2 concert and he (presumably) hallucinates a moment where Bono says to Patrick and Patrick alone: "I . . .am . . .the . . .devil . . .and I am . . .just . . .like . . .you."
- Something a bit more likely:
- Eh, it's more of a running gag in Hunter than anything else. In fact, Cherion hunters often reference the movie for FPD personnel who become slashers, calling them "Bateman's".
- He may be a larval form of Slendy.
- Jossed for both the Psycho books, films and TV adaptations. Norman Bates didn't have any children and dies in the second book. In the film series, Norman's child would have been born in the early 90s. Any possible women Norman would have been attracted to before the events of the first novel/film would have been murdered due to his Mother's persona taking over, killing any woman he was attracted to. Same is true with both Bates Motel TV adaptations as well.
But furthermore, they are even actively pranking him by hiring a fake detective who then pretends to investigate the "mysterious disappearance" of Paul Allen...
A lot of the satire comes from the fact that all these men all share the same callousness, the same consumerist superficiality, and are pretty much interchangeable and they're basically all self-centered sociopath. The reason nobody bats an eye at Patrick's confessions is that everyone else around him is *also* a violent serial killer with a double-digit body count.
Throughout the plot, Patrick shows traits of all seven sins:
- Sloth: Patrick has a very cushy, very well-paying job at Wall Street, but never seems to actually do anything, even in business meetings he and his 'friends' are talking about men's fashion or comparing business cards, and he lazes about in his office instead of doing his job.
- Gluttony: Rather than quantity, Patrick's Gluttony is about quality. Patrick, like many of his Yuppie friends, is obsessed with eating in the most expensive restaurant possible, purely for the status symbol of what it entails. On top of that, he's also a cannibal, for no other reason other than he wants to eat human flesh.
- Greed: Patrick is an extremely greedy man, always wanting the best, most expensive things possible, and what happens when he can't have those things leads to...
- Envy: A lot of Patrick's motivations come from pure, unadulturated envy. The reason why he so deeply prepared Paul's murder and went through with it? Purely because he had a better looking business card than him and claimed to being able to get reservations to an exclusive restaurant. When he disposes of his body and enters his apartment, he panics...because he sees that Paul's apartment is more expensive than his.
- Wrath: It can take very little to set Patrick off, a good chunk of his murders are made against people who slighted him in extremely mundane, minute things.
- Lust: Patrick is an avid porn watcher, and has extreme fetishes on top of that. Lust is sex without love, and Patrick feels no love for anyone, all sex is to him is a show of power and a self-affirmation of his worth. His murders of women are not based in either envy or wrath...but just to satisfy his bloodlust.
- Pride: Above all else, Patrick is a narcissistic sociopath, obsessed on how he's seen by others: his greed, envy and gluttony are almost exclusively based around his overwhelming pride (or lack of), he hates "lesser" people like Homosexuals (after he's Mistaken for Gay by Louis and he kisses his hand, he immediately goes to wash it) or the homeless (he mocks a homeless man before murdering him) because he feels superior to them due to his wealth and status. Unfortunately, there's always someone wealthier, more fashionable or more attractive than him; he so desperately wants to be at the top of the pyramid, but he never quite reaches it.
This all goes hand-in-hand with the Hell theory. If one considers Patrick Bateman as a Satanic allegory, then his punishment is the greatest one of all: he's given a place where he can indulge in all the sins in the world, in all the depravity he wants, and get away with everything...but he never truly feels satisfied, he never experiences catharsis. All he feels is sharp and unending pain, a pain he wants to share with the rest of the world. He's the most evil human possible, and yet nobody really cares about him, he can't even find catharsis in being recognized as evil.
He's the ruler of Hell, but all it entails is unending pain.
And as the sign behind him says:
- So, tying into the interchangeability of the characters, it is entirely possible that the Timothy Price seen exiting the novel at the beginning is not the same one that re-enters the narrative at the end. The Timothy Price who stormed out of the tunnel killed himself. The Timothy Price that enters the novel is someone else, and Patrick is mistaking them for him. The only characters who Bateman does not see as interchangeable and thus killable are the ones that treat him like a human (Jean, Evelyn, Luis), and Price doesn't really fit that description. By that point, Bateman is so far gone that the person who was once the only person in his circle of friends who seemed a little bit interesting is just another rich yuppie.
- Alternatively, the Timothy Price that re-enters the novel at the end is the same one as the Timothy Price at the beginning, but only returns upon coming to the same conclusion that Patrick does about the world he lives in. Like Patrick's murders being unable to affect the world around him, committing suicide would be pointless because his absence would not be noticed.
- Given the story's critique of yuppie culture, it would make sense that Bateman isn't actually special in his evil desires and that every other character in his environment is equally as self-serving, vapid and awful as he is. Bateman hasn't actually killed anyone, and his violent fantasies are not unique to him; every yuppie is also like this, but everyone involved is too self-absorbed to recognize that those around them are merely acting out a script of perceived normalcy. The violent fantasies aren't even due to any inherent evil, but out of the sheer boredom and madness of being stuck in a performative, empty lifestyle surrounded by no one but other self-serving assholes.
- None of Bateman's coworkers are shown to have different priorities to Bateman that aren't performative acts of their status, and they often indulge in the same ridiculous displays of such status, like comparing business card colors. Who else would indulge Bateman in something so banal but a group of other Batemans?
- Evelyn never actually cares about Bateman beyond wanting him to propose because she is merely using him for status the exact same way he does to her. After Bateman dumps her, she appears to cry... only to wipe her tears hastily and look around the restaurant for others' reactions, implying that they aren't sincere.
- Another possibility (one that might overlap with this one) is that Marcus is the polar opposite of Patrick, with Patrick possibly being too shallow, self-absorbed and superficial to look past the surface-level similarities. It would add a layer of irony to Paul constantly getting the two of them confused.