{"id":668,"date":"2023-11-01T11:09:52","date_gmt":"2023-11-01T15:09:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/wrt118st-fa23\/?p=668"},"modified":"2023-11-01T11:09:52","modified_gmt":"2023-11-01T15:09:52","slug":"american-psychos-the-dangers-of-ignoring-context-and-form","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/wrt118st-fa23\/american-psychos-the-dangers-of-ignoring-context-and-form\/","title":{"rendered":"American Psychos: The Dangers of Ignoring Context and Form"},"content":{"rendered":"

Narcissistic and unempathetic, he walks through the world as if it belongs to him. He only appreciates women based on what they can do for him. He takes art, music, literature and people at surface value. He holds grudges and discriminates against anyone who isn\u2019t exactly like himself. He cares only for appearances- context and emotion mean nothing to him. His hero, whom he uses to legitimize his backward outlook, is Patrick Bateman: a character created to expose the flaws of <\/span>his<\/span><\/i> way of life.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The film <\/span>American Psycho<\/span><\/i>, directed by Mary Harron and adapted from the novel written by Bret Easton Ellis, intended to deliver a hyperbolic satire and a critique of masculinity. The story is told from the first-person perspective of Patrick Bateman, a self-obsessed, hyper-masculine Wall Street banker with an uncontrollable urge for violence, and as the plot progresses and Bateman\u2019s crimes accumulate, his grasp on reality quickly unravels into ambiguity and paranoia. Upon the novel\u2019s 1991 release, a concerning reception emerged: droves of men identified with Patrick Bateman, idolizing him and his embodiment as the \u201cperfection\u201d of masculinity that allows him to attract women and exert power and influence. The film adaptation, released almost ten years later, was met with identical misled admiration, and despite it being directed by a woman, adorers of Bateman continued to use the film as justification for discrimination towards women. In Susan Sontag\u2019s essay \u201cAgainst Interpretation\u201d, she argues that the form of an artwork and the context of its artist are much more crucial to analyze than merely its appearance and content (Sontag 10). She warns that when content alone is interpreted, the work is violated and its original intentions are distorted. In the case of <\/span>American Psycho<\/span><\/i>, the highly violent yet satirical content<\/span> overshadowed its context, and the original intentions of the story have been greatly misconstrued.<\/span> American Psycho<\/span><\/i> and its widespread misinterpretation support Sontag\u2019s argument that interpreting a work of art solely as its content and ignoring its context is painfully and dangerously reductive. A true understanding of the film is only achieved when viewers submit their senses to the influence of the film, submerging them in the waking nightmare and suffocating anxiety of modern masculinity.<\/span><\/p>\n

The context of a work is also crucial to recognize when evaluating art, and with respect to <\/span>American Psycho<\/span><\/i>, neglecting the identities and intentions of Bret Easton Ellis and Mary Harron has resulted in many men idolizing the figure created specifically to critique them. Susan Sontag articulates what she sees as a major flaw in how society interprets art which is that \u201cwhether we conceive of the work of art on the model of a picture (art as a picture of reality) or on the model of a statement (art as the statement of the artist), content still comes first\u2026it is still assumed that a work of art is its content\u201d (2). She goes on to argue that \u201cinterpretation, based on the highly dubious theory that a work of art is composed of items of content, violates art. It makes art into an article for use, for arrangement into a mental scheme of categories\u201d (6). To Sontag, when a work is evaluated solely through its visual content, the artist is undermined and the art is reconfigured into a narrative it was not made for. <\/span>American Psycho<\/span><\/i> was misread into a narrative that was the antithesis of Mary Harron\u2019s original intentions. According to Harron herself in an article she authored for the New York Times, \u201cwhen I set out I thought I was making a social satire, it was only during filming that I realized how much I was drawing on my own deepest fears. I began to see \u2018American Psycho’ as a scenario of female terror.\u201d<\/span> Despite Harron depicting Patrick Bateman with the intention of portraying the nightmares inflicted upon women by toxic masculinity, men who idolize the character still hover on the surface of the story. They see that Bateman has an ideal physical form; they see his powerful job and his influence over his friends and coworkers; they see the women he attracts; they see his wealth and the material possessions he surrounds himself with; they see a life that they think they want, but the central intention behind <\/span>American Psycho<\/span><\/i> is that these shallow appearances mean nothing to Bateman. He is consumed by apathy and violence and he obsesses over his appearance, job, influence and wealth to distract himself from the terrors of his mind. Therefore, when viewers of an artwork ignore the context of the artists and their intentions, a stage for misinterpretation is constructed, and in the case of <\/span>American Psycho<\/span><\/i>, the entire thesis of the film critiquing the materialistic men of Wall Street has been violated and contorted into a narrative championing their displays of toxic masculinity.<\/span><\/p>\n

Mary Harron reflected on the wildly antithetic reception of her film when she wrote, \u201cno matter how moral or ironic or satirical a filmmaker might think a work is, he or she can have no control over how a member of the audience will receive it.\u201d Viewers of <\/span>American Psycho <\/span><\/i>who find or aspire to find success through capitalism and stereotypical masculinity feel frightened and discomforted by Patrick Bateman\u2019s brutally depraved reality that looks quite similar to the lives they strive for, and the viewers, desperate to find a meaning of the film that fit neatly into their worldviews, interpret the content rather than the context. Sontag provides an explanation as to why one is driven to over-analyze the content of a work: \u201cthe contemporary zeal for the project of interpretation is often prompted not by piety toward the troublesome text (which may conceal an aggression), but by an open aggressiveness, an overt contempt for appearances\u2026 The modern style of interpretation excavates, and as it excavates, destroys; it digs \u2018behind\u2019 the text, to find a sub-text which is the true one\u201d (4). She continues her claim by arguing that \u201creal art has the capacity to make us nervous. By reducing the work of art to its content and then interpreting that, one tames the work of art. Interpretation makes art manageable, comformable\u201d (5). Patrick Bateman does whatever he wants, buys whatever he wants, and says whatever comes to mind no matter how controversial or inappropriate, but women still love him and his male colleagues still respect him. He never deals with the consequences of his actions. These viewers crave that unrealistic life so desperately that they are blinded to the subtext screaming at them to find some value in life beyond material desire and accumulation of influence. Misled viewers of <\/span>American Psycho<\/span><\/i> project admiration onto Patrick Bateman because they find his character unnervingly similar to themselves or to the future they see for themselves, and instead of trying to confront and deconstruct their morals and values, they interpret <\/span>American Psycho<\/span><\/i> as condoning misogyny and classism, conforming the film to their perspectives.<\/span><\/p>\n

Morally challenging works like <\/span>American Psycho <\/span><\/i>can best be experienced through emotions rather than interpretation- by feeling the anxiety Mary Harron infused into her filmmaking techniques, any viewer will immediately recognize Patrick Bateman as an embodiment of the unbearable tension and terror of masculinity. Sontag\u2019s proposed cure to the epidemic of content overemphasis is \u201cmore attention to form in art\u2026What is needed is a vocabulary\u2014a descriptive, rather than prescriptive, vocabulary\u2014for forms\u201d (8). In order to achieve this state of medium appreciation and description, Sontag suggests that \u201cwhat is important now is to recover our senses. We must learn to <\/span>see<\/span><\/i> more, to <\/span>hear<\/span><\/i> more, to <\/span>feel<\/span><\/i> more\u201d (10).<\/span> The argument is that experiencing art through our senses rather than interpretation is the truest way to honor the artist, the intentions behind their work and the perspective they bring to it. Mary Harron crafted the <\/span>American Psycho<\/span><\/i> film with the intention of making it as frightening and distressing as possible, and in her New York Times article, she maintains, \u201cif entering this territory is too risky, then what is the solution? Don’t show violence, don’t show evil, don’t show any of the aspects of human nature that most frighten and distress us.\u201d The build-up of the fast-paced editing and tension-filled score resonates dread within viewers, and this intended to put viewers in the anxious, paranoid Armani loafers of Patrick Bateman, communicating that his life is not one to idolize. However, audiences that walked out of the film worshiping Bateman did not experience the film through their senses. They did not heed Sontag\u2019s warning against over-interpreting content (2), nor did they feel the pulsating fear and tension infused into the film with Harron\u2019s female perspective. Subsequently, the original aims of the film were \u201cviolated\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n

When Christian Bale began preparing for the role of Patrick Bateman, in order to embody the hyper-masculine capitalist Bateman satirizes, he visited the trading floor of Wall Street. According to Bale, a worrying scene unfolded in lower Manhattan when \u201ca bunch of [the businessmen] were going \u2018yeah Patrick Bateman!\u2019 and patting me on the back and going \u2018aw yeah we love him!\u2019 I was like \u2018yeah ironically right?\u2019 and they were like \u2018what do you mean?\u2019\u201d Both Bret Easton Ellis and Mary Harron aimed to use <\/span>American Psycho <\/span><\/i>to tell a cautionary tale, warning male viewers what happens when you let the pressures of conformity in a materialistic, patriarchal society consume you, your worldview, goals and values. Like Sontag argues, this message is distinctly discernible when viewers use their senses to feel the fear projected by Christian Bale\u2019s unhinged performance and Mary Harron\u2019s personally expressive directorial choices. When we ignore what Sontag warns us about- when we let the appearances of an artwork spark rage and uncertainty within us (4)- we end up with hundreds of hyper-masculine, narcissistic, misogynistic Patrick Bateman’s running around Wall Street, thinking that <\/span>American Psycho <\/span><\/i>is an affirmation of their discriminatory hatred rather than a condemnation of it. That is why it is crucial that society not only understands what Sontag believes but also puts it into practice. It is so easy to interpret a work according to one\u2019s own biases, but truly feeling a work, letting it take over senses and sway emotions is how every work should be approached in order to genuinely honor the intentions of the artist.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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