{"id":26282,"date":"2025-04-17T01:57:07","date_gmt":"2025-04-17T01:57:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/26282\/"},"modified":"2025-04-17T01:57:07","modified_gmt":"2025-04-17T01:57:07","slug":"american-psycho-director-baffled-by-bro-worship-for-patrick-bateman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/26282\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018American Psycho\u2019 Director Baffled By Bro Worship For Patrick Bateman"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cAmerican Psycho\u201d<\/a> director Mary Harron says she finds it bizarre to witness \u201cWall Street bros\u201d idolizing Christian Bale<\/a>\u2019s character Patrick Bateman, considering the film is \u201cvery clearly\u201d poking fun at them. <\/p>\n

While marking the 25th anniversary of the satirical slasher in a conversation with Letterboxd Journal<\/a>, Harron said she\u2019s questioned whether she \u201cfailed\u201d in her making the film after seeing men openly praise Bateman<\/a>, a cocky New York investment banker by day and serial killer by night, on social media. <\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m always so mystified by it,\u201d Harron explained. \u201cI don\u2019t think that [co-writer Guinevere Turner] and I ever expected it to be embraced by Wall Street bros, at all. That was not our intention. So, did we fail?\u201d <\/p>\n

She continued, \u201cI\u2019m not sure why [it happened], because Christian\u2019s very clearly making fun of them.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Canadian film director also finds it ironic that Bateman is so beloved by \u201csigma males\u201d on the internet. The 2000 film is an adaptation of the satirical novel of the same name by Bret Easton Ellis, which the filmmakers saw as \u201ca gay man\u2019s satire.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201c[Ellis\u2019] being gay allowed him to see the homoerotic rituals among these alpha males, which is also true in sports, and it\u2019s true in Wall Street, and all these things where men are prizing their extreme competition and their \u2018elevating their prowess\u2019 kind of thing,\u201d Harron said. \u201cThere\u2019s something very, very gay about the way they\u2019re fetishizing looks and the gym.\u201d<\/p>\n

Harron pointed to a moment in the book that she wishes could\u2019ve been included in the final version of the film, in which Bateman thinks to himself that his co-worker McDermott (Josh Lucas) appears \u201cpuffy.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cThere was a reversal of alpha male culture, which was more like the culture of teenage girls,\u201d she explained. \u201cIt was about insecurity and vanity and competition and the way they gossip. The way they talk about each other is like teenage girls in a locker room at school.\u201d<\/p>\n

The filmmaker told Letterboxd Journal she attributes some of the internet\u2019s misplaced reverence for Bateman in recent years to the birth of memes and \u201cTikTok, or whatever,\u201d noting there\u2019s appeal in \u201c[Bateman] being handsome and wearing good suits and having money and power.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cBut at the same time, he\u2019s played as somebody dorky and ridiculous. When he\u2019s in a nightclub and he\u2019s trying to speak to somebody about hip-hop \u2014 it\u2019s so embarrassing when he\u2019s trying to be cool,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n

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Elsewhere in the interview, Harron compared the 25-year-old film, which is set in the Reagan era, to \u201cwhat we have in the White House\u201d today.<\/p>\n

\u201cAmerican Psycho\u201d is \u201cabout a predatory society,\u201d she said. \u201cThe rich are much richer, the poor are poorer. I would never have imagined that there would be a celebration of racism and white supremacy, which is basically what we have in the White House. I would never have imagined that we would live through that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read the full interview on Letterboxd here.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cAmerican Psycho\u201d director Mary Harron says she finds it bizarre to witness \u201cWall Street bros\u201d idolizing Christian Bale\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":26283,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3935],"tags":[16041,16040,77,16042,3943,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-26282","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-american-psycho","9":"tag-christian-bale","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-mary-harron","12":"tag-movies","13":"tag-uk","14":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26282","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26282"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26282\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26283"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26282"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26282"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26282"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}