My analysis on Postsructuralism and Postmodernism revolves around the 2000 uncut version of the horror film, American Psycho, directed by Mary Harron, who also wrote the screenplay along with Guinevere Turner. The setting of the movie transpires in New York City during the 1980s. Patrick Bateman, the yuppie lead character and protagonist (if I may use the word protagonist) from the outset proclaims “There is an idea of Patrick Bateman but only an abstraction, no real me” (American Psycho). Later, he answers his fiancée, “Negative, I want to fit in,” when she prods him “Why don’t you quit your job?” When I try to put this film in the postmodernistic perspective a couple of its tenants come to mind: There is no ultimate truth, and, there is no self without the word. The French existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1890) “focused on the human experience of freedom and responsibility in a godless universe. For Sartre, ‘existence is prior to essence’: because the world and human nature possess no fixed meaning, human beings are responsible for their own choices and actions” (Leitch 1196). But is Patrick Bateman fully responsible for his murderous actions, or perhaps, partially, a victim of a cultural psychosis inflicted by the Postmodernistic Society?
Someone once said of contemporary society, “To the extent that they allow bureaucracies and entertainment to define and distract them, they live unauthentic lives.” Surely, Bateman exemplifies this by his unauthentic value system. His murderous rage ignites even over seeing better looking business cards of his yuppie colleagues, and over another colleague’s ability to get coveted reservations at an esteemed restaurant while Bateman cannot. Jean Baudrillard observes that “In consumer society, natural needs or desires have been buried under, if not totally eliminated by desires stimulated by cultural discourses (advertising, media, and the rest), which tell us what we want” (Leitch 1554). Bateman’s true needs to murder and dissect women (predominantly) most likely stem from displaced anger brought about by his fantasy environment with no discernible outlets to sublimate his psychoses.
One might argue that his bizarre sexual activity and acts of murder reflect reality. However, these acts are cultivated through the mass media of film. He watches porno films, which include sadism-masochism, and the horror film, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, whence he formulates his wants and techniques of kinky sex and murder. Mary Harron, the film’s director, comments that “Patrick Bateman learns how to kill and have sadist-masochistic sex (and positions) through his videos" (American Psycho BluRay DVD). Along these lines, Baudrillard feels “sexual desire is no longer a response to a person whom we meet and know face-to-face. Rather, sexual desire is stimulated by images promulgated by the media, and we strive to make our bodies to fit those images” (Leitch 1554). Bateman even makes his body fit by doing calisthenics to these videos. This brings us to the question: Does Kant’s ideals of reason and rationalism from the Enlightenment still prevail in our Postrucuralist and Modernistic Society?
Michel Foucault and Noam Chomsky discuss this during their 1971 debate. (Foucault Chomsky Debate YouTube). For the most part, Foucault believes that the coercive forces inherent in our society—government, corporate, educational, military—make it very difficult for humanity to maintain reason on a large scale. However, and more optimistically, Chomsky believes that “people’s creative powers to produce reasonable things will overcome the progressive structures of repression” (YouTube). Foucault interjects that even “Psychiatry, which is supposed to help people, is actually part of the power structure used in the judicial system” (YouTube). He goes on to say that Mao Zedong, the first communist revolutionary leader of China, had said that “Human nature is different between the proletariat and bourgeoisie” (YouTube). Chomsky reflects the more positive side in human nature bringing up his own civil disobedience concerning the Vietnam War. We may consider Chomsky a de facto proxy for Jürgen Habermas in this debate, who understands very well the arguments of the postmodernists and agrees that “the Enlightenment project of basing authority on reason has gone awry…we must strive to fully reintegrate the discourses of modern science, art, and politics … Enlightenment ideals gives people in post-Enlightenment societies a lever with which to move their less-than-perfect societies toward a better future” (Leitch 1569).
Perhaps Baudrillard’s Disneyland metaphor captures most trenchantly our world and the American Psycho’s Patrick Bateman's world with these words: “Disneyland is presented as imaginary in order to make us believe that the rest, when in fact all of Los Angeles and the America surrounding it are no longer real, but the order of the hyperreal [models of a real without origin or reality (Leitch 1557)] and of simulation. It is no longer a question of a false representation of reality (ideology), but of concealing the fact that the real is no longer real, and thus of saving the reality principle” (Leitch 1565).
Works Cited
American Psycho. Dir. Mary Harron Perf.Christian Bale, William Dafoe, Jared Leto, JoshLucas, Samantha
Mathis, Matt Ross, Bill Sage, Chloe Sevigny, Cara Seymour, Justin Theroux, Guinevere Turner, and
Reese Witherspoon. Lionsgate, 2000. Blu-ray DVD. Film.
Leitch, Vincent B. Ed. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. 2nd ed. New York:
W.W. Norton & Company, 2010. Print.
Foucault Chomsky Debate. YouTube. 1971. Web. 22 Apr. 2011.
http://www.YouTube.com
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