Patrick bateman gay
Home / gay topics / Patrick bateman gay
“He’s played as somebody dorky and ridiculous,” she said. According to GQ, these men often mimic Bateman’s obsession with productivity and aesthetics.
Harron, who co-wrote the screenplay with Guinevere Turner, explained that the film was always intended as a critique of toxic masculinity. The way they talk about each other is like teenage girls in a locker room at school.”
Despite Bateman’s sharply tailored suits and polished appearance, Harron insists the character was never meant to be aspirational.
So, did we fail? And yet somehow, somewhere along the way, a segment of the population missed the memo that American Psycho was not a masterclass in alpha male swagger—it was a send-up of it. “That was not our intention.
It’s been 25 years since Patrick Bateman first lathered himself in exfoliant, recited Huey Lewis lyrics like gospel, and dragged a blood-soaked ax across the Manhattan skyline of 1980s excess.
“There’s something very, very gay about the way they’re fetishizing looks, and the gym.”
“They’re so obsessed with their looks, and Brett could see it and focus it and underline it,” the filmmaker opined.
Citing radical feminist Valerie Solanas, the subject of Harron’s debut film I Shot Andy Warhol, she said: “There was a reversal of alpha male culture, which was more like the culture of teenage girls. “But, people read the Bible and decide that they should go and kill a lot of people. You, sir, are in the closet with a Platinum AmEx.
There’s something gorgeously subversive in watching a film that lets you enjoy a perfectly choreographed skincare routine while also showing the utter horror of a society that prizes looks over empathy, power over humanity.
I'm not sure why [it happened], because Christian's very clearly making fun of them… But, people read the Bible and decide that they should go and kill a lot of people. I’m not sure why [it happened], because Christian [Bale]’s very clearly making fun of them.”
“But, people read the Bible and decide that they should go and kill a lot of people,” the director added.
“They’re so obsessed with their looks, and Bret could see it and focus it and underline it.”
She also likened the behaviour of Bateman and his peers to that of teenage girls. “It was very clear to us that we saw it as a gay man’s satire on masculinity,” she said, pointing to author Bret Easton Ellis, who is openly gay, as someone uniquely positioned to critique the homoerotic undercurrents in hyper-competitive male spaces.
“There’s something very, very gay about the way they’re fetishising looks and the gym,” Harron said, describing these male rituals in both Wall Street culture and sports.
But maybe leave the chainsaw at home.
Source: Variety
‘American Psycho’ Director Baffled By Film’s “Wall Street Bro” Fandom: “We Saw It As A Gay Man’s Satire On Masculinity”
Movies
In the view of writing duo Mary Harron and Guinevere Turner, the fact that their 2001 cinematic adaptation of American Psycho has received such a heavily-lauded reception specifically from men who follow the “Wall Street bro” mentality is one of the most surprising phenomena to pop-up around the film – especially so given that they viewed Bret Easton Ellis’ original novel as an outright “satire on masculinity”.
RELATED: ‘American Psycho’ Author Bret Easton Ellis Says That His Best-Selling Novel “Would Not Be Published Today” On Account Of Being “Too Problematic” For Feminists
This reflection on the Christian Bale-led classic’s cultural footprint was offered by Harron, who also served as the film’s director, during a recent retrospective interview given to Letterboxd‘s Mia Lee Vicino.
Presented by Vicino with the statistic that “slightly more fans with she/her pronouns” have picked American Psycho as one of their overall favorite movies “than those with he/him pronouns”, Harron asserted, “That’s really interesting, because it got a lot of attacks before it came out.”
“And the book got a lot of attacks by people who never read the book,” said the writer-director in reference to the outrage expressed by various feminists and feminist groups at the time of the film’s release.
That was not our intention. “There’s [Bateman] being handsome and wearing good suits and having money and power. And the joke was never meant to be aspirational.
To Harron—and to many queer viewers from the jump—the satire has always been clear: American Psycho is “a gay man’s satire on masculinity.” The source novel’s author, Bret Easton Ellis, wrote from the vantage point of someone who understood the homoerotic pageantry of power and performance.