.i was reminded that i did not properly understand american psycho properly.....so i went back and watched a video called the best lines of patrick bateman.....and started reading the book too.....
and what i found astounded me....
american psycho....i hope u have watched the movie, or that atleast i will make sense to you here on...
It is about a 26 yr old guy, bateman, who apparently is a twisted serial killer who loves inflicting horrific sexual deaths to his victims most of whom are female, he even resorts to cannibalism and "experiments" with "cooking".....
all this said and done , the movie(and the book) at first glance appear nothing to be but works of gore, meant for those people who actually like to watch people decapitating other people..
that was the reason i had not watched it twice for this long...
turns out i could not have been farther from the truth in my understanding. The book/movie is actually about how empty we all are due to today's consumerist society...
it is about how bateman, pursues and achieves everything that we all so desire, good looks, great money, luxuries and beautiful women. But even after attaining all these things all he feels inside is emptiness.
He wears the best (designer labelled) clothes, knows everything about fashion, has perfect hair, perfect body, a high paying job for which he has to do minimum work, is socially chiseled, and a confident and people friendly outer personality.
He works out regularly, goes to the most expensive of restaurants for everyday meals, has a beauty skin regimen for each morning, all in all he is perfection personified, other than the fact that all this has filled him with emptiness.
he quotes "i just do not exist".
He is so absorbed about acquiring things, that everything to him is just another commodity. Even with his victims he sees nothing human, nothing feels human to him anymore, and he is periodically seized with bouts of madness which only hurting others seems to quell.
In the end it is revealed that he actually never killed anybody and that all the gore involved was just his madness. He imagined all those things. His madness is so complete that he is unable to distinguish between it and reality.
And even after confessing all of it,(he is narrating the book/movie), he confesses one last thing , that
"There are no more barriers to cross. All I have in common with the uncontrollable and the insane, the vicious and the evil, all the mayhem I have caused and my utter indifference toward it I have now surpassed. My pain is constant and sharp, and I do not hope for a better world for anyone. In fact, I want my pain to be inflicted on others. I want no one to escape. But even after admitting this, there is no catharsis; my punishment continues to elude me, and I gain no deeper knowledge of myself. No new knowledge can be extracted from my telling. This confession has meant nothing."
"no deeper knowledge of myself"/"i want my pain to be inflicted on others"/"my punishment eludes me"
I have never understood anyone as much as i can understand bateman.
