WEEK 4: OLD WEIRD AND NEW WEIRD

The book I read this week was American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis. I also watched the movie before, but I was really excited to see that reading the book was a different experience. I think it’s a little sick of me to say, but I really enjoyed the fact that Patrick Bateman was a murderer. While the film portrayed it in a way that suggested it could all have been a dream, the book was much more ambiguous about the killings and I am going to say he really was a murderer. The way the author used this man who is a perfect member of society, so perfect and held such a high status in society to the point that even as he confessed to others about his kills, no one believed him. That to me was categorized as weird because status is such a highly valued thing nowadays and all throughout history. That the way the author really used his status against Patrick and how it tore him apart was very uncomfortable in the best way possible.

His lewd thoughts about women and how he killed them showed just how far he was being pushed. He wanted to fit in so badly that he almost became invisible. His personality was nonexistent unless he was killing someone. He was so consumed by himself that his own sense of reality disappeared. This portrayal of being consumed by your own mind definitely makes me cringe and even worse it tells you a story about what is actually happening in real life. It makes me eerily uncomfortable thinking about how it could happen to anyone but at the same time I am strangely drawn to it. I think it’s so compelling because it’s an ugly process to unfold all the layers we try to hide every day, but it is actually so honest to the truth and reality. Personally, I thoroughly enjoyed this very much and definitely am a fan of the ‘weird’ aspects in story.