okay so i rewatched american psycho yesterday and it got me thinking about this ridiculously stupid thing on twitter some months ago where a rumour was spread that margot robbie was gonna play patrick bateman in the new american psycho and. firstly i cannot imagine a more hilarious lie. i am truly racking my brain rn trying to think of something as obviously comically untrue and i genuinely cannot, which of course means twitter users took it seriously and started moping about how patrick bateman being a shitty man is The Whole Point, and like, yeah, but. that’s not the whole point
patrick bateman’s defining characteristic is his obsession with appearances, both in his absolutely insane morning routine but also his job, where he goes, what he buys, who he talks to, on and on and on to the degree that people who don’t even remember his name call him a tryhard. this focus on appearances is so insanely conformist (there’s another guy who has his same job, suits, glasses, and even barber and he appears for one scene and never again) that he repeatedly gets away with murder and generally very poorly veiled psychopathy because it literally doesn’t even stand out. all the men around him are just as fake, even the president is just as fake, they wouldn’t recognize a murderer if he screamed it at them, because are they really any better? that’s why the movie calls attention to war, poverty, sex work, etc as both examples of the cruelty these men perpetuate and also as clear avenues for more men like patrick to be cruel on an even more personal level.
at the same time, though, that’s not exactly true. sure, paul thinks he’s halberstram and his own lawyer can’t recognize him, but the women around him can. his fiancée evelyn likes him, vaguely, and is the only person to notice that paul allen calls him by the wrong name, even asks about it and is shushed with a kiss. the sex worker he calls “christie” recognizes him, obviously, and fears him, but can’t prioritize her safety over money because of her conditions, it’s only other sex workers who try to get her to press charges. his assistant, jean, catches on to everything and finds his crude sketches of various violent fantasies, the only reason she was able to escape getting killed by him in the first place was because she was innocent and kind enough to make him hesitate, especially when reminded of evelyn, even though he previously couldn’t care less about whether or not she knew he was cheating with her best friend. as for courtney, she’s too drugged out all the time to notice anything past patrick’s facade, but that goes both ways, he’s too focused on his appearance in the mirror to pay much attention to her clear unspoken something (i think it’s suicidal ideation but there are other theories). even then, although the women of the movie are always without fail more observant than the men and thus more fearful of and hated by patrick, they’re occupied with facades too. jean wants to go to dorsia too, evelyn is having an affair and prioritizes their relationship only for social status too, the unnamed model from the club is so used to wall street guys like patrick that she can tell he thinks she’s dumb but finds “something sweet” about him. the film doesn’t link patrick’s constant preoccupation with appearance and status to his masculinity, it’s specifically about the capital, the women exposed to the same men and the same culture behave identically, whereas “christie” and “sabrina” don’t bother asking where patrick works. these men are still horrifically misogynist, and these women are still victims, but it’s the acclimation to that specific culture that enables patrick’s violence. evelyn doesn’t notice patrick’s sketching or his confession because she’s complimenting a friend’s new bracelet.
so, obviously, yeah you couldn’t just make patrick bateman a girl and have a good movie. it’d be an absolute trashfire. but that doesn’t mean the commentary and themes of the movie just couldn’t at all be conveyed with a female main character, she’d just have to be evelyn or courtney instead of patrick. taking an original movie which poses the thesis that “wall street guys are all so misogynist, conformist, and latently psychotic that not only would they not notice if an actual axe murderer worked with them, they wouldn’t even be able to recognize his face and would consider him an awkward tryhard loser” and making a new version that says “wall street guys are all so misogynist, conformist, and latently psychotic that not only would they not notice if they were dating an actual axe murderer, they would demean her and treat her identically to any other woman in their midst” is an actually smart concept for a movie and I’M SICK AND TIRED OF PRETENDING IT ISN’T. ALL AMERICAN GIRL WAS BAD DUH BUT WE CANNOT AS A SOCIETY CONTINUE TO IGNORE THE FEMALE AMERICAN PSYCHO POTENTIAL
