‘American Psycho’ Director Baffled By Film’s “Wall Street Bro” Fandom: “We Saw It As A Gay Man’s Satire On Masculinity”
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”.
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. “Not that there isn’t a lot of horrific violence in the book, but there’s, to me, a clear critique. Not just of masculine behavior; it’s a critique of society, of the world of exploitation and consumption and greed and reduction of people… So I’m really delighted that young women have started liking it.”
On the subject of the film’s reception, Harron then noted that when it came to the recent adoption of American Psycho protagonist Patrick Bateman, portrayed in the film by Bale, as a sort of memetic figurehead by some online circles, she was “always so mystified” by said phenomena.
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“I don’t think that Guinevere and I ever expected it to be embraced by Wall Street bros, at all,” she told Vicino. “That was not our intention. So, did we fail? 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. “People read The Catcher in the Rye and decide to shoot the president.”
From there, Harron asserted that while that a portion of both the film and Bateman’s popularity was admittedly “about memes”, another non-insignificant part was the fictional serial killer’s portrayal as “being handsome and wearing good suits and having money and power.”
“But at the same time, he’s played as somebody dorky and ridiculous,” she then explained, pushing back against the online persona projected upon the character. “When he’s in a nightclub and he’s trying to speak to somebody about hip hop—it’s so embarrassing when he’s trying to be cool.”
On this note, Harron then raised the topic of the Ellis-penned source material, positing to her host, “It was very clear to me and Guinevere, who is gay, that we saw it as a gay man’s satire on masculinity.”
“[Ellis] being gay allowed him to see the homoerotic rituals among these alpha males, which is also true in sports, and it’s true in Wall Street, and all these things where men are prizing their extreme competition and their ‘elevating their prowess’ kind of thing,” she elaborated. “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. “It was the thing that Valerie Solanas, of I Shot Andy Warhol [the Harron-directed biographical film based on the aforementioned Solanas’ attempt to assassinate the titular pop artist], always said: there was a reversal of alpha male culture, which was more like the culture of teenage girls.”
Drawing her thoughts on Ellis’ character to a close, Harron ultimately concluded, “It was about insecurity and vanity and competition and the way they gossip. The way they talk about each other is like teenage girls in a locker room at school.”
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