THE MALE PROJECTION ON WOMEN by Clara Lee weakness of men, and their own fragility projecting onto other women. Hence, as a female reader, it is hard to deny that Ellis isn’t actually promoting extreme misogyny - he is demonstrating it.
Bret Easton Ellis’ American Psycho, is a novel published in 1991 that ventures into the ideas of the middle-class white man during the 1980s economic crisis. It is brutal in its imagery and supposedly sexist in its nature; the pinnacle of all things that play a part in suppressing women in literature, and in reality. Since its release in 1991, many critics considered this novel’s appearance as pulp fiction with no introspection for women in literature. The novel follows the 1st person narration of Patrick Bateman, 27, an elite Manhattan business man who has an insatiable desire for violence, particularly towards women. This is intertwined with his frantic struggles to keep afloat to the conformity of male vanity.
In the novel, we are exposed to the multiple yet synchronised perspectives that Bateman and his colleagues have on women. During the beginning, the group of men leave one of their many ostentatious restaurants for a bar called ‘Pastles’. All of them decide to comment on a woman they’ve seen, sitting at a different table. They unanimously reject the idea of her beauty from the shape of her knees as “this unnoticeable flaw now seems overwhelming”. I think what Ellis is trying to display here, is the extreme hypocrisy with the ideologies of what it means to be a ‘man’. Patrick is undoubtedly dramatizing ‘problems’ that are so irrelevant and completely fabricated by society. The ‘problems’ themselves are involving appearances that require no further thought, and yet he dwells on these aspects for a copious amount in the novel. Once more this emphasises the satirical foundation of the novel.
This novel was also made into a movie adaptation. Unsurprisingly, the movie had a similar reaction. It was directed by Mary Harron, who had the one and only feminist Gloria Steinem comment on the idea that Leonardo DiCaprio (who was originally chosen for the role) should NOT take up this opportunity: “there is an entire planet full of 13-year-old girls waiting to see what [he will] do next, and this is going to be a movie that has horrible violence toward women.”1 Subsequently, Christian Bale had ended up playing the role, who eventually became her step-son during the movie’s production.
The intense tone of this passage feels ironically comic; you are unable to shake off the feeling of how important it is to him. This leads us to Bateman’s frantic meltdown shortly after, about the material of a business card from another colleague. He is physically described as ‘sweating’ and becomes absolutely fixated on the card on the table, furious that Van Patten has a card made with “Eggshell with Romalian type”. Arguably, there are more flaws in Patrick’s pessimistic attitude than there is in any women we come across in this novel.
Nevertheless, for many feminist critics, American Psycho is shallow. It portrays the ideas of women through men: blonde, thin, mindless ‘creatures’ who are an accessory to a man’s pleasure. It is to believe that American Psycho controversially illuminates the
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