The Unintentional consequence of “American Psycho”
American Psycho has been on trend with Gen Z for years at this point. The movie has scored positive reviews with a 3.9/5 on Letterboxd and a 7.6/10 on IMDB. American Psycho has everything a movie needs to captivate a viewer. It has a complex and deeply unsettling storyline from start to finish.
The main character Patrick Bateman Is a caricature of a 1980s businessman working on Wall Street. Played by Christan Bale, Patrick Bateman is a mask he says the right things at the right times. But there is nothing behind the mask. The only feelings that Batemans feels are anger, disgust, envy, lust, and fear. But because of apps like TikTok the ugly side of Bateman is not shown.
This has led to Bateman being the face of a growing trend for Gen Z is the “Sigma Male” movement. These are boys that put money and status over everything. They hold pride in emotionless stoicism. They don’t believe it is necessary to have a relationship with a woman. Many of these traits seem like they are directly copied from Batemans character design. Bateman is their idol because in the TikTok edits he is the picture perfect sigma male. This leads thousands of kids to idolize a man that is a psychotic murder.
The ironic part is that the film’s director chose to make Bateman so stereotypical to make fun of males in that atmosphere. If these boys actually decide to watch the movie they will see that Bateman is the weak deranged psychopath that director Mary Harron depicted him to be. In the movie there are scenes that depict Bateman as an insecure, idiodic, nervous, envious, fearful, and homosexual man. So if the hyper masculine boys that make up the sigma community found out that their idol was actually like this then the image of Bateman would be tarnished.
Why is this a problem? The point of the movie is to hate Bateman to see his flaws and see his malicious tendencies. Harron directed this in a way to humiliate Bateman and men that act like him. Yet Generation Z are too foolish to see who Patrick Bateman is. To idolize a monster is to become a monster. The scary part of this is that thousands of young men are looking up to a psychopathic killer. Their short term blissful ignorance will become a disease in their minds.
