And just at that point, I develop a crazy craving for chocolate. I get all kinds of cravings when I watch movies, chocolate is the least crazy one of them.
Until I actually realize that what I am now watching is a scene where an ATM machine asks of Bale to "feed it a stray cat" just as the cutest little kitten crawls beside his legs and purrs most adorably. So, naturally -ha!- , he pulls out a gun and aims at the kitty, whilst trying to feed it to the money withdrawal socket of the ATM. But, oh no, an old lady shouts at him to stop, -Bale still holding the gun at the kitty-. The old lady had it coming, drops dead. Police sirens - we are talking immediate action!-, psychedelic orchestration that warns of a pursuit scene, then car alarms, Bale running through alleys, hunted by the policemen, at some point, confronts them, looks at them and shrugs his shoulders,- i am thinking, wait, shouldn't he say something like "are you talkin' to me?" right about now?-. Guns are drawn out, one dead cop, two explosions, I mean; the police car bursts into a fiery smoke of a mushroom. Long story short, visible as the fact that this man is crazy, sweat running like rivers covers his face in a declaration of sheer panic. But panic for what? Because he shot a dozen people that fell cold and drained from blood like puppets or because he is scared shitless that, well, now it has become kind of obvious as daylight that he is a psychopath and that he will be pursuited and caught, for his unstoppable urge to kill is not accompanied with particular carefulness or restraint. Calls his lawyer, cries "you are my lawyer, you should know I killed a lot of people", starts saying certainly more than just a dozen names. "maybe twenty people, maybe forty". Wait, the end is not that near. Says "I tried to cook tonight", and at that point, I don't think anyone is surprised, but even so, well,... Hangs up the phone, "keep your eyes open", just a glimpse in a fraction of a second of relief as the muscles on his face loosen and then distortion again.
Next scence, next day, bright new day indeed.
Well, as it turns out, no one was ever killed by the hands of Mr. Bateman, many were slayed by his twisted imagination. And I cannot stop myself from wondering, what exactly does the story of the American Psycho mean? Just another thriller cult movie, that eventually fails to make you even wonder what it is that you have just watched? Is it just random that psychosis and revelling insanity sprout from within the very bowels of a consumerist and modern-day organised and degenerate lifestyle? A lifestyle meant to defuse all inhibitions and social restraints in the anonymity of the big hip city and replace all that with the imperative cultivation of the "image culture". The crazy of the '80s, the demoralisation of the business market and the inane and bootless character of the modern culture, more specifically pop music, all prevail in this film. There is one scene in particular where Bateman gets his nemesis co-worker drunk and back to his apartment where he puts on a raincoat, and splits the guy's (Jared Leto) head in two with a shinning axe, continuing on to just axing him a little more, while we see the blood spattering on Bateman's face. All that while a Huey Lewis & The News song plays on the background, and Bale does a little dance overtaken by the energy that the prospect of cold blooded murder offers him. I do have to admit, I laughed out loud at this point. So I thought, black humour huh? or satire? or maybe both.
And thus, I come to my last question; does everything have to have a profound meaning? Does all need to be in the end serious, didactic and thought-inducing?
Well, American Psycho, for me, did work in an alarming manor - it made me write this really long article didn't it?-. But most certainly not from the very beginning.
However, this question has been bothering me for quite some time now, and drifting away from the "American Psycho" analysis, I would like to take a minute and reflect on that.
Let's assume that not everything has a deeper meaning, in the sense that some things exist in human lives only to accommodate certain human needs and when they do so not to be ever considered again. But even then, even when the purpose is to solely fulfil the most trivial needs of men, that automatically qualifies any function to be really meaningful. Meaning thus, that something has no meaning whatsoever when the need it is supposed to fulfil and the purposes of its existence are fictional. Right?
I think now, even I myself am very very confused.
People of the modern age have numerous needs and desires and each one of them have the potential of being satisfied, but how can someone nowadays really know what one is in need of. There are the
"plastic needs", and there are the primitive needs, the physical drives and urges and needs, and the spiritual needs.
What I want to say, is; do all movies present a special message? are you not supposed to leave the movie theatre with nothing to say about how you spent the last two hours or so of your life? is all art representative of some greater idea that is so subtle that it cannot be put to words? does everything need to be analysed and attributed to social structuralism and human behavioural patterns? is it okay for people just pass time, without producing any spiritual or physical work whatsoever and stop? Stop everything, freeze their thoughts and feelings, numb them that is with anything that will come in handy-with everything that the social standards and mass-culture archetypes force down their throats, inject in their veins, feed their emotionally wrecked and violated minds, against their natural tendency to always think and feel. But, think this, it is the end of the day, a really bad day, hell was raised in the office, you shouted at someone on the phone, people shouted back at you in the street while you tried to talk on the phone and hold your plastic coffee container on one hand and drive simultaneously to a professional meeting across town, you got stuck in jam, maybe on your way back home you spilled your third cup of coffee all over the driver's seat, etc etc. You finally lock your doors, hide from behind you heavy closed curtains and sink into the couch. Turn on your TV, all that is on is an annoyingly stupid TV series, or a late night show interviewing hollywood starlets that always laugh a lot, and one channel with the news talking about next month's elections or a bombing incident in Syria, or a documentary about the environmental issue in Bangladesh. What will you watch? It would be sheer masochism if when all day so far has been a proof of how much the world sucks to ask for more. So, when we wonder why have people resigned from thinking and from having a truly productive “free time”, we should consider the possibility that they simply cannot. They do not have much of a choice. Better this way actually, for when you force someone’s mind to overwork so that it can try to keep pace with the reality of this “fast forward” society the most probable results are going to be catastrophic. Yes, ideas will be produced but they will have been nurtured in agitation and distress, they will be twisted.
So, we all are crazy. We are crazed beyond our limits and we still insist that this is the way everything is supposed to be. That this is somehow right.
Lately, this odd thought has been swirling around my head; humans and all living organisms are a product of nature. If not a product per se, then surely something like what a branch to a big old tree is. Nature and the whole of the natural ecosystem presents magnificent calm and symmetry. Isn’t it an abomination, something that disrupts that calm and defies the “rules”? Us?
Oh, and by the way, yeah, in the end, the prostitute dies a rather phantasmagorical death. A lot of blood and a chainsaw with its own will form high above.
