Bret Easton Ellis - Tumblr Posts
American Psycho has been hijacked by ideological misogynists; and the most common counter argument I see is people pointing out that the film was directed by a woman, the book was written by a gay (or bi, depending on who you ask) man and therefore it should be obvious that it’s a satire. This is true, but it doesn’t touch on just how anti-manosphere AP actually is (despite predating online in-cel culture) and I want to explain what I mean —
Bret Easton Ellis explicitly stated that AP is not only a satire on materialist culture, but that it’s primarily a self-directed critique — he had a period in his life where he aspired for the ideal male lifestyle presented in magazines like Gentleman’s Quarterly. This alienated him from the people around him. It made him miserable.
We see this in Patrick as well, though it’s exacerbated by his presumed AsPD and very clear mental illness. His pathological need to be the perfect man, to have the perfect life, completely isolates him. Women are nothing more than objects, prey, meat. They only serve to satisfy his desires — in the film, he and his friends laugh about how “there are no girls with good personalities” and the ideal woman is “a little hardbody who will satisfy all sexual demands without question”. (A conversation which also occurs in the novel almost verbatim). Sound familiar?
In a particularly gruesome scene near the end of the novel, Patrick says: “though it does sporadically penetrate how unacceptable some of what I’m doing actually is, I just remind myself that this thing, this girl, is nothing, is shit […]”. This is exactly the way that manosphere content conditions men to think.
A few sentences later we get the kind of thing you see “blackpill” guys saying when they explain their plight: “And later my macabre joy sours and I’m weeping for myself, unable to find solace in any of this, crying out, sobbing “I just want to be loved”, cursing the earth and everything I have been taught: principles, distinctions, choices, morals, compromises, knowledge, unity, prayer […]”
Tl;dr: Patrick Bateman is explicitly (albeit sort-of inadvertently) and fundamentally an anti-in-cel figure. He is a warning.
In the book, the main guys in American Psycho usually refer to each other by surname, but they also have little nicknames / epithets for each other!
Timothy Price is “Priceless”!
Patrick Bateman is “The Boy Next Door”!
David Van Patten is “Mr Manhattan”!
Craig McDermott doesn’t have one. His name alone is enough to strike fear into the hearts of men.
i would simply like to imagine them in alternate reality hanging out as friends and that is definitely paul owen he’s talking to
patrick “i believe in a balanced diet” bateman
…And if we won’t burn together, I’ll burn alone.
-Bret Easton Ellis
american psycho is now on netflix so of course I’ll be watching it again 😭
Bret Easton Ellis does The Baby-Sitters Club
As a young bookworm who spent a lot of time travelling in cars, I inhaled any book that was near me. It was one of my better coping mechanisms. One series that I read obsessively (before dropping without a second thought) was The Babysitters Club aka BSC if you were cool.
As in the style of all vanilla-flavoured American pop-culture, BSC is mostly about the unique struggles of a bunch of perky (one day, God will unleash a plague of caffeine-deprived zombies and they will only eat the perky people. I hate "perky" people) bland, whiny, determined middle-class white people who have a few quirky ethnic friends that still manage to fit into their respective stereotypes. For example, Claudia Kishi fits into the All-Asians-Look-Good-In-Any-Whacked-Out-Shit stereotype. There is a fabulous website dedicated to her clothing choices. She is an early 80's/late 90's Asian Lady Gaga with a sugar problem and I heart her enormously.
God, I love racism. It's some of the best fun you can have.
Anyway, a genius named Drew Grant has decided to rewrite the series in the style of Bret Easton Ellis, thus making the series readable again. We now receive gems like the following:
There is nothing more depressing than coming home after last bell at StoneyBrook High, trying to get my room in order for the Baby-Sitters’ Club meeting, and then realizing that you really don’t even give a shit anymore. Like, sorry that you have diabetes Stacey, but do we have to spend half the afternoon discussing it? And yeah, it really bums me out to watch Claudia just snort up half those Pixie Stixs when she is so blatantly trying to get attention to her sugar problem, but every time we try to talk to her about it she says she needs it to focus on her art and that her super-strict Asian parents are coming down on her ass again so what’s the point, really? This whole club is really getting to be a drag but whatever, I started the project and I just know that bitch Marci is waiting for me to like, drop the ball on this whole thing so she can pick up all the money and maybe Mary-Anne’s boyfriend Logan as a nice “fuck you too” perk
Good shit! Now this is what a bunch of pre-teens are thinking.
I've spent a chunk of the afternoon reading this while listening to Lady Gaga. Totally upgraded my mood. Try it. First Bret Easton Ellis does BSC chapter is here, chapter two is here, and it shouldn't take more than a few brain cells to find chpater 3