More than two decades after the release of American Psycho, the film’s director and co-writer, Mary Harron, is speaking out against a growing group of men who idolise its lead character, Patrick Bateman, despite the film being a clear satire.
In a new interview with Letterboxd, Harron criticised the rise of “Wall Street bros” and self-proclaimed “sigma males” who admire Bateman, the narcissistic and violent investment banker played by Christian Bale in the 2000 cult classic.
“I’m not sure why [it happened], because Christian’s very clearly making fun of them…” Harron said. “But, people read the Bible and decide that they should go and kill a lot of people. People read The Catcher in the Rye and decide to shoot the president.”
The “sigma male” trend — popularised by internet subcultures — idolises Bateman as the ideal man: a solitary figure who is self-sufficient, attractive to women (yet disinterested), and hyper-focused on capitalist success. According to GQ, these men often mimic Bateman’s obsession with productivity and aesthetics.
Harron, who co-wrote the screenplay with Guinevere Turner, explained that the film was always intended as a critique of toxic masculinity. “It was very clear to us that we saw it as a gay man’s satire on masculinity,” she said, pointing to author Bret Easton Ellis, who is openly gay, as someone uniquely positioned to critique the homoerotic undercurrents in hyper-competitive male spaces.
“There’s something very, very gay about the way they’re fetishising looks and the gym,” Harron said, describing these male rituals in both Wall Street culture and sports. “They’re so obsessed with their looks, and Bret could see it and focus it and underline it.”
She also likened the behaviour of Bateman and his peers to that of teenage girls. Citing radical feminist Valerie Solanas, the subject of Harron’s debut film I Shot Andy Warhol, she said: “There was a reversal of alpha male culture, which was more like the culture of teenage girls. 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.”
Despite Bateman’s sharply tailored suits and polished appearance, Harron insists the character was never meant to be aspirational. “He’s played as somebody dorky and ridiculous,” she said. “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.”
A new adaptation of American Psycho is reportedly in the works, this time helmed by openly gay filmmaker Luca Guadagnino. Whether this version will again be misinterpreted by the same crowd remains to be seen.
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