American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis - 9 out of 10

 American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis

Nine out of 10

 

 

When one opens a book called American Psycho, he or she may expect it to be about the ultimate psychopath that comes from that land – the one who still leads that sorry democracy and tries hard to carry on as a tyrant if need be, helped by the GOP and more than seventy million lunatics – and this might be a world premiere, in that few if any of the critics probably remarked on the presence of Donald Trump in the novel, who is mentioned quite often, not in the capacity we know of today – that of very stable genius and the Paradigm of the Ultimate Psycho  - but as a symbol of excess, approved of by the anti-hero of the narrative, who keeps referring to the Trump limousine, tower, plaza, Christmas party, the food and restaurants he likes and even in connection with…U2, apparently, the American Ceausescu liked the band, the latter being just one of a few segments that muse on music.

 

The main character of the acclaimed novel by Bret Easton Ellis appears exaggerated and is sure to prompt the question ‘if this type of personage has anything to do with the real world, with his excesses, gruesome fantasy, pornographic imagination and accoutrements’, but then we look at the seventy million individuals that have voted with the paradigmatic psycho and prefer an alternative universe to the real one and realize that there is more than one American Psycho and maybe almost seventy million of them…creatures for which the American Gods – as in http://realini.blogspot.com/2020/11/american-gods-by-neil-gaiman-eight-out.html - have been replaced with just one, the deity they call the Chosen One, who does not care a hoot in the world for anything except himself, ready to have millions killed by the virus or anything else for that matter, on the altar of his supreme ego, just like the old Aztec priests would do with their victims http://realini.blogspot.com/2017/06/note-on-apocalypto-directed-by-mel.html

On the one hand, these people do not kill with ferocity and mad cruelty their victims – albeit a good number may be even more creative in that department and they haunt the residence of the governor of one state, officials in others, where they feel in their demented minds that the ‘election has been stolen’- but on the other hand, with their vicious, ferocious stupidity they are ready to spread a deadly virus by not wearing a mask and in their extremism they are willing to destroy the other side, which anyway is ruled for most of them by lizards, perverts, pedophiles and even some aliens and fictional characters – they live in a nightmare of the mind most of them, since they do not see that their cult leader is a vicious, psychopathic, narcissistic, stupid, corrupt, tax dodging crook that is as close to the devil as one can be.

 

Consumerism is the other God that shows in this troubling book, which also works as a list of ‘who is who’, where every single major haute couture house is mentioned and the price tag of items like socks is exorbitant and relevant for those who live in a golden land – just like the modern day Caligula, infamous for people who have some sense – and admired by the rest of the world, who has no brains - a man that has golden toilets and other items, in one of the tackiest most disgusting penchants for ostentation and pretentiousness – where they ear Armani suits, pay fifty dollars for underwear – which would actually mean 100 in the currency of the moment probably…

 

Another important side of this indictment of the mad, crazy, greedy, selfish, abhorrent, Trump=like characters is their obsession with perverse sex – not all would surely indulge in this type of behavior, some would surely be impotent, others would just like to watch passively – as expressed in what the very stable genius has said in the infamous Hollywood tapes – where he talks about grabbing women by the pussy – and in general, in many of the gory tweets he keeps posting…Patrick Bateman – who appears to be at least in some part born out of the nightmares, anxieties, disillusions of the author, as he confesses himself and you can read about it on the Wikipedia page dedicated to this landmark opus – is getting into such violent sex as to be from one point on related to his murders and it becomes atrocious.

There is a question over the reality of all the abject killing, maiming, beheading, mutilation, burning, molestation, sadistic coitus, necrophilia extravaganza, for there is a possibility that this is all a collection of dreams mixed with the twisted imagination of a lunatic aka psychopath – incidentally, there is a definition given by Tal Ben-Shahar, Harvard professor who has had the most popular courses there and says that a psychopath is one who feels nothing, but he is able to speculate and gain from the emotions of others – and there is even a series of answers on that issue, if you care to google for it…

 

To be fair, Donald Trump is not the only figure mentioned in this disturbing saga – though as you have gathered by now – that is if you kept reading, which is unlikely and therefore even this reference to ‘you’ is redundant – the under signed is overwhelmed by the idea of trump, the sheer size of the cult that he has created and the dumbness, the downgrading of human kind that he and his followers demonstrate…they are not the only phenomenon, for we have the long list of the leaders of Brazil, Philippines, to which we must add the fact that last Sunday, our very own Red Plague has arrived on the first place at the elections, though Alhamdulillah, they will not be able to govern and the liberals and the new guys will, Insha’Allah.

Tom Cruise shows up, as he climbs in the same elevator with the antihero, who refers to his film The Bartender, only to be corrected by the prominent Scientologist who tells him it is called Cocktail, Bono of U2 is mentioned and a portrait of him is painted, there is Phil Collins of Genesis, Madonna, Whitney Houston and other singers and bands have their performances, singles and albums analyzed, lauded or criticized in a paradoxically amiable manner, which is in such contrast with the madness of the murders, which are not just horrible as such, but made more traumatizing in the complexity, dedication, fervor and creativity with which heads are cut, mouths are mutilated – together with bodies in general – brains are fed to rats, felatio is performed on the severed heads and even when the respective women are still alive – he kills both men and women, but has sex with the female sex only, though there are some episodes where homosexual intercourse is suggested and the monster enjoys lesbian coitus – the limits are shattered and the narrative can surely be considered pornographic in its excesses – aside from the ‘usual’ frenetic depictions, the main character and some of the personages involved lick anuses, use dildos and when his paroxysm of violence is reached, he cuts vaginas, bites into the sexual organs of his partners and the whole thing is absolute madness…which makes sense if we look at what is going on now, in what used to be the model of democracy…

http://realini.blogspot.com/2020/12/note-on-american-psycho.html