It's one of those rare adaptations, like The Godfather pt.1 and the first three James Bond outings, that stands up to the book, possibly even making it better.
One of my favourite things about American Psycho is how brilliantly it seems to capture the era in which it's set. We enter the race just as the rats are making their fastest lap and whether you were sentient in the late 80s or not, you immediately "get" that it's all about the desperation to acquire as much money as possible in as short a time as possible, and screw everyone else that gets in your way.
A true ideal of the 80s, if there ever was one.
One thing that has stayed with me after my Saturday night sit-in is the music Patrick Bateman listens to. For example I now "like" Robert Palmer, or more specifically his classic "Simply Irresistible" which I played on my radio show the next day.
I later YouTube'd this tune to watch the video (I also massively love music videos, which I've written about before) and as I sat there sipping my coffee I was struck by how, even though there was WAAAAAAAAY more money in the music business in 1988 than there is today, how low-fi the quality of the video was (I know, I know, camera technology has improved immensely since then, blah blah blah).
To me, the video is a lot like the character of Patrick Bateman, in that I both hate it and love it. So let's take a look-see:
It's hard to believe now but at the time it was so stylish and ground breaking that it's use of light, direction and catwalk models set the tone for many music videos for years afterwards. Today, though, the whole thing looks kind of cheap and dare I say it, a little comical.
Maybe it's a victim of it's own success, in that it helped create a theme that has now evolved so far beyond where it started that it's barely recognisable anymore. Just look at Beyonce's "All The Single Ladies", which clearly has firm roots both stylistically and visually in "Simply Irresistible":
Compared to how B's girls move, Robert's Troupe are hilarious in their awkwardness. The only other time I've seen people dance like that are after taking drugs, lots of drugs. But again this is the 80s, so that was also probably the case.
Strangely, I actually think it works really well: the way they all look like mannequin dolls - identical in their movements, clothing, make up and expressions - is kind of sexy.
They all look so cool, too. Their air of elegance mixed with solidarity gives a fairly strong impression of the increasing fight for equality in the workplace. Sadly, this ideal seems lost in the majority of today's music videos, who feature dangerously young women apparently lacking in the principles their more mature predecessors employed.
For example, look at this lot:
Fucking hell. They're so desperate for money that they agreed to feature in a Chris Brown video. My heart truly weeps and I only hope there's a decent amount of professional help readily available to them.
That's the other thing that struck me about this video: of all the 13 dancers/models the video features, none of them are coloured. They're all white.
Since the explosion of hip-hop and it's undoubted influence on wider popular culture (urgh), we're now so used to back-up dancers being one of only two things: "bootylicious" and/or African American. So much so that seeing anything else now seems weird to us. In itself, that is weird and also a little worrying. What kind of message is that sending out? Bad ones.
A fine example being Albert, the 6-year old rapper whose video "I Can Make Your Booty Pop" featured bikini-clad women dancing around him and his creepy belly-button. That video has now been taken down and hopefully Albert is enjoying the Child Protection Agency's accommodation. God knows his parents should be "popped" (that's youth-speak for "killed").
Oh no, I've just turned into Patrick Bateman. I think it's best I stop now before I start dropping chainsaws down stairwells onto night-stalkers.
Cheerio.
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