Patrick Bateman

Patrick Bateman
First appearance	The Rules of Attraction
Last appearance	Lunar Park
Created by	Bret Easton Ellis
Portrayed by	Christian Bale (American Psycho) Dechen Thurman (This Is Not an Exit) Michael Kremko (American Psycho 2) Matt Smith (American Psycho)
Information
Aliases	Marcus Halberstram Paul Allen
Occupation	Investment banker
Title	Vice President
Family	Sean Bateman (brother)
Nationality	American
Education	Phillips Exeter Academy Harvard University Harvard Business School

Patrick Bateman is a fictional character, the antihero^[1][2] and narrator of the novel American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis, and its film adaptation. He is a high-achieving Wall Street investment banker who abuses drugs including cocaine and has a double life where he perceives himself as one of the most vicious serial killers ever to live. From his point of view he commits brutal, repeated, sadistic murders, but he experiences hallucinations and is an unreliable narrator, and so the veracity of his "secret life" is left, to the reader, in doubt. Bateman has also briefly appeared in other Ellis novels.

Biography and profile

When he is first introduced in Ellis' novel, young investment banker Patrick Bateman's "mask of sanity" is about to slip, according to his own admission. Bateman works as a specialist in mergers and acquisitions at the fictional Wall Street investment firm of Pierce & Pierce (also Sherman McCoy's firm in The Bonfire of the Vanities) and lives at 55 West 81st Street, Upper West Side in the American Gardens Building (where he is a neighbor of actor Tom Cruise). In his "secret life", however, Bateman is a serial killer who murders a variety of people, from colleagues, to the homeless, to prostitutes. His crimes, including rape, torture, murder, necrophilia and cannibalism, are described in graphic detail in the novel.

Bateman comes from a wealthy family. His parents have a house on Long Island, and he mentions a summer house in Newport. His parents divorced sometime earlier, while his mother became sick and now resides at a sanatorium. His father, who first appeared in Ellis' preceding novel The Rules of Attraction, grew up on an estate in Connecticut, and now owns an apartment in the Carlyle Hotel in Manhattan, although he was apparently dying in the previous novel and, unlike his ex-wife, is mentioned only in past tense during the novel. His younger brother Sean attends Camden College (and is a protagonist of The Rules of Attraction). Bateman attended Phillips Exeter Academy for prep school. He graduated from Harvard University in 1984, and Harvard Business School two years later and moved to New York City.

Personality

As written by Ellis, Bateman is the ultimate stereotype of yuppie greed: rich, shallow, and addicted to sex, drugs, and conspicuous consumption. All of his friends look alike to him, to the point that he often confuses one for another, and they often confuse him for other people. Bateman takes delight in obsessively detailing virtually every single feature of his always designer clothes, workout routine, business cards, alcoholic drinks, as well as his elaborate high-end stereo and home theater sound system. He is engaged to an equally rich, shallow woman named Evelyn Richards. They can't stand each other, but they stay together for the sake of their social lives. He has a mistress on the side (the fiancee of a gay colleague whom he holds in great contempt and who makes repeated, hapless sexual advances towards Bateman) and has regular liaisons with prostitutes and women he encounters at clubs, many of whom end up being his victims. The one woman (and possibly the one person) in his life he has anything approaching feelings for is his secretary, Jean. He just cannot bring himself to seduce, rape or kill her, perhaps because she is the only person in his life who is not completely shallow. He casually acknowledges her as "Jean, my secretary who is in love with me" and introduces her in the narration as someone whom he "will probably end up married to someday".

Bateman kills many of his victims because they make him feel inadequate, usually by having better taste than he does. His friends mock him as the "boy next door", his own lawyer refers to him as a "bloody ass-kisser... a brown-nosing goody-goody", and he is often dismissed as "yuppie trash" by people outside his social circle.

Bateman often expresses doubts regarding his own sanity and he has periodic attacks of psychosis, during which he hallucinates. Bateman is therefore an unreliable narrator. He often experiences feelings of depersonalization. In his own words, "although I can hide my cold gaze and you can shake my hand and feel my flesh gripping yours and maybe you can even sense our lifestyles are probably comparable: I simply am not there." Although Bateman often claims that he is devoid of emotion, he also describes experiencing moments of extreme rage, panic or grief – being on the "verge of tears" – often over trivial inconveniences such as remembering to return videotapes or trying to obtain dinner reservations. In the middle of dismembering a victim, he breaks down, sobbing that he "just wants to be loved". He takes psychotropics, like Xanax, to control these emotions.

Bateman compensates for these insecurities through obsessive vanity and personal grooming, with unwavering attention to detail. He dresses in and uses the most fashionable, expensive clothing and accessories possible (e.g. Salvatore Ferragamo and Valentino suits, Oliver Peoples glasses and Jean Paul Gaultier, Louis Vuitton and Bottega Veneta leather goods) as a means of effecting some "control" over his otherwise chaotic life. Likewise, he categorizes people by what they wear and how they look because they are more easily "understood" in terms of labels and stereotypes. Bateman's apartment also is firmly controlled in terms of look and taste, with the latest music, food, and art.

Bateman kills more or less indiscriminately, with no preferred type of victim and no consistent or preferred method of killing. Throughout the novel, he kills men, women, animals, and - on one instance - a child. He kills women mostly for sadistic sexual pleasure, often during or just after sex, and is also a prolific rapist. He kills men because they anger or annoy him, and the child just to see if he would enjoy it (he did not).

Periodically, he matter-of-factly confesses his crimes to his friends, co-workers, and even complete strangers ("I like to dissect girls, did you know I'm utterly insane") just to see if they are actually listening to him. They either are not or they think that he is joking. In the movie's climactic scene, Bateman calls his lawyer and leaves a lengthy, detailed message confessing all of his crimes. He later runs into his lawyer, who mistakes him for someone else and dismisses the confession as a joke, also claiming to have had dinner with one of his victims after Bateman had supposedly killed him, leaving the supposed reality of Bateman's acts open to audience interpretation.^[3]

Outside American Psycho

Bateman made his first appearance in Ellis' 1987 novel The Rules of Attraction (in which Sean, his brother, is a main character); no indication is given that he is a serial killer. Bateman also makes a short appearance in Ellis' 1998 novel Glamorama, with "strange stains" on the lapel of his Armani suit and Victor mentions "He has a coat-of-arms, baby".

Bateman also appeared in the American Psycho 2000 e-mails (transcribed here), which were written as an advertisement campaign for the movie. Although they are often mistakenly credited to Ellis, they were actually written by one or more unnamed author(s) and approved by Ellis before being sent out. American Psycho 2000 served as a sort of "e-quel" to the original novel. The e-mails take place in 2000, a little over a decade since the novel. Bateman is in therapy with a Dr. M. He is also married to Jean, his former secretary. They have a son, Patrick Bateman Jr. (P.B.), who is eight years old. In the story, Bateman talks about therapy, trying to get a divorce from Jean, his renewed feelings about murder, and idolizing his son. In the end, it is revealed that the 'real' Bateman, who 'writes' the e-mails, is the owner of the company that produces the movie.

Bateman appeared in Ellis' 2005 novel Lunar Park, in which the fictionalised Bret Easton Ellis confesses that writing American Psycho felt like channeling the words of a violent spirit rather than writing anything himself. This ghost—Bateman—haunts Ellis' home. A character also comes to Ellis' Halloween party dressed as Patrick Bateman, and a copycat killer is seemingly patterning himself on Bateman. Toward the novel's end, Ellis writes the 'last' Bateman story as a way of confronting and controlling the character, as well as the issues Ellis created Bateman as a means of countering. Bateman, for all intents and purposes, dies in a fire on a boat dock.

Patrick Bateman is the false name under which serial killer Dexter Morgan of the Showtime TV series Dexter acquires M-99 for the use of incapacitating his victims.

In film and stage

Though Christian Bale had been the first choice for the part by both Ellis and Harron, the producers offered the part to Keanu Reeves, Edward Norton, and Brad Pitt. Leonardo DiCaprio was set to play the character, but Ellis (as explained in the American Psycho DVD) decided he was too young, especially immediately after Titanic. Bateman was also portrayed by Dechen Thurman (brother of Uma) in the 2000 documentary This Is Not an Exit: The Fictional World of Bret Easton Ellis. Michael Kremko played Bateman in the spin-off American Psycho 2, in which the character is killed by a would-be victim. Aside from the character appearing in the film, the sequel has no other connection to the previous film and has been denounced by Ellis.^[4]

Scenes with the character were shot for the 2002 film adaptation of The Rules of Attraction. Ellis revealed in an interview that director Roger Avary asked Bale to reprise the role, but Bale turned down the offer, and Avary asked Ellis himself to portray Bateman. Ellis refused, stating that he "thought it was such a terrible and gimmicky idea", and Avary eventually shot the scenes with Casper Van Dien. The scenes, however, were ultimately cut from the final version of the film.

In 2006, the television show Dexter (season 1 episode 6 "Return to Sender") The main character is seen using a pseudonym "Dr. Patrick Bateman" as a tip of the hat as both characters are serial killers.

In a 2009 interview with Black Book, director Mary Harron said, "We talked about how Martian-like [the character] Patrick Bateman was, how he was looking at the world like somebody from another planet, watching what people did and trying to work out the right way to behave, and then one day [Christian] called me and he had been watching Tom Cruise on David Letterman, and he just had this very intense friendliness with nothing behind the eyes, and he was really taken with this energy."^[5]

Doctor Who star Matt Smith^[6] played the role in the 2013 stage Musical version of American Psycho at London's Almeida Theatre.^[7]

In TV

Bateman will feature in a TV series sequel to the 2000 film.^[8]

Chronology

• October 1962: Patrick Bateman is born.^[9]
• 1980: Bateman graduates from Phillips Exeter Academy.
• 1984: Bateman graduates from Harvard University.
• 1985: Bateman has a short discussion with his estranged brother Sean about his future.
• 1986: Bateman graduates from Harvard Business School.
  • From the time of his graduation, through the end of American Psycho, Bateman works at Pierce & Pierce.
• ca. 1996: Bateman shows up at Victor's club in Glamorama with "strange stains" on his suit.
• 2000: Bateman enters therapy with a Dr. M. This appears in the American Psycho 2000 e-mails. In these emails, he is divorcing Jean, to whom he has been married for at least five years, and with whom he has a son. He has started his own brokerage firm and seems to be wealthier than he was in the original novel. His tastes are even more refined. His homicidal tendencies (or thoughts) seem to have cooled a little with the birth of his son and have mellowed as he has gotten older, but have not disappeared completely.
• 2003: Ellis kills off Patrick Bateman by writing an account of the serial killer being trapped in a pier fire. See Lunar Park.

References

External links

• Patrick Bateman at the Internet Movie Database