Final Analysis Essay

Patrick Bateman's Morning Routine Scene 

Simply Not There :

 Jacques Lacan’s and Karl Marx’s philosophies on Society and Language elucidating Patrick Bateman’s sense of Alienation in Mary Harron’s American Psycho

         The 2000 movie American Psycho is one of the most misunderstood and debated movies in cinema history because of its social, linguistic, gender, existential, and metaphysical implications. A myriad of critics have examined the film under a postmodern lens, but there are more subtle forces at work within its protagonist’s existential journey. In the scene where Patrick Bateman, the film’s protagonist (played by actor Christian Bale) prepares his morning routine we get deeper insight into the source of his alienation, as he is alienated from sanity, mankind, and from his own true sense of identity and individuality. Just as Lacan concluded that we are defined and alienated by language, we find that Bateman is no exception. In his morning routine monologue, he introduces his home, age and name, and simultaneously reveals his social class in the Marxist sense. His signifiers’ signified ideas as a whole serve to define his social location; his extensive lists of beautification products reveal that he is obsessive with materials, as he is defined by the relationship his words have in naming them; his introspective conclusion—that he is merely an idea that is alienated from a name—relates to Lacan’s theory of linguistic alienation within the human psyche; when he peels off his mask in front of the mirror, Bateman demonstrates what happens to the human conception of self when one enters Lacan’s Symbolic Order during The Mirror Stage; his final introspection, where he reveals that he “simply is not there,” parallels Lacan’s theory that, with language, the signified dissolves into the signifier in the end. Altogether, Lacan and Marx help us understand what gives Patrick Bateman’s unconscious desires—to fuck and kill excessively—impetus.

            But before using Lacanian theory to elucidate Patrick Bateman’s alienation, it is critical to understand Lacan’s philosophy first. As a French philosopher, Jacques Lacan has had a seminal influence on literary theory primarily because he predates Marxist thought in terms of how we, as humans, are socially identified by the language which predates us. When we are born, Lacan would say, we are born into a world that teaches us language, defines us with language, and associates physical objects with words for us. Language, he would argue, is socially prescribed to the human child who enters a new world through maturation—an adult world of social classes and hierarchies; Lacan says specifically, “In other words, the man who is born into existence deals first with language; this is a given. He is even caught in it before his birth” (The Symbolic Order). In his essays, The Mirror Stage as Formative of the Function of the I as Revealed in Psychoanalytic Experience and The Symbolic Order, Lacan plunges the idea of “self” into culture. He says that we are all shaped by the Symbolic Order into which we are born—this order is a realm of symbolization with which children must translate themselves with their words, or spoken language. Lacan denotes this order when he says, “Man speaks, then, but it is because the symbol has made him man” (The Symbolic Order). The Symbolic, then, is how we are defined within, and by, the greater social conventions. When children learn to make symbols, they learn to detach from their childhood realm of objects and attain a sense of independence through a loss. This loss can never be a gain; this void can never be filled, as human desire is rooted in it, as we struggle to fulfill our sense of lost unity within. This craving, this desire for unattainable unity, is what Lacan calls the Imaginary Order; it is the part of the human mind that narcissistically establishes and defines the Ego’s activity. Lacan emphasizes that the ego thinks it has control of the id, but in actuality doesn't. He argues that the Ego, then, tries to reach this unattainable unity within, but in the end, is always unable to. This unattainable unity is part of what Lacan defines as the Real order, which embodies the human instincts, drives and unconsciousness that shapes our personalities. Altogether, Lacan’s essay denotes the self as a delusional and social construct afflicted by imaginary identifications with a false sense of wholeness and unity.

            In the morning routine scene from Mary Harron’s film, American Psycho, we meet Patrick Bateman, a wealthy Wall-Street businessman by day and a bloodthirsty serial killer by night. He introduces himself, first, with where he lives, his name, and then his age: “I live in the American Gardens building on West Eighty-First Street, on the eleventh floor. My name is Patrick Bateman. I am twenty-seven years old” (Harron). Right off the bat, we place Bateman in the upper class, Marx’s Bourgeoisie, of society; he is in his prime in age and in material wealth. Following a brief introduction, Bateman expresses what he values—“I believe in taking care of myself, in a balanced diet, in a rigorous exercise routine” (Harron), and reveals that, “In the morning, if my face is a little puffy, I'll put on an ice pack while doing my stomach crunches. I can do a thousand now” (Harron). Immediately, the audience is presented with a character who is wealthy, youthful, and deeply concerned with his physical appearance. Although he is unaware of how he is defining himself, as he simply states facts about himself and his lifestyle in the beginning of the clip, Patrick Bateman is actually revealing which social strata he belongs to and associates with based on his language—the Marxist Bourgeoisie. When Karl Marx says “They do not know it, but they are doing it” (Capital 669), he means that people operate within an ideology, within a social class, entirely, whether they are aware of it or not—that social classes, and their respective ideologies are inescapable in the long run. Ideology and language can be interchanged here, as a certain language belongs to a certain ideology. Bateman, here, exemplifies how one’s seemingly harmless and unassuming introduction can carry socio-economic implications. In fact, the entire scene can be said to display the language of an ideology—the upper class ideology. Within his first couple of introductory sentences, we immediately discover that his voice has the sound of a refined, upper class individual; his voice is collected and overly-confident, his words dispassionate and itemized.

            After he introduces himself within an upper-class discourse—as a health and appearance conscious individual—Patrick Bateman reveals his obsession with the countless hygienic products he uses, as he utilizes the material world to establish his “self”. In listing these objects, he uncloaks his attachment to them, as he uses them to define his refined image and his social identity:

In the shower, I use a water-activated gel cleanser, then a honey-almond body scrub, and on the face, an exfoliating gel scrub. Then I apply an herb mint facial mask which I leave on for ten minutes while I prepare the rest of my routine. I always use an after-shave lotion with little or no alcohol because alcohol dries your face out and makes you look older. Then moisturizer, then an anti-aging eye balm, followed by a final, moisturizing ‘protective’ lotion. (Harron)

Patrick Bateman’s character illustrates Lacan’s theory on language. Lacan says that language gives us an identity, that “it is the world of words that creates the world of things” (The Symbolic Order); thus, Patrick creates his world of things within the world of words. The products he uses for self-beautification are merely products of socially prescribed signified ideas behind a learned chain of signifiers within his socialized language. For Lacan, there is no unified self in this world of words; Bateman doesn't have a unified self either. This ties into what Karl Marx says about commodities, things with a socio-economic value: “There it is a definite social relation between men, that assumes, in their eyes, the fantastic form of a relation between things” (Capital 667). Bateman, thus, defines himself with objects and simultaneously defines himself with words; his entire monologue is an illustration of his relationship to his things, to his “ice mask,” to his “water activated gel cleanser,” to his “honey-almond body scrub.” Furthermore, Bateman’s routine is painted as both extensive, but also ridiculous. The repetitious and multifarious application of skin conditioners and appearance-enhancing products strikes an ironic chord for the audience—this irony is grounded in the fact that Bateman’s excess—in his obsession over maintaining a pristine and exceptionally refined appearance through the usage of a laundry list of material objects—in the limitless lifestyle his socio-economic status provides for him.

            But the scene takes Bateman’s character one step further than just socio-economic status, it reveals what a life of excess—a life based solely on materialism and commodity fetishism—does to the human spirit; it adds to his feeling of linguistic and Psychological alienation from the world’s objective meaning. In the last portion of Patrick Bateman’s morning routine scene, his monologue takes an introspective and noticeably bleak turn. He says, “There is an idea of a Patrick Bateman, some kind of abstraction, but there is no real me, only an entity, something illusory” (Harron). Essentially, Bateman’s concluding introspection in the clip serves as his attempt to come to terms with the separation of the signifiers, and their respective signified ideas, in the Lacanian sense. The insatiable desire for Bateman to become as clean, healthy, polished, and refined as possible, can, then, be said to result from his separation from the meaning in words themselves—he is coming to terms with his lack of being and substance. Thus, Bateman’s extensive morning routine is, in itself, his attempt to replace the void he feels, the fissure between his subjective personality and the objective, outside, social world; he is trying to fill this void with the materials in attempting to identify himself with what he owns, with hygienic products. As Lacan puts it, we, and Patrick Bateman here, “cannot ever find an object to embody what we ultimately” (the Symbolic Order), and ideally want—Bateman slides along a chain of signifiers, whereas each signifier represents a part of a whole, not a whole in itself—he is forever incomplete this way. Lacan says, “For the signifier is a unit in its very uniqueness, being by nature symbol only of an absence” (The Symbolic Order). Therefore, Patrick Bateman realizes that what he defines himself by—his name “Patrick Bateman” quite literally here, with words absolves any true understanding of himself. Just as the countless skin-care and beautification products and itemized style in which Bateman’s introduces them with lose their signified meaning in their ridiculously endless context, Bateman, himself, like language, loses any realization of himself, any idea of himself. He essentially conveys his alienation from language, his alienation from assigning meaning to the countless signifiers he uses to introduce himself with, and his alienation from any true sense of individuality (he is just like his upper class friends).

            Its crucial to note that Bateman looks in the mirror and peals off the mask—an amalgamation of the numerous hygienic, material products he has applied to his face—when he concludes his monologue. When he sees himself in the mirror, he attains a false sense of identification, of wholeness and autonomy, just as the child does in Lacan’s The Mirror Stage: “we have only to understand the mirror stage as an identification…the transformation that takes place in the subject when he assumes the image” (The Mirror Stage 442 ). When he peels his mask off in the mirror, Bateman learns his place in the Lacanian sense of the Symbolic Order and represses an original desire for wholeness and autonomy. Bateman’s repression of his id, of his desire to be whole, his desire to have complete in control of his actions, ties in nicely with how Lacan bridges a child’s repression of his original desire for his mother with language. Lacan says that as a child represses his original desire for autonomy and wholeness is synonymous with how the signifier makes the signified absent, “For the signifier is a unit in its very uniqueness, being by nature symbol only of an absence” (The Symbolic Order). The theorist says that the acceptance of repression and entry into the Symbolic is itself comparable to language in that once one learns to name something, one accepts separation from it: Similarly, in American Psycho, when Patrick Bateman names the various objects associated with his morning routine, he sacrifices each object’s meaning; this is because, according to Lacan, the mere presence of an object’s signifier is the absence of the signified behind the signifier—that is, Bateman’s words, his extensive naming of the expensive and seemingly superfluous hygienic products he applies to his body, only have meaning for him in that he is alienated from their signified meaning. To extend this concept, Bateman is only the product of the objects he owns, or, in this case, of the self-beautification materials he applies to his body on a daily basis. In their application and verbal utterance, Bateman’s spoken commodities confirm the absence of any individuality and substance in character, he has—as his numerous beautification materials are present in his everyday life, albeit in excess, his sense of self is absent in their presence. At its heart Bateman’s story in American Psycho is one which deals primarily with surfaces; when he peels off the facial mask in front of the mirror, he is peeling off a layer of his identity—he is reinventing his sense of self, whether it is merely an abstraction. His mask, which he peels off then, not only symbolizes Bateman’s reinvention, but also his detachment from reality, from words and their meaning, from surface and substance—it serves to show the beginning of his character’s arch from psychopathic to psychotic.

            When Patrick says, “though I can hide my cold gaze and you can shake my hand and feel flesh gripping yours, and maybe you can even sense our lifestyles are probably comparable: I simply am not there” (Harron), Bateman is really saying that he is alienated from everybody, even those within his higher socio-economic class. As Lacan explains, we are split form ourselves and that “we can never possibly attain wholeness in a world of objects” (The Symbolic Order); the ego deludes us with ideals. Patrick Bateman is no different in this scene. Bateman’s lack of being is based on his initial lack of being, from the original instance of his alienation from an imaginary sense of fullness; his id overpowers his ego. Moreover, Bateman’s identity is prescribed by society and he is alienated in the process. As linguistic structures have preexisted Bateman’s character, we can infer that he is merely playing the role of the wealthy young man in the Bourgeoisie camp, in the Marxist sense. He is part of the genetic upper class, and is, thus, fortunate to live a lifestyle of luxury and excess, even if its to the point where even material objects and property lose their meaning for him. His usage of the word, “flesh,” here, denotes the physical human aspect that he attributes to human relations and communication, although he is ultimately alienated to everybody, even himself, by language, and by the material world.

            Bateman is, moreover, split from himself because he can never attain wholeness is his world of objects and the material. Lacan defines the Real as the cause of our desires, which we can only access through signifiers. In American Psycho, the chain of signifiers Bateman operates within represents his desires that never arrive at the Real; the Signifiers he uses only distance him from his desires as he distances himself from objects in the very act of listing them off. Thus, according to Lacan, human desire—here, Patrick Bateman’s desire—is carried by signifiers which stand in for a lack that can never be filled in; Bateman’s unconscious resides in the signifiers of his language, which he uses to identify his socio-economic self. It is crucial to notice that Bateman ends with a tone that resembles a yearning for communication and clarity between men and objects; he illustrates his complete alienation from man, through language, here. His introspection starts with identifying himself as an “idea” and as an “abstraction,” but concludes with his realization that he is, in himself, the absence or void: “I simply am not there”—moreover, Bateman’s conception of himself starts as a Signified and evaporates into a sole Signifier. In a couple sentences, just as Bateman’s words have lost their signified meaning, so has Patrick Bateman lost his own meaning as an individual within a social class. This relates to what Lacan says of language and absence as presence, that, “Through the word—already a presence made of absence—absence itself gives itself a name” (The Symbolic Order); Patrick Bateman, in his character’s absence of substance, understanding, completeness, and unity, symbolizes Lacan’s “presence made of absence” because he is present in defining his own absence; he is the embodiment of “absence” and he gives himself the name, “Patrick Bateman,” although his identity becomes completely associated with his Signified name, completely devoid of the idea he mentioned before.

            Patrick Bateman’s psychological crisis, then, is that he has no real concept of self, except that there is a lack of self, that there is something missing. There is nothing innate within him that he can fall back on—he is basically a murderous vacuum, looking for meaning in the surface of things and people, in the signifiers of his words, in his material objects and their lack of signified ideas. Moreover, every single word in Bateman’s monologue describing his morning routine alienates Bateman himself, as in naming objects in the first place has alienated him from their meaning and importance to his life. He is constantly reinventing himself in every ridiculous situation he finds himself in, after every word in list, after every sentence in his monologue—just as his desires are carried by signifiers which supplant a bottomless hole within him—and he only operates in a world of signifiers, where meaning is just as illusory as his generosity and genuineness.

            

Works Cited

American Psycho. Dir. Mary Harron. Perf. Patrick Bateman. Polygram, 2000.

Lacan, Jacques. The Symbolic Order (from "The Function and Field of Speech and Language in Psychoanalysis). Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan. Literary Theory: An Anthology.Massachusetts: Blackwell, 1998.

Lacan, Jacques. The Mirror Stage as Formative of the Function of the I as Revealed in Psychoanalytic Experience. Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan. Literary Theory: An Anthology. Massachusetts: Blackwell, 2004. 441-446.

Marx, Karl. Capital. Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan. Literary Theory: An Anthology. Massachusetts: Blackwell, 2004. 665-672.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-yoMEZXnbQ