American Psycho: Philosophy of Materialism and Nihilism

[00:00:00]this video is sponsored by Squarespace more about them in just a moment my normal ability to feel compassion had been eradicated Brett Easton Ellis's Landmark novel American Psycho is a cultural phenomenon especially since it was made into a film starring Christian Bale it has been a major cult classic spawning memes fan edits and waves of discussion around its enigmatic protagonist Patrick baitman the novel follows bitman a New York investment banker as he leads a double life on the one hand he is a successful financer managing and making an awful lot of money but on the other he is a coldblooded killer committing horrific crimes to satisfy his blood lust and yet it is never clear how many of these misdeeds simply occur in Batman's tortured imagination alongside its sensationalist violence Ellis's novel is a sharp critique of Batman's approach to life and the disturbing ways it may mirror our own so let's begin with one of his most explicit themes the overvaluing of material Goods one materialism and Idols few topics have been as philosophically attention grabbing as the causes behind existential malays over the course of the 19th century many philosophers worried that people were losing their zest for life decrying more and more things as meaningless and falling into a kind of passive misery that we would Now call an existential crisis this was by no means a new phenomenon but in their opinion it was seemingly getting worse some people thought that the decline of religion was to blame others saw it as the result of certain economic factors but Brett easn Ellis has his own theory for the cause of existential despair specifically in the Modern Age unfettered materialism and the glorification of appearances materialism is one of those words that people use in so many different ways it actually becomes quite difficult to talk about it but here I just mean the excessive value placed on acquiring material things over and above other goals in life it is the philosophy of smow from The Hobbit whose sole aim is to hoorde gold and also Patrick baitman whose materialism is so all-encompassing that it becomes the lens through which he views the world almost every time baitman describes someone he tells us what they are wearing in excruciating detail noting the brand names whether or not it looks good and sometimes even the price this is emphasized far above the person's name which baitman often forgets mistaking them for someone else whenever he goes out for a meal or notes a piece of his furniture he will tell us the cost and whether it was higher or lower than he expected and he gets extremely irritated if someone underestimates just how much he spent on something for example he turns immediately cold and hostile on an acquaintance when they misremember how expensive one of his paintings is thinking that it was $20,000 rather than $50,000 in itself this is all relatively within the Realms of Sanity even if it is a little bit obsessive but Ellis's critique really comes in how Batman's materialism makes him treat other people Patrick baitman is pretty much devoid of empathy I say pretty much because there is the odd moment where he shows glimmers of deeper feeling normally when he's with his secretary Jean but on the whole He views people not as agents but as tools Ellis is careful to frame this as an extension of the way he views the rest of reality baitman is so used to looking at the world as a collection of objects for him to use enjoy and own that he employs that same approach when thinking about other conscious beings this is especially prominent with women who he sees as essentially objects for his pleasure and will definitely be revisiting that theme in the next section as I said Ellis purposefully leaves it very ambiguous whether baitman actually committed any of the murders in the novel but if he did it is this underlying attitude that allows him to do so without feeling any remorse people are seen simply as flesh it is no coincidence that he picks up a lady of the night outside a meat packing Factory since this is explicitly how he sees her as merely meat this is often how analyses of Batman's character wind up his materialism brings him misery and this in turn drives his brutality towards others but I think it is perhaps more complicated than this because while he says he views people as merely objects and it is true that he does not care about them in the traditional sense he still values their viewpoints to an almost path logical degree bitan is not just a materialist he is ruled by Aesthetics the clothes he wears his extravagant purchases his choices of restaurant these are all geared towards projecting a certain image of himself he wants to appear powerful successful and in control put a pin in this point about power because that will also be very important in the next section upon reflection it is not so much that he reduces everything to material rather he reduces everything to appearance other people are seen as not just tools but also ornaments this is clear in the way he evaluates others it is not just their wealth he's interested in it is their whole aesthetic package for instance in one of the first scenes of the novel he and his friends insult the appearance of someone they see as more financially successful than them calling him short and implying that he is unattractive if they merely worship material Goods then this insult just would not work he is still richer than they are after all but if baitman is equally obsessed with appearance then the logic makes sense it does not hurt for the man to be richer as long as baitman looks better than him baitman takes particular pride in being mistaken for an actor or a model we also see this in a brief interaction between baitman and the actor Tom Cruz who lives in Batman's building since Cruz is both much richer than baitman and also a handsome actor baitman has no way of seeing himself as Superior he actually becomes quite embarrassing turning obsequious self-effacing and quite Meek Cruz is better than baitman in every metric That Matters to him and so baitman sees no other option than to just submit the inverse of this holds as well one of Batman's first victims whether real or imagined is a homeless man that baitman finds physically repulsive this is part of how he can justify assaulting him the homeless man is viewed as lesser precisely because baitman sees him as unattractive baitman thus reduces ethics entirely down to athetics what someone is worth is just what they look like they're worth with nothing seen as holding intrinsic value many of you might also recognize this as how value is dictated in an exchange of goods where the value of an item on a market just is what someone will pay for it with very little value recognized externally to that thus bait 's attitude reflects the commodification of personhood itself a theme Ellis is pretty explicit about throughout the work but this obsession with Aesthetics is ultimately a double-edged sword it traps bitman in an internal contradiction on the one hand he wants to treat people like mere objects but on the other his preoccupation with his image forces him to Value their judgments attractiveness and Beauty are properties that are defined by others perceptions it does not make sense to say that person is attractive even though no one finds them attractive so Batman's tortuous relationship with other people is not just because he treats them as objects it is that he treats them both as objects and as paradoxically the most important aspect of his life he constantly stresses about whether people think his hair is thinning or whether he can get a particular table at a restaurant he is terrified of no longer being hip and of women finding him unappealing he craves people's attention and praise while at the same time seeing them as just meat walking around in expensive clothes bitan often flits between these two modes in one chapter he will see people as objects and in the next he will be at the mercy of their momentto moment judgments Batman's mind struggles to hold this contradiction in place over the course of the entire novel and eventually it just breaks down he cannot separate who he is from the Persona he has created to manage others perceptions bitman the man gets lost in baitman the character again we'll be exploring this in more detail in a later section but this approach also leaves baitman feeling powerless because despite his insistence that he does not care about others he is at the mercy of their judgments so let's see how he reacts to that feeling but before examining more about the flaws of materialism I want to take a moment to thank our very kind sponsor Squarespace if you're looking to build a website then you know it can be real pain first you have to find a domain name and then build the whole website and there's always the underlying fear that you are messing up and building 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powerlessness the moral good so that even if they are powerless they can feel as if they have a moral power instead however the idea of imaginative Revenge stretches far further than this theoretically it covers any case where someone reacts to powerlessness by retreating into their imagination and taking some feeling of power from this kind of mental World near the end of the novel it is heavily suggested that much of Batman's violence just has not occurred it was instead a sophisticated fantasy that he somehow tricked himself into believing one of his first victims a man named Paul Owen is revealed to still be alive as someone had lunch with him in London just a few days earlier that person even comments that baitman could not have possibly committed any heinous crimes since he is such a suck up and a coward so I'm going to write this section assuming that baitman did not in fact commit these murders but instead that this was a fantasy he escaped into to cope with the profound lack of power he felt in his real life as psychologists like Manuel Eisner have pointed out fantasizing about killing people and other violent imaginings are far more likely among among those who feel disempowered such as bullied children EA comments on the extremity of these fantasies which were often out of proportion to the offense committed against the imager and he hypothesized that these thoughts might be a privil or survival mechanism where planning violent Revenge might be an important tool he particularly notes that attacks on personal identity are likely to spark these sorts of thoughts this is very in line with n's idea that a natural response to powerlessness is to try to take revenge in the imagination or in the realm of ideas and if we look at Batman's victims we do find an interesting pattern they often are or resemble people he feels threatened by for example his first full-on murder victim is Paul Owen another Banker who runs a more significant and successful account than baitman it is clear that baitman wants to be more like Owen he allows Owen to repeatedly mistake him for someone else and desperate wants to know how Owen manages his accounts near the beginning of the novel he even defends Owen against the insults of his friends at some level he deeply admires Owen at the same time he seems to hate this fact about himself it makes him feel lesser and Powerless it attacks his identity as a highflying successful young man that nobody can touch thus Owen Must Die it is the only way for this contradiction to be resoled olved in Batman's mind he can reclaim a sense of Power by imagining that he has done away with Owen who was really just on a business trip to London if he had actually killed Owen and managed to get off scottf free this would have been the ultimate show of strength a real demonstration that when push game to shove baitman could dominate Owen as it only happens in his mind it just forms one part of this Fantastical house of cards that somehow keeps Batman's self-esteem temporarily intact the same is true for the women that baitman supposedly kills though he is obsessed with how everyone sees him baitan is particularly fearful of the opinions of women he is constantly asking for reassurance from women that his hair looks good or that he is attractive when he is unable to secure a reservation at a restaurant for him and his date he almost has a panic attack like a lot of men bitman is completely preoccupied with how women see him and nothing has a greater impact on his self-image or his self-identity than this so it only makes sense that so many of his crimes are Revenge fantasies against women in general and women sexuality in particular I'm not going to describe any of this in detail just because it's really grim and also this is YouTube but his murders are often preceded with another fantasy where he is the source of admiration for these women it is only after this reassurance that he is attractive and desired that he enacts his brutality it is a strangely similar Dynamic to the one he has with Owen he cares so much about what women think of him that it makes him feel powerless and he attempts to reclaim this sense of Power with his violent Tales ironically it is his flawed worldview where he values appearance and image over everything else that makes him care about the opinions of others to this extreme extent and this is the very thing making him feel so disempowered most of the time the power struggles that baitman is so obsessed with only occur between the walls of his skull take the famous scene where bitman and his friends are discussing business cards and it's revealed that his friends all have more beautiful business cards than he does the other Bankers are engaging in a pissing contest here but they clearly have it much more in perspective baseman's friends share many of the same qualities he does they also desire status and money and power but this has not yet reached the fever pitch it has in baitman likewise while they all use people as a means to an end it is only baitman who takes this to its logical extreme Desiring to end people's lives if they become inconvenient to him much of Batman's violence is also against the homeless while he does not feel threatened by them they also present an easy target for him to reassure himself of his strength because they are already vulnerable and struggle to fight back they provide plausible fantasies for baitman to either think about or inact depending on your interpretation he enjoys their desperation and their fear because these are sure signs of his power over them he likes that he could hurt them and they could almost certainly do nothing about it his entire American Psycho Persona is arguably also a power fantasy he first declares himself a psycho in response to someone calling him the boy next door and talking about what a nice person he is considering how much he bubbles with inner resentment bitman may just appear nice because he actually is the pushover he's described as near the end of the book whatever the reason bitman would rather be a kind of psycho because he Associates that with the power he lacks a psycho doesn't care what other people think they are not bound by conscience or the rule of law they do what they want when they want and there is not a single thing any other person can do about it they are above the Petty concerns of morality they prow the world like a lion amongst sheep at least that is how baitman sees it again this is not so far-fetched as it might seem it is just an extreme extension of a power fantasy many of us would have had the fantasy of being independent from others here it's just taken to a psychopathic extent it is no coincidence that so many online appear to idolize baitman they too have bought into his power fantasy they've just not noticed how miserable baitman is Underneath It All seen through this lens baitman almost becomes pitiful if we interpret his crimes in the book not as real events but as the fevered imaginings of a man who feels completely powerless trapped by his total obsession with the judgments of others and fighting to recover a small shred of perceived strength then American Psycho takes on a whole new meaning it is no longer the story of a deranged Mur murderer but rather someone who wishes they could be a deranged murderer but for all his fantasies he remains caged by his misguided approach to life one that prizes material things above people and appearance above reality and I want to home in on this point about appearance in more detail because while Batman's whole philosophy is incredibly surface level it is also a wonderful illustration of just how destructive a focus on The Superficial can be if you want to help me make more videos like this then please consider becoming one of my wonderful patrons to support the channel the link is in the description three truth reality and nihilism nihilism much like materialism is used in a variety of ways but here I just want it to mean viewing something as of no value so a nihilist about politics might think that participating in politics is pointless or a nihilist about God might think that God either does not exist or that the question is of no value I want to focus on how Batman's nihilistic attitude towards almost everything in his life brings him not just misery but also total confusion as we've already discussed Batman's view on life is dominated by not caring about a whole host of things he does not care about other people except as potential evidence of his own greatness he does not care about his work except as a means to enhance his own power or his own wealth he does not care about any ideal at all and lives only to serve himself he is a nihilist about everything outside of him and his own perceptions a sort of perfect egoist but despite his bravado this doesn't seem to fulfill him in the slightest Batman's everyday life is marked by a kind of emptiness and attachment this is even reflected in the tone of his narration which for most of the novel is Bland steady and dispassionate he will list his own possessions and how much they cost but not with any particular Joy or feeling he describes the world around him in an awful lot of detail but with almost no emotion or weight we only get tiny glimpses of how he feels about his day-to-day existence for example he will occasionally remark that he hates his job or can't stand his partner Evelyn he doesn't value loyalty and will continuously have affairs with his friends girlfriends he also doesn't seem too bothered by the disloyalty of others he is certain that Evelyn is also sleeping with one of his friends but he never revisits this thought indicating that it just doesn't matter that much to him the days seem to pass him by unnoticed and he can't quite get a grip on anything his life is one long featureless play this seems to be how Ellis views the sort of big city rap race that baitman is taking Martin whether or not someone succeeds at it Ellis thinks they are fundamentally valuing the wrong things the obsession with goods and appearances means that even getting to the top of the ladder brings no real Joy by any material standard bait's life is fantastic but that's not how it feels from the inside at the beginning of the novel this is in marked contrast to when he is in Psycho mode whether that's real or imagined he remarks that it's basically the only time he feels alive and the narration is no longer a detached monotonous draw but instead a passionate story initially he finds a real thrill in his violence and he seems disappointed to return to his normal life as a banker it Taps into some Primal Instinct in baitman a state where his decisions indisputably matter and the stakes are life and death though this too loses its luster pretty quickly as we'll see in the next section but perhaps Batman's most extreme nihilistic attitude is towards the notion of fact itself we have already said how he values appearances over any inner or deeper properties but it goes much further than this for baitman seeming to be something and being something are exactly the same thing he does not care what is true but just what he can fool people and himself into believing if he can make people think that he is a big shot then he is one this is perhaps one reason he is so fond of his secretary Jean since she occupies a lower rung on the social ladder than he does he seems much greater in her eyes so when it's just baitman and Jean he can believe he's sort of a king of the world but this devaluing on external reality has a serious impact on bait's psyche the trouble with valuing appearances so highly is that they are by definition extremely meeting I'm hardly the first person to point this out it was made by Plato the stoics and a whole host of religious figures on one day you might appear funny clever and attractive after a bad night's sleep you might instead appear sluggish slow and may not look your best if only appearance is valued then this will cause you to think you fundamentally transform between days when that is clearly not the case ultimately it prevents any long-term structure to life time becomes flat and existence becomes one confusing disorganized blur even worse since bait's outward appearance is so woefully out of line with the truth he is constantly teetering on the edge of total collapse the reason the failure to get a dinner reservation can bring him to tears is that it threatens to upend his entire identity his whole facad is threatened and he worries that he might be found out by others perhaps he is even frightened that he will become too aware of his own Lies by the end of the novel baitman is totally disoriented and no longer has any clue who he is at even the most basic level to quote directly from the book and no I'm not going to do an impression there is an idea of Patrick baitman some kind of abstraction but there is no real me only an entity something illusory and though I hide my cold gaze and you can shake my hand and feel flesh gripping yours I simply am not there my self is fabricated an aberration I am a non-contingent human being my personality is sketchy and unformed and baitman will go to extraordinary lengths to keep this crafted self-image as Playboy by day psychopath by night when K's a lawyer says he had lunch with Paul Owen only a week ago and baitman could not have possibly killed him baitman confesses to everything he says he has killed dozens of people and that he enjoyed doing it if baitman believes this then it is an act of complete and utter self-destruction he is stating unequivocally that he is a murderer and when they search his flat they will find all the evidence of his misdeeds so we are left with two options either baitman knows he did not really commit any crimes and this is a vain attempt to Salvage his self-conception in the face of a really quite serious challenge or he does believe he committed the crimes but he would rather go to prison than permit even one person to contradict his self-image either way it demonstrates the real danger in bitman valuing appearances over reality eventually reality will bite back if I believe that I am Invincible that belief will end when I'm punched in the face and there is nothing that I can do about it many of the mysterious aspects of Batman's Behavior ultimately stem from this devaluing of reality it is what allows him to treat his fantasies as on par with verifiable facts it is how he can blend his imagination with the real world so seamlessly that he doesn't even notice for him reality is not a shared world we all inhabit but rather a post-modern propaganda war between every individual person to get their version of events imposed on everyone else there is no truth there is only belief and there is no world there are only fleeting perceptions to be is to be seen to be but by disregarding everything except appearance bitman is left with nothing solid to grip onto his complete Detachment from reality is simply a reflection of his philosophy taken to its logical conclusion I don't think that Ellis is saying that if you have the same view this will literally happen to you but is an exaggerated example of the instability brought about by this approach one of the ofed features of American Psycho is its unreliable narrator but this doesn't go nearly far enough to baitman there is no such thing as a reliable or unreliable narrator there are only narrators who can maintain their story and those who cannot it is life as one endless sales pitch but lastly I want to look at what I think is one of the most valuable themes of American Psycho and one that is transferable to well outside the contents of the book four false promises historically philosophers have been very skeptical of promises of happiness and Bliss so many philosophies begin with a recognition that suffering is inevitable and a warning against overvaluing certain things like material goods and reputation in the belief that they will bring you happiness because they have identified a number of ways that a fixation on material wealth or other people's perceptions can backfire on someone bitman is the prime example of a person caught in this bind he is richer than anyone really needs to be and has every material possession he desires but as soon as he gets something it no longer makes him happy now material goods are merely ways to compete with others he wants to be more successful than anyone else but he no longer knows why Renee Gerard would say that he's caught in a cycle of mimetic desires his day-to-day wants are all mediated through other people he doesn't want a business card but a business card that inspires Envy from everyone else he buys a tanning machine purely because one of his friends has recently bought one his choice of restaurant clothing and even date are based entirely on what other people do and desire all of Batman's wishes are hand to him by others adding to this general feeling of self-alienation the question what do I want is basically incomprehensible to him he has spent his entire life playing a character and is now totally unable to drop the ACT he has become lost in a particularly Sinister version of what epicurus calls the honic treadon the human ability to create greater and greater desires for ourselves along with our increasing Meats but baitan does not even have the small comt comfort of these desires genuinely being his own at first the psycho Persona seems to help with this alienation but it too is ultimately a false friend while the sheer thrill of violence does give baitman a temporary Rush it's also just an act despite his insistence that the psycho is who he really is we know that's almost certainly not the case for one thing it's totally in congruous with how anyone else describes him but additionally at the Heights of his Psychopathic actions baitman begins to describe himself in the third person he is now so self- alienated that he can no longer use I whether real or imagined this violence splits his mind even further what begins as a kind of mental crutch to help him cope with his powerlessness and the drudgery of his real life eventually becomes his sole reason for being but it's also just chasing novelty he finds that he requires bigger and Bigg hits of increasingly outrageous violence to give him that same Rush he felt first enacting it baitman does not find fulfillment in his brutality but just the fleeting excitement of doing something new and transgressive he becomes like the Mary desart depicting more and more depraved acts to comfort himself in his prison cell not only does this alienate him from himself it also prevents him from forming any connections with anyone else his refusal to to Value the internal states of other people can initially seem like a form of strength it allows him to ruthlessly pursue his own goals no matter the cost to others but it also contributes to his profound sense of loneliness such as when he says that he has nothing in common with other people or that he wants Peace Love friendship and understanding or that he desires to fit in Batman's fundamental needs for interpersonal connection are never met this is both because of the environment he's in where superficiality and egoism abounds but also because he Embraces this attitude completely uncritically and even takes it to its extreme it is fitting that a piece of graffiti at the start of the book reads abandon all hope ye who enter here a reference to Dante's Inferno where the same words are scrolled across the gates of hell just like Dante's depiction of sin Batman's approach promises happiness but delivers nothing of the sort likewise baitman thinks that the status he acrs will bring him Joy but in truth it only makes him less happy as he sacrifices more and more of himself to what other people want he gets ahead in a race he doesn't even really want to win he is already incredibly rich and has more influence than most people could ever dream of and yet he is miserable in a lot of stories this would give bitman the opportunity to take stock realize that this is a mistake and change the dire ction of his life but this is not those stories bitman never concludes that there is something wrong with his value system but rather that he is not succeeding at it enough so he must get more status more reputation more money and more power having entered hell baitman thinks that the only way to progress from here is to dig ever deeper into it and in some ways maybe this is a more realistic picture after all how many people do you think realize they are on a self-destructive path and turn back versus how many stubbornly persist until all other ways of living become Unthinkable maybe the most tragic part of Batman's life is that it is false promises all the way down first the life of an American Banker promises him that he will find joy in money possessions and appearance but this does not help next he thinks the alternate owna of this American Psycho will restore his power and his zest for life but this doesn't work either sure this could be a turning point but the final line of the novel reads this is not an exit suggesting that bitman is highly unlikely to find a route back this really gets to the heart of what I like about American Psycho behind his confident front his money and his increasingly desperate cries that he really is a dangerous psychopath trust me bitman is quite a pathetic figure it's worth noting that Ellis prefaces the book with a quote from dostoevsky's Notes from Underground Underneath It All bitan is very like dostoevsky's anti-hero he is resentful miserable and nihilistic the only difference is that baitman can put on a prettier exterior it is rather fitting considering that Aesthetics is the only thing he can ever bring himself to care about to sum it up in one of his lines I feel like but look great Perhaps it is not surprising that Batman's glittering outer layer sometimes even blinds readers or audiences to the festering sore at the heart of his life but if you want to learn about a similarly disturbing yet fascinating character then click here to watch my analysis of Judge Holden from corac McCarthy's blood meridian thank you so much for watching and have a wonderful day