I recently finished reading Bret Easton Ellis’s 1991 novel American Psycho, better known to most of the current generation as a cult film released in 2000, starring Christian Bale as the depraved serial killer and investment banker, Patrick Bateman. The novel serves as a superb expose of American bourgeois culture. Having endured page after page of his blood-soaked, racist, misogynistic narrative, it is hard to recall any literary character as utterly repellent and seemingly irredeemable in one’s eyes as Patrick Bateman. However, it is the real psychopaths stalking the financial sector, personified by the fictional character of Bateman, for whom our contempt and anger should be reserved.
Wikipedia defines psychopathy as ‘a personality disorder characterized primarily by a lack of empathy and remorse, shallow emotions, egocentricity, and deception’. One is hard pressed to find a more appropriate description of the behaviour of the financial sector! It is unnecessary to re-summarise the details of the sub-prime mortgage crisis here and how the amoral, opportunistic, cynical actions of financial traders contributed to economic meltdown. I will however spare a mention for the self-styled market trader Alessio Rastani, who hit the headlines in 2011 as the result of a BBC interview in which he declared that ‘Governments don’t rule the world, Goldman Sachs rules the world’ and ‘I’ve been dreaming of another recession’. After the initial media furore, it transpired that Rastani’s credentials as a ‘financial expert' are questionable; he is in fact an independent trader who, given his lack of insider experience in the financial sector, hardly qualifies as a spokesman for the likes of Goldman Sachs. This, however, should not detract from the accuracy of the statements he made in his interview. We should have been spared the reactions of shock and horror to Rastani’s candour, because he was merely stating facts which have long been apparent to the critics of global capitalism. A ruthless, selfish culture has starved empathy of oxygen and produced mercenary individuals, for whom profit overrides any human considerations, inflicting pain and misery upon millions of people worldwide.
There is an interesting parallel between the initial reaction to American Psycho’s publication and an earlier work of art that provoked similar controversy in its time and continues to do so today: Pier Paolo Pasolini’s 1975 film Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom. The film, based upon the Marquis de Sade’s book The 120 Days of Sodom, is set in the Republic of Salo in the final years of Mussolini’s regime, and depicts the brutal torture of eighteen teenage boys and girls at the hands of a group of Italian fascists. The film’s stomach-churning scenes of violence and depravity were too much for many a censor, and the film was subsequently banned in a number of countries (It was only released uncut in the UK in 2000). In Italy itself, one cannot rule out the possibility of politically motivated censorship. Almost all of Pasolini’s films had been banned at some point in his native country because of their critical attitudes towards authority. The fact that he was also gay, an atheist and a Marxist, cemented his position as a hate-figure for the Italian Right. American Psycho too faced the wrath of critics and censors worldwide, and Ellis received hate mail and even death threats after its publication. In Australia, it is still only available in bookstores to those aged 18 or over, shrink-wrapped and behind counters.
Like American Psycho, Salo, despite its graphic nature, does not glorify or glamorise violence; indeed it does quite the opposite. It is impossible to watch the film and be titillated; one can only feel emotions of disgust and horror, just as Pasolini intended. The film is rich with symbolism and meaning, right down to the notorious scenes of coprophagia, which Pasolini regarded as a metaphor for rampant consumerism. The irony is that the ‘shit’ we have been force-fed by the commercialised mainstream film industry is seen as less harmful, from the thinly veiled racism of American Westerns to the shameless jingoism of modern action films, genres which have historically glorified machismo culture and warfare, at the expense of dissenting voices. Likewise, the trail of havoc wreaked by Patrick Bateman, selecting as his victims homeless black men, prostitutes and a young child among others, is emblematic of the devastation inflicted on the most underprivileged and vulnerable segments of society by a financial elite, buoyed by callous indifference to those whose lives it impacts on.
American Psycho conveys through words what Salo conveys through celluloid: A pure undiluted hatred of hegemony and abuse of power. It may be that those in the ranks of financial professionals will reject this and regard any comparison to a man who rapes, tortures and murders his way through life preposterous and offensive. Then again, wouldn’t those who only saw the exterior of Patrick Bateman – handsome, charming and intelligent – have had similar thoughts if confronted with that image? Works of dissenting art like American Psycho and Salo are brilliant because through their raw, uncompromising nature they force us to confront the ugliness of reality. It is certainly not a pleasant experience, but it is probably necessary.
