A fascination with Brenton Easton Ellis’s fictional serial killer, Patrick Bateman, permeates many online circles, particularly those that are primarily young, male, and conservative. Such allure is odd. Bateman’s character is thoroughly reprehensible. He is a hyper-materialistic, vain, murderous sexual deviant who subscribes to an entirely amoral brand of egoism. In a way, he represents everything the online Right stands against, yet he enjoys enduring popularity among them.
The American Psycho protagonist has carved out an established presence on a number of social media platforms and forums, usually being presented through iconic scenes from the novel’s film adaptation. Sometimes these come in the form of stand-alone memes, other times as reaction images. Occasionally, entire online personas are borne out of the character.
Bateman’s likeness is often used in conjunction with a viewpoint that the person posting finds agreeable or to mock something with which they disagree. The connotation is that Bateman expressing or implicitly supporting an opinion lends it authority — association or philosophical proximity to the serial killer is considered a positive thing. Holding a character designed to represent the worst of Reaganite consumerism and yuppie narcissism, who also happens to be a violent psychopath, may seem a little bit strange to external observers.
Odd as it may seem, there is something to this.
A plausible explanation holds that Bateman’s character, as portrayed by Christian Bale, is just really attractive. Clean-shaven, toned, tall and tan — Bale’s appearance in American Psycho is strikingly similar to that of an 80’s Ralph Lauren model. There could be some truth to this assessment as it is not uncommon for people online to attach opinions to powerful or attractive figures as a means to make a joke or to portray those they disagree with as weak by contrast.
While this could explain some of the popularity Bateman’s character enjoys, it fails to address how people reason through his dubious moral credentials. A substantial part of his popularity, in fact, seems to come from him being psychopathic.
People don’t admire him simply because he’s a handsome fictional degenerate. There are a lot of those out there, most of whom get nowhere near the attention Bateman does and especially not from self-described conservatives.
Bateman’s popularity in corners of the Right is rooted in his perceived power. He wields control over himself and his surroundings, something many young men, especially conservatives, feel is unattainable to them and thus long for an avatar to experience such things vicariously through. Hence, Bateman’s appeal.
Through his wealth, physical desirability, and violence, Patrick Bateman is capable of shaping the world around him into whatever he wants it to be. His vision for the world is, of course, self-absorbed and depraved, but the capability to realize it is enough to captivate the minds of those who have been made to feel helpless by modernity. Further, Bateman is both obsessed with following and, at times, entirely dismissive of social conventions. For young men who feel constrained by the passive-aggressive and increasingly regimented nature of their day-to-day interactions, Bateman is both a morbidly relatable and a cathartic presence on screen.
Hollywood has failed to provide an entire generation of young men with masculine role models. While our fathers grew up with Clint Eastwood and Sean Connery, we have been fed a narrative that men ought to be docile and submissive, totally contrary to our nature. Filling this void have been characters such as Bateman, extreme manifestations of masculinity that the reactionary fervor cultivated by the Left’s assault on manhood has drawn many toward.
