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American Psycho
Heise, T. (2011). American Psycho : Neoliberal Fantasies and the Death of Downtown. Arizona Quarterly: A Journal of American Literature, Culture, and Theory, 67(1), 135-160.

Krause, J. (2016). The Killing Cure: Popular Culture and Postmodern Madness in Onde andará Dulce Veiga? and American Psycho. Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction, 57(2), 166-177.

Serpell, C. (2010). Repetition and the Ethics of Suspended Reading in American Psycho. Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction, 51(1), 47-73.

Jameson, Fredric. “Postmodernism and Consumer Society.” The Anti-Aesthetic: Essays on Postmodern Culture. Ed. Hal Foster. New York: New P, 1998. 111–25.

Themes[edit]
According to literary critic Jeffrey W. Hunter, American Psycho is largely a critique of the "shallow and vicious aspects of capitalism". The characters are predominantly concerned with material gain and superficial appearances, traits indicative of a postmodern world in which the 'surface' reigns supreme. This leads Patrick Bateman to act as if "everything is a commodity, including people", an attitude that is further evident in the rampant objectification and brutalization of women that occurs in the novel. This distancing allows Bateman to rationalize his actions; in one anthropophagic scene, Bateman remarks "though it does sporadically penetrate how unacceptable some of what I'm doing actually is, I just remind myself that this thing, this girl, this meat, is nothing ..."

Patrick Bateman's consumption of what he views as nothing more than a piece of meat is an almost parodically literal interpretation of a monster created by consumer culture. This, combined with sex, violence, drugs, and other desires of the "id", is how Bateman enacts his sociopathic violence in a superficial world.

Bateman's episodes of schizophrenia also shows clear signs on how he copes being an affluent person living in a superficial world, fashioned on consumerism. Stated by the critic Fredric Jameson, "blames the schizophrenic’s ills on the incoherence of postmodern media and capitalistic consumption" (124).

Jameson's critique is expanded through Krause in saying, "Through this, we can see a distinctly popular culture schizophrenia arise, a disease spread by the postmodern culture industry, which ruptures personality and isolates the fractured self. Though Jameson does not specifically reference two different types of schizophrenia in his writings, he implies an artistic schizophrenia versus a more popular form—one more or less accepted, and the other anathema. This raises questions about how popular culture might act as a potential cure for madness." (167) In one hand, you have a rich Wallstreet banker concerned and very self-conscience about every detail of his physical appearance, expensive possessions, and control of the people and the world around him. On the other hand, you have the inner self of Patrick Bateman, the aboriginal-self, who copes and relinquishes his outter complications and "fake" identity, created by consumerism, through violence on other human beings, who he finds consumable, and expresses absolute control of his desires and true self through his violent fantasies. His consumer, artifiicial self, proceeding in society how a wealthy consumer would live and spend his monies in his position, verses his natural self, who instead of spending money, would hunt and prey on the weak and vulnerable, usually women, who he deems expendable. Bateman treats the people around him just like any other consumer product, because of the void he still battles with and wishes to fulfill from within, hence, having dual personas, having the dull artificial identity, compared to his free limitless persona of his mind.

Observing another side of potential behavior coming from the affluent American society of consumerism is explained through C. Serpell saying, "Though serialized violence in American Psycho is an extension of the deadening effects of serialized consumer exchanges in an economy where commodities and bodies become interchangeable and indistinguishable, this point largely escaped the notice of the novel's harshest critics."(138) Despite critics arguing over the aesthetic properties of the novel from rapid patterns and transitions of self-consciousness and murder, Serpell claims critics have overlooked the key themes and motives of the novel. Serpell bringing to light the patterns and trends Ellis expresses through Bateman, what the consequences of how "serialized consummer exhanges in an economy where commodities and bodies become interchangeable and indistinguishable," could affect society, and the way affluent people view others whether they are higher, lower, or the same in wealth or social status. The Critic T. Heise states, "the uncertainty about the reality of Patrick’s violence has become the chief critical debate on American Psycho, and it serves as a convenient introduction to the entanglement of epistemology and ethics in the novel." (48) Bateman's character and traits according to Heise challenges what we understand as the social norms for the way the elite upper class think and react to society on a normal basis. Bateman's epistemology and ethics in regards to his actions and way of thinking throughout the novel is a reflection, through his violence, which raises the questions of the moral and ethical understanding of all individuals in Bateman's position and status, and how they might act and think similar or completely identical in a consumer world built on capitalism as we see in today's American society.