Dhu, do you know of an <b>icky movie called "American psycho"</b> (Christian Bale). Maybe you can read some reviews or, better yet, try to locate the script of the movie if it's online and go through it. (I once had the misfortune of watching bits of it.)
<b>ADDED:</b> Script is at www.imsdb.com/scripts/American-Psycho.html
It says the movie's based on a "novel by Bret Easton Ellis"
<b>I don't recommend it to anyone for watching,</b> as it's got gore, sexual violence, violence against women, implied violence against animals and more of such junk. The only reason I'm mentioning it is because <b>it shows outright and very clearly the extreme of WASPyism/christowestern culture.</b> The christian aspect is not mentioned as such or even referenced (other than frequent mentions of gawd, jesus and christ), but just as 'secularism' makes the strongly present christianism merely invisible, the same is true with the film.
It's about the spoilt rich elite in America (90s movie set in the 80s yuppie period apparently).
Some scenes from the film:
- There's a scene where Patrick Bateman (the american psycho of the title) yells at the Chinese people at the laundry: he needs their services and threatens them with all kinds of things.
- He is repulsed by homeless people and murders an African American homeless man. The first murder.
- He and other spoilt rich man (his direct competitor, played by Jared Leto) yell at Hispanic people, and both threaten to "kill" the Mexican (?) waiters unless they did whatever it was they had demanded.
- His envy of Jared Leto's character is predictably about very petty things. He's jealous of the other's style since he is basically the same but better.
- There's a very revealing scene where he and his similar friends are grouped about a table and where they suddenly point out how they, being rich guys, should actually be discussing 'deep, intellectual', global, general-knowledge type stuff. And while some of them bring up sob stories from the rest of the world, Bateman shows off how well he's kept himself up-to-date with the 'things he ought to know and have the right opinion/popular informed opinion on'. Mentions Sri Lanka, Sikhs and other stuff. Probably he would have thrown in the environment and gun-running. Don't remember, but you get the idea.
Seemed to me like they are just programmed to be PC and show they care but couldn't really give a hoot about anyone or anything elsewhere.
This part of the movie taken from the movie's official script:
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>PRICE</b>
(Wired on coke)
Oh ho ho. That affects us? What
about the massacres in Sri Lanka, honey? Doesn't that
affect us, too? I mean don't you know anything about Sri
Lanka? About how the Sikhs are killing like tons of
Israelis there? Doesn't that affect us?
<b>BATEMAN</b>
Oh come on. Price. There are a lot more important
problems than Sri Lanka to worry about. Sure our foreign
policy is important, but there are more pressing problems
at hand.
<b>PRICE</b>
Like what?
<b>BATEMAN</b>
Well, we have to end apartheid for one. And slow
down the nuclear arms race, stop terrorism and world
hunger. But we can't ignore our social needs. either We
have to stop people from abusing the welfare system. We
have to provide food and shelter for the homeless and
oppose racial discrimination and promote civil rights while
also promoting equal rights for women but change the
abortion laws to protect the right to life yet still
somehow maintain women's freedom of choice.
The table stares at Bateman uncomfortably.
<b>BATEMAN</b>
We also have to control the influx of illegal
immigrants. We have to encourage a return to traditional
moral values and curb graphic sex and violence on TV, in
movies, in pop music, everywhere. Most importantly we have
to promote general social concern and less materialism in
young people.
Price chokes on his drink. Everyone is silent and
mystified.
<b>CARRUTHERS</b>
Patrick, how thought-provoking.
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->I think the hypocrisy is obvious, and actually very representative of some of their ignorant rich people.
- He is incredibly misogynistic of course. He's totally twisted about women and it
ends in the murders of at least two women. (I didn't watch the whole thing, so not sure).
- He kills some poor kitten or pup, out of pure spite of course. (Not shown I think, but again, whatever happened I fortunately missed it - it was playing in the background at a classmate's house and I only caught bits of it and heard some sentences)
- He's a metrosexual. Obsessed with his clothes, his physique, the right restaurants to visit, the right introductory card to have, and knows all the music he is supposed to know and like (and for the reasons he is supposed to like said music). Has some skin-regime to supposedly keep him pretty and youthful. Spends hours everyday exercising and doing pilates (No, I don't recognise it as Yoga).
- Of course, he's is frightened to death of homosexual men. At one point he tries to kill a 'friend' in the men's room for having a more stylish introduction card than he has. He intends to choke him but the friend turns out to be gay and thinks Bateman is actually making advances and welcomes it. Bateman is so repulsed he doesn't want to kill him anymore and waddles off.
- His character is engaged to a woman (Reese Witherspoon) who it looks like he really hates. She keeps talking and he has disinterested affairs with someone else's girlfriend whom he dumps. At some point in the movie he breaks off the engagement to his fioncee.
So he hates everybody: non-waspies, women, animals, homeless people, gay people. The only thing I don't remember them showing was kids. But I'm sure he hates them too if he were to think of them.
It's strange how though it's played as a farce it is quite accurate.
The end twists things around supposedly, but by then, the message is already across and it was not meant to change the message anyway. The twist is how apparently he hadn't really killed anyone - that it was all his subconscious imagination and wishing. And it turns out that others don't think Patrick Bateman is the fabulous guy he imagines himself to be. When he talks to his friends in the end, they talk about "Patrick Bateman" as a third person and as someone who is a social loser and don't agree that he and Bateman are one and the same person. I missed too much of the movie in the middle and only caught parts, but even if I had wanted to know exactly what the end meant, I would never put myself through American yucko wacko Psycho again. Wouldn't advise anyone else to try it either.
<b>ADDED:</b> Script is at www.imsdb.com/scripts/American-Psycho.html
It says the movie's based on a "novel by Bret Easton Ellis"
<b>I don't recommend it to anyone for watching,</b> as it's got gore, sexual violence, violence against women, implied violence against animals and more of such junk. The only reason I'm mentioning it is because <b>it shows outright and very clearly the extreme of WASPyism/christowestern culture.</b> The christian aspect is not mentioned as such or even referenced (other than frequent mentions of gawd, jesus and christ), but just as 'secularism' makes the strongly present christianism merely invisible, the same is true with the film.
It's about the spoilt rich elite in America (90s movie set in the 80s yuppie period apparently).
Some scenes from the film:
- There's a scene where Patrick Bateman (the american psycho of the title) yells at the Chinese people at the laundry: he needs their services and threatens them with all kinds of things.
- He is repulsed by homeless people and murders an African American homeless man. The first murder.
- He and other spoilt rich man (his direct competitor, played by Jared Leto) yell at Hispanic people, and both threaten to "kill" the Mexican (?) waiters unless they did whatever it was they had demanded.
- His envy of Jared Leto's character is predictably about very petty things. He's jealous of the other's style since he is basically the same but better.
- There's a very revealing scene where he and his similar friends are grouped about a table and where they suddenly point out how they, being rich guys, should actually be discussing 'deep, intellectual', global, general-knowledge type stuff. And while some of them bring up sob stories from the rest of the world, Bateman shows off how well he's kept himself up-to-date with the 'things he ought to know and have the right opinion/popular informed opinion on'. Mentions Sri Lanka, Sikhs and other stuff. Probably he would have thrown in the environment and gun-running. Don't remember, but you get the idea.
Seemed to me like they are just programmed to be PC and show they care but couldn't really give a hoot about anyone or anything elsewhere.
This part of the movie taken from the movie's official script:
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>PRICE</b>
(Wired on coke)
Oh ho ho. That affects us? What
about the massacres in Sri Lanka, honey? Doesn't that
affect us, too? I mean don't you know anything about Sri
Lanka? About how the Sikhs are killing like tons of
Israelis there? Doesn't that affect us?
<b>BATEMAN</b>
Oh come on. Price. There are a lot more important
problems than Sri Lanka to worry about. Sure our foreign
policy is important, but there are more pressing problems
at hand.
<b>PRICE</b>
Like what?
<b>BATEMAN</b>
Well, we have to end apartheid for one. And slow
down the nuclear arms race, stop terrorism and world
hunger. But we can't ignore our social needs. either We
have to stop people from abusing the welfare system. We
have to provide food and shelter for the homeless and
oppose racial discrimination and promote civil rights while
also promoting equal rights for women but change the
abortion laws to protect the right to life yet still
somehow maintain women's freedom of choice.
The table stares at Bateman uncomfortably.
<b>BATEMAN</b>
We also have to control the influx of illegal
immigrants. We have to encourage a return to traditional
moral values and curb graphic sex and violence on TV, in
movies, in pop music, everywhere. Most importantly we have
to promote general social concern and less materialism in
young people.
Price chokes on his drink. Everyone is silent and
mystified.
<b>CARRUTHERS</b>
Patrick, how thought-provoking.
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->I think the hypocrisy is obvious, and actually very representative of some of their ignorant rich people.
- He is incredibly misogynistic of course. He's totally twisted about women and it
ends in the murders of at least two women. (I didn't watch the whole thing, so not sure).
- He kills some poor kitten or pup, out of pure spite of course. (Not shown I think, but again, whatever happened I fortunately missed it - it was playing in the background at a classmate's house and I only caught bits of it and heard some sentences)
- He's a metrosexual. Obsessed with his clothes, his physique, the right restaurants to visit, the right introductory card to have, and knows all the music he is supposed to know and like (and for the reasons he is supposed to like said music). Has some skin-regime to supposedly keep him pretty and youthful. Spends hours everyday exercising and doing pilates (No, I don't recognise it as Yoga).
- Of course, he's is frightened to death of homosexual men. At one point he tries to kill a 'friend' in the men's room for having a more stylish introduction card than he has. He intends to choke him but the friend turns out to be gay and thinks Bateman is actually making advances and welcomes it. Bateman is so repulsed he doesn't want to kill him anymore and waddles off.
- His character is engaged to a woman (Reese Witherspoon) who it looks like he really hates. She keeps talking and he has disinterested affairs with someone else's girlfriend whom he dumps. At some point in the movie he breaks off the engagement to his fioncee.
So he hates everybody: non-waspies, women, animals, homeless people, gay people. The only thing I don't remember them showing was kids. But I'm sure he hates them too if he were to think of them.
It's strange how though it's played as a farce it is quite accurate.
The end twists things around supposedly, but by then, the message is already across and it was not meant to change the message anyway. The twist is how apparently he hadn't really killed anyone - that it was all his subconscious imagination and wishing. And it turns out that others don't think Patrick Bateman is the fabulous guy he imagines himself to be. When he talks to his friends in the end, they talk about "Patrick Bateman" as a third person and as someone who is a social loser and don't agree that he and Bateman are one and the same person. I missed too much of the movie in the middle and only caught parts, but even if I had wanted to know exactly what the end meant, I would never put myself through American yucko wacko Psycho again. Wouldn't advise anyone else to try it either.