If there's anyone out where who understands the prostitute threesome scene in American Psycho, could you please explain it to me? Every time I watch that scene and things like "now wash your vagina" and "I'm going to call you Christie" I feel like there's something I should be getting about Bateman's particular psychosis that I'm not. (Well, I get the mirror-flexing thing, that's just awesome, but that's not all, is it?)
On an unrelated note, Saran Wrap is underappreciated as a bondage material. It's see-through, touch-through, requires no special knowledge to apply quickly and thoroughly (I suspect this is a secret negative for a lot of people), you can get a ton of it for three bucks, it looks pleasingly seedy and bizarre, and it's quite effective if you use enough passes. Okay, if you don't have a fetish for your submissive sweating like a racehorse there's one drawback, but really, it's a minor one.
I feel like I'm missing all the subtext in American Phsycho. I'm just not the arsty type. I feel like I'm missing it, but whatever it is, I don't have a fracking clue.
ReplyDeleteOn the saran wrap/package wrap thing, I can not stand the sound it makes when it's being dispenced. It makes my skin crawl. I've listened to my boyfriend and others wrap people, and it very much torture. If he wanted to do it to me I'd call red. I'm also rather claustrophobic, so I don't personally like the idea in the first place. I've seen others enjoy it... to each there own.
I love the stuff! I keep meaning to do a post about how I used it the other day - it's such versatile stuff :)
ReplyDeleteI thought it was just supposed to be crazy.
ReplyDeleteThe hooker scene, not the saran wrap. Saran wrap is so obviously CUHRAHZEE that there is no point in airing out that fact.
I didn't think it was that Deeply Symbolic in its particulars, just more ways he likes to control everything right down to the last detail, so that other subjectivities don't even get a look in. The renaming of both the women means that they don't even get to name themselves (even a fake name of their own choosing); the one from the agency doesn't even have any lines at all, in fact.
ReplyDeleteAs for the wash your vagina business--well, he picked her up off the street, right? Dirty dirty. It's creepier because that's him in "be charming" mode; there are all kinds of little moments like that through the movie, i.e. when he's got his secretary on the date, offers her "sorbet" (a "classy" gesture like the white wine and Varda truffles), then suddenly yells at her when it looks like she's going to put the dirty spoon directly on the table without a coaster.
anyway I think the whole prostitute scene is, even his wildest erotic fantasies (the non murdering ones, that is) are as vapid and unimaginative and straight-from-a-zillion-other-peoples'-ideas as everything else. You know how you've said the 22 year old thin blonde is "I'll have what he's having?" This is yet another example of Bateman trying to have what he thinks everyone else is having. ZOMG hot threesome, make my own porn flick. Of course, it doesn't work.
ReplyDeleteAnd of course, completely dehumanizing the women, not so much by hiring them for sex (I'm sure feminists argued it from both sides; certainly you could make a good case for the classic porn->horror->murder a la Catherine MacKinnon based on the sequence of events, not that I'm saying one should) but by...well, just basically being a total dick, even before the violence starts. He keeps trying not to be, but he keeps revealing himself, because he doesn't actually give a shit about the women as human beings, and it shows. I thought one of the best parts of the movie was that really awkward scene in the living room where the two women are kind of eyeballing each other like: this guy's a weirdo, let's just get this over with.