American Psycho: An Inflated Controversy

Bret Easton Ellis’ American Psycho was utterly rejected by mainstream media, feminist critics, and by American society as a whole before it was even published, de-published, and then finally re-published throughout the course of the 1990s. Beginning with Simon and Schuster’s withdrawal of their publication at the loss of a $300,000 advance given to the author, it is not hard to understand the proclivity of the outrage provoked by the gruesome violence depicted by Ellis in the novel. Random House did agree to step in, publishing the novel the following year, likely too because of the frequency and intensity of media outrage and attention at the time. Seemingly, every American magazine and media outlet was captivated by the scandal, from the New York Times and Vanity Fair, to the Washington Post, and even Rolling Stone, which all either took up arms in defence, or outright rejection, of the novel. Even Ellis became a participant in the dialogue in the spring of 1991, whereby in a compelling interview with Rolling Stone, he stated,

I’m confused by it, but I think it’s basically a joke. To put it as simply as possible: The acts described in the book are truly, indisputably vile. The book itself is not. Patrick Bateman is a monster. I am not. The outrage that has been expressed is totally disconnected from what this book is about. And if anything, it reflects the intolerance of our culture to deal with anything that falls outside the acceptable. (Love 1)

Criticisms began in 1990, with Roger Rosenblatt’s New York Times review entitled ‘Snuff This Book! Will Bret Easton Ellis Get Away With Murder’ detailing opinions of ‘the revolting publicity’ (1) received by the book as a ploy for more sales. He accurately conveys the significance of the ‘young, wealthy, hair-slicked-back, narcissistic, decadent New York’ (1) men, pivotal to the novel, yet fails to recognise Ellis’ own disdain for the characters he creates, instead claiming it to be too ‘hard to tell what Mr. Ellis intends exactly, because he languishes so comfortably in the swamp he purports to condemn.’ (1). Rosenblatt continues by advocating for a boycott of the book as a form of ‘sweet revenge’ (1) for the author and the publishing house, proclaiming that,

This nonact would give a nice ending to our tale. It would say that we are disgusted with the gratuitous degradation of human life, of women in particular. It would show that we can tell real books from the fakes. It would give the raspberry to the culture hustlers who, to their shame, will not say no to obvious rot. Standards, anyone? (1)

If doing nothing more than reaffirming and further intensifying the divisions caused by this book, Ellis, in response to Rosenblatt, stated, 

I think Roger Rosenblatt made a complete ass of himself...You don’t have to read this book! This book is not being forced on anyone...What it comes down to is that it’s intolerance, and I think that is far more offensive than what the people in this book symbolize….I don’t think any book deserves this sort of advance negative scrutiny, no matter what the subject matter is. And I think the indignation and the hostility that the press expressed just seems far more intolerable than what this book is about. (Love 1)

Demands for censorship and boycotts continued with the Los Angeles Chapter of the National Organisation of Women’s creation of ‘a hotline with a recording of a woman reading some of the novel’s most violent passages’ (Serpell, 195). A notorious voice amongst this organisation was that of Tammy Bruce, the president of the L.A. Chapter, who emboldened people to ‘exercise their free right of expression’ (196) by refusing to buy any books published by Vintage and Knopf, in an attempt to further the notion that ‘violence against women in any form is no longer socially acceptable’ (196)  and that ‘the women of this country will no longer tolerate gratuitous violence for the sake of profit and entertainment’ (O’Brien 1). Bruce went on to describe the book as ‘the most misogynistic communication we have ever come across’ (1) and ‘a how-to manual on the torture and dismemberment of women’ (1). Of course Ellis retaliated during his Rolling Stone interview by expressing his lack of ‘care (for) what some women think or feel about this book’ (Love 1) or ‘whether they find it offensive or not’ (1), in addition to his lack of feelings of ‘responsibility toward women or the women’s movement of NOW to write what they consider a socially acceptable book’ (1). He continued by arguing that, ‘People like those in the NOW coalition can’t seem to divide the two things: being shocked and being offended’ (1) and that ‘What NOW is about to perpetrate - this boycott of Random House - is harmful: It’s intolerance being masked by this new sensitivity.’ (1). Hilary Sio, manager of a prominent New York city bookstore, further contributed to feminist rhetoric of the time in her issuement of a statement professing that ‘We don’t wish to represent that part of our culture: the exploitation of sadomasochism’, giving rise to the notion that 1990s society as a whole was not yet ready to face the very real existence of sexual and other forms of violence, and instead sought to repress the harsh realities of this darker part of human nature under the guise of censorship, boycotts, and moral outrage. Roger Straus proceeded by attacking the literary value of the book, asserting any claims on behalf of American Pyscho as possessing ‘any redeeming social value’ (O’Brien) to be ‘bullshit’ (1), declaring the book as totally indefensible. Thus, it is wholly evident that there was no lack of scrutiny, judgement, and discourse directed about and towards Ellis’ novel, summarised perhaps most passively by Mailer in his calls to “Let it be published...but don’t ask me to defend it.’ (1).

With regard to the motives behind the controversy surrounding American Psycho, it is clear to see why women’s groups such as Bruce’s L.A. Chapter were so offended and provoked by the violent graphic nature of the novel; even Ellis himself ‘agree(s) with a lot of what Mailer wrote.’ (Love 1) acknowledging it to be ‘in many ways, an unendurable book.’ (1). He goes on to admit that ‘A lot of it is probably intolerable. It’s violent. It’s boring. I think some of it’s sick.’ (1). Depictions of women, therefore, in the novel are undeniably sexist, destructive, masochistic, and disturbing, as evidenced by the following excerpt: “I tried to make meatloaf out of the girl but it becomes too frustrating a task and instead I spend the afternoon smearing her meat all over the walls, chewing on strips of skin I ripped from her body” (Ellis 344).

However, much of the moral grievances directed toward the novel by figures such as Bruce entirely take the violence depicted out of the social context, constructed by Ellis, within which it is supposed to function. The notion, conveyed by feminist critics, that Ellis seeks to endorse this type of immoral and nefarious behaviour in not just making Bateman his protagonist, but by offering no sense of justice or retribution at the end of the novel, is reductive, and undermines the subtleties and ironies the novel so cleverly offers readers. What makes the novel so powerful and engaging is the very fact that we are required to tolerate such a person as Bateman in his entirety; we are given the rare opportunity of dwelling inside the mind of a maniacal, murderous psychopath, and one who, at that, is functioning successfully at the very height of modern society. If Ellis seeks to comment on anything through American Psycho is it the not the way in which our society rewards those who are most undeserving? Critics such as Bruce and Rosenblatt cynically overlook the novel’s attempts to expose the corrupt and despicable nature of the 1980s New York social elite; a message that seems all the more necessary to modern readers today living under the presidency of the real-life, equally corrupt and despicable Donald Trump. As Zaller conveys, the accumulation of judgements directed toward Ellis attempt to encompass his role ‘simultaneously [as] a foul-mouthed child, a cunning nihilist, and the cynical manipulator of a jaded public. The contradiction among these charges betrays their ritual, shunning nature. If American Psycho had been mere trash it would hardly have required such excoriation.’ (319), illustrating the deficiencies inherent in claims such as these.

As Serpell articulates ‘Bateman models his speech on the language of fashion, business, and music reviews. He models his behaviour on visual simulacra like pornographic and snuff films. His apartment, were it to exist, would be in the impressionism gallery of the Met.’ (197). Seemingly, this offers an explanation for the extent of the criticism directed toward the novel; the mundanely authentic realities scattered throughout the novel, and the everyday societal commodities that we recognise and ourselves consume, are perhaps too close to comfort for some, whereby one begins to associate themself and the society within which one lives with the corruption and debauchery so characteristic of Ellis’ constructed world. Zaller argues that:

Both late capitalism and serial murder involve extreme forms of depersonalisation in which predators as well as victims are ultimately rendered faceless, action is reduced to function, and events seem randomly spewed out by a process whose design is inscrutable and whose purpose appears to be the mere production of itself. Rage, violence, and repetition - this is both the automating mechanism and the sequence of action itself. (320).

In this regard, could it not be said that much of the fervour and severity of criticism directed toward the acts of sexual violence depicted in American Psycho is in fact reflective of subconscious anxieties surrounding the very real existence of these same entities within our own capitalist society? The fact that much of the violence written by Ellis is not fictionalised, and is indeed based upon real life police reports, only further contributes to this notion: the notion that people were, and perhaps still are, unable to handle the legitimacy this novel possesses in terms of the perverse and radical evils human beings are capable of enacting. As Ellis expresses ‘The police reports about Gainesville [the Florida serial murders that remain unsolved]...are even creepier and more horrible than what Patrick Bateman does in this book. There is a level of human savagery and cruelty that is undeniable’ (Love 1), thus raising the question: ‘If we can’t reflect it in our culture, if we’re intolerant of it, what does that mean? Does it mean that we don’t want to see it in art because there’s so much of it in real life?...Do we want evil diminished in art because we don’t always get that in our everyday life?’ (1). This would go some way to explaining the intensity of the reactions evoked by the novel, even predating its publication, and serve to resolve critics’ insistence on removing Bateman from the social context of the novel, proclaiming his existence as a character as proof of the advocacy of violence and masochism on behalf of the author. If critics at the time were unable to separate the author from his work, and to separate Ellis from Bateman himself - a separation that should not have to be established, but should be inherently assumed - is this not further proof of the existence of this controversy as nothing more than a symptom of larger, deep-rooted cultural anxieties surrounding the degradation of our capitalist, consumerist, materialistic society? As Zaller concludes ‘the idea of an unpunished serial killer in their [the social elite’s] midst is a deeply unsettling proposition. It forces us into awareness at the most threatening level of the degree to which our lives are already in their power. No one who reads the mainstream critical responses to American Psycho can fail to be struck by the underlying note of unease, if not of latent hysteria, at Ellis' project’(324) because of the harsh realities, inequalities, and discrepancies present in our own political, cultural, and social institutions that it succeeds in reflecting.

In summary, although the rejection of the novel by mainstream critics and feminists is not hard to empathise with - due to the undeniability of the disturbing and gut-wrenching violence depicted in Ellis’ American Psycho - and yet criticism of the like is not valid, nor sufficient, in dictating the boycott and censorship of a novel such as this. For the entire novel to be inherently vilified and denied the right to exist within literary society, it simply proves the oppressive nature, not of the novel or its contents, but of radical calls for censorship far more representative of intolerance, discrimination, and corruptness than a fictional character enacting violent crimes within a fictionalised setting. As Serpell asserts ‘when representation is construed as advocacy, and figuration is construed as performativity’ (199) it allows for irrational assumptions to be made surrounding the ‘reality of Bateman’s actions’ (199) posing as a threat to society, when in fact they are informed by, and have originated from existing depravities within the cultural and political institutions of that same society. 

Works Cited

Ellis, Bret Easton. American Psycho. Picador, 2015.

Love, Robert. “Bret Easton Ellis: Psycho Analysis.” Rolling Stone, 4 April 1991, www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/bret-easton-ellis-psycho-analysis-170890/.

O'Brien, Maureen. “The ''American Psycho'' Controversy.” EW.com, 8 Mar. 1991, ew.com/article/1991/03/08/american-psycho-controversy/.

Rosenblatt, Roger. “Snuff This Book! Will Bret Easton Ellis Get Away With Murder?” The New York Times, The New York Times, 16 Dec. 1990, www.nytimes.com/1990/12/16/books/snuff-this-book-will-bret-easton-ellis-get-away-with-murder.html.

Serpell, C. Namwali. Seven Modes of Uncertainty. Harvard University Press, 2014.

Zaller, Robert. “American Psycho, American Censorship and the Dahmer Case.” Revue Française Detudes Américaines, vol. 57, no. 1, July 1993, pp. 317–325., doi:10.3406/rfea.1993.1511.