American Psycho’s Killer Gaze
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film studies
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published 18/08/2007
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SummaryJacques Lacan’s description of the Other is that which gazes on you or exerts power on you, yet does not truly exist; the Other is an imagined gaze that is constantly looking over you (Willemen, 216). In the film American Psycho (2000), screenwriter and director Mary Harron personifies the Lacanian Other with serial-killer Patrick Bateman. The Bateman character is an embodiment of the Other in that he is represented as a dead eye that continuously emits the intradiegetic Lacanian gaze (in various forms) on everyone around him.
Table of Contents
- Throughout American Psycho, Bateman personifies three main qualities of the Other
- But the tone of Bateman's speech sounds indifferent, and to the viewer and Bateman's friends it is an ironic lecture
- Bateman's gaze is evident during the scene in which he has lunch with Detective Kimball
- Laura Mulvey notes that the look cast by the spectator can be in fascination with the image of like, identifying with this ideal ego, and thus, the spectator can gain control and possession of the desired object within the diegesis
- Bateman continues to let Paul Allen refer to him as Marcus Halberstrand rather than confront Paul Allen about his error
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