Dangerous Ideas 2 - Psychotic satire

For all it's unforgiveable faults, reading Atlas Shrugged has enriched my life in a number of ways. I now feel that I am wiser about the dangers of self-interest. I feel that I better understand the thought processes and logic behind capitalist-corporate behaviour. I feel I have looked inside the head of someone I couldn't be more distant from, and been introduced to ideas I had not given much thought to before. And most importantly, it made me laugh. 

I couldn't laugh at the book itself. It's a truly humourless piece of writing, depressingly po-faced. The world of Atlas Shrugged is the sort of world where people "laughed without humour", and "smiled, but without emotion". No, the thing that made me laugh about it was that I finally realised what the joke was about in American Psycho.

As far as I am aware, Bret Easton Ellis has never said as much, it is purely my own speculation. But the first couple of chapters of Atlas Shrugged, followed by a few pages of American Psycho should be proof enough for any person.

I was working at Sainsbury's at the time I read American Psycho. After about 50 pages of it I still couldn't see why something so repetitive and eye-wateringly boring had garnered so much praise calling it a tour-de-force. So I was treating it as an opportunity to practice skim-reading. I remember flicking through the pages faster than anyone else in the smoking room was reading, determined to get to the end of this tedium, when the first murder ripped past my eyes. If it hadn't been so visceral I might have just passed it off as a dream, and I had to go back to re-read it.

"Whatcha readin'?" Barbara said from the other side of the table, Sovereign burning between two fingers beside her face.

I showed her the cover and her face twisted the other direction into a grimace. "Whatcha readin' that for?" she asked.

The problem with American Psycho is that it is so easy to take it at face value. Almost anything of meaning  in it is in the meta-reading, otherwise it is just a very, very boring portrait of a very, very uninteresting person, seasoned lightly (to mix my metaphors) with acts of violence so horrific that the only way to read them is to put the book down and do something else for a while.

But what if you didn't get it? Like this guy:

"You can interpret anything intellectually and give reasons why works should be considered as being of great worth in any artistic sense. This book can sit amongst the very worst examples of art in my opinion.
I loved the film American Psycho & so bought the book. I am a huge William S Burroughs & Ballard fan and am not easily shocked. This book is never able to justify the disgusting imagery it produces. If you find this book humorous then I truly believe that you are mentally unhinged. The film was funny - perhaps due to it's absurdity, this book is over the top in my opinion.
You really just have to ask yourself - "Is this book in all it's gore & horror worth reading for a few mere chuckles?". Ask yourself this - "Should I read a book that ties brutality & rape to humor so very vividly?". It must really damage the morality of the reader to reduce such horrific scenes to a laugh.
I think this work is a good book for pseudo-intellectuals to cling to. I can't see any merit in reading this book at all. All books I'm finished with due to over-reading or dislike are given to the local charity shop to sell. This book was so bad I ripped it in half & put it in the bin. I wouldn't want to curse anyone else with this book even if it meant money going to charity."

I must be mentally unhinged.

And what if you were pro-Objectivism? Or a misogynist? There's plenty here to support both

The amazon reviews are somewhat revealing, that 56 people got the joke, and appreciated it, and the numbers go down with the star rating as people exponentially appreciate it less. And then, there is a sudden jump at one star ratings. My first assumption is that these are people who most certainly either did not get it, or did not appreciate the graphic medium.

The satire, the mundanity, and the horror beyond excess were all sadly glossed over for the mainstream in  the movie. It got right the general sense of elitism and pedantry (see video below for the most hilarious scene) which rules the lives of people who earn too much and work too much with money, and the deeply ingrained misogyny. My problem with this, and I still don't understand if it is a misunderstanding on the film-makers part, or a fault of the shift between mediums, is that the bathos of the book requires the tedium to enhance the shock value of each murder, and this in turn trivializes the boring, consumer/corporate pages that compose most of the novel. Each scene in the film is cleverly realised, and neatly pieced together, but it just isn't nearly boring enough, and sadly, boredom is an integral part of the story. The book and film are two very different monsters and don't increase the appreciation of the other.

But, let's address some of these issues: you can interpret anything intellectually, including this book, but why would you want to do it to this book?

First and foremost, I don't think there's anything to be lost in interpreting anything intellectually, except maybe a little bit of time and the potential for losing face as you describe the metaphysical and social merits of something as trite as Angels and Demons.

American Psycho on the other hand has clearly been written with the intention of being analysed. For a start. nothing is spelled out. It is asking to be thought over. You may come out of it thinking it's a cheap trick or an allusive product of genius. But give it a thought if it wants to be thought about and you may find yourself asking some interesting questions about yourself.

And justifying the graphic imagery in terms of intellectualism? There are certain parts that they could surely make the victims of ingested poison read. But for me, visceral as they are, are not the most graphic parts. I would like to say the excessive description of business suits in place of individual personality is the most graphic, being the bulk of the material, but I skimmed over most of it. In my opinion, the coldly analytical descriptions of musicians and their branding is more graphic. Chauvinism and misogyny are common character indicators in fiction (not normally as horrific as here however), but someone so graphically misunderstanding consumerist constructions is not. To me, that is more disturbing than the sort of torture porn that graces our cinema screens so often.

The rapes and murders constitute less than 50 pages, and yet it is what people come away remembering most. 

And then you find yourself accused of finding humour in the novel. Why does it make me laugh? Like I said before I didn't laugh when I read it. It's a slow burning joke, like Holmes and Watson on a camping trip, and it's only when you think retrospectively about the ideas that the laughter can come.

Thankfully, almost everyone who has made it to the end of this book is generally someone who has realised what it is they are reading. SATIRE!!!! Even if they didn't class it as enjoyable satire, in the way that 1984 is very readable.

Satire is often misunderstood. In fact, some would even say that it is not satire unless it has been misunderstood. I think this is a meta-approach to a form of entertainment that is already meta, and is said to justify the fact that satire needs to be understood. The most obvious way to prove that you have understood a piece of art is to laugh at someone who did not. A joke is only a joke if someone or something loses.

This always makes me think of that scene in Black Adder:

"Baldrick, do you know what irony is?"
"Yes, Sir, it's like goldy and bronzy, but made of iron."