The male way of conceiving women (still today) and overall the affective aridity toward them, the envy at work and the contempt for any outcast: all these are many topics dealt with in a sole movie. I’m talking of the masterpiece called like the book it’s based on: AMERICAN PSYCHO, directed by Mary Harron ed interpreted, among others, by two extremely good Willem Dafoe and, especially, Christian Bale, who succeeds in sending to the audience a sense of absolute awful anxiety, pure terror. The novel, I would call a psychological thriller, was written in 1991 by Bret Easton Ellis. The related film is a bit different here and there, but the plot is the same and it focuses on one main character: on one side, a perfect business man, with an elegant look, refined manners and a charming behaviour, who’s smart, brilliant and very handsome, but also obsessed with order and cleaning, a maniac with regard to small… very small daily gestures, done by him or other people; on another side, he’s icy and nonaffective, able to kill and massacre corps, a mass murderer, a serial killer, a bloody psychopatic who keeps his victims in pieces and, thanks to his meticulous outfit for committing the crime, protects himself from the slightest blood spatter. He kills most times women, perhaps in order to reject affection and profit of their physical weakness. The truth that frightens us is that, without getting so far, meaning: the orc who kills with no logic, we are surrounded by people with a questionable psyche, people who suffered from traumas they never faced (for lack of bravery), nor were they well advised on the matter. These people are not easy to be classified because – as per the same character description, especially if we keep in mind Bale wonderful performance in the movie and his ability to go from the out of reach Mr. Handsome by day to the scary werewolf by night – we are attracted to Beauty, an either reassuring or fascinating look, and to business and relation skills, rather than to a nerd, for instance, who might soften us but would never make us feel safe at the point of considering him a guide. And such society, as in 1900 and probably in the next 2100, is very superficial, at least at first glance, because to aim at fame and fortune plus a good-looking well-built body seems to be the key to our joy, well..an easy happiness. Therefore, we have apparently too high standards which we aspire to, though we believe to know where we are heading to for our satisfaction. Problem is: the big frustration coming from not achieving the results we want(ed) and then, like in the book/film, we often live at the edge of fictional realities,meaning we don’t really know how things are: does what we see and perceive from the outside necessarily/fully match the reality? Just think of the popular social networks/media, first and foremost facebook, where so many people seem to live a 360-degree wonderful life as if they came out of the well-known Barilla commercials. All this way of living, characterized by superficial relationships, a fake self-manifestation (who we are and what we do, for instance in the business), driven by ephemeral values, encourages people, particularly men, also to think wrong (a wrong ‘modus cogendi’) of women, considering them a mere object (in some countries) or, more ‘luckely’, just emotional beings. I am talking of a certain part of the human population, not of everyone, but we have to take into consideration that the origin of any violent crime is to be found first of all in an unfair mentality and culture. Respect and the awareness of humans, both female and male, prevent any form of (mutual too) violence. And to women, who still are victims of a scared straight understatement, I wanna say vigorously: if someone does not treat us the way we deserve, please let’s make him out and detach from him, for we’re worth, as a famous ad recited. To be undermined and hurt you won’t have to actually cross someone as dangerous as the serial killer in “American Psycho”. Speaking from experience.
Trailer En: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YnGhW4UEhc
