Kanye West and Patrick Bateman

Funny enough, today in my Literature and Film class we briefly brought up the discussion of Patrick Bateman in American Psycho. We briefly touched upon the idea that no one actually wants to be Patrick Bateman but the movie portrays an interesting view of Dystopia. It's kind of funny how we don't want to be Bateman as a psycho killer but we will become a version of him as a byproduct of consumerism.

Today, relaxing at home, I turn on the Ellen DeGeneres Show. None other than Kanye West is sitting in the chair next to the host talking about the influences for his new music video Love Locked Down. Interestingly enough, he says some of the influence came from Patrick Bateman.




We can see from the opening scene a resemblance to Bateman's Aparment as in this clip



The following videos is where he talks about the influences,



In addition to the clip showing Kanye's inspiration, here is a quote from an article about today's appearance on the Ellen show:

After Kanye West unveiled the new video
for his single "Love Lockdown" on "The
Ellen DeGeneres Show" on Tuesday (October 7),
he admitted that the clip's modern look
was inspired by a chainsaw-wielding maniac.

"On this album, I kind of embody Patrick
Bateman from 'American Psycho,' " he joked
on the show, adding, "You know at the end
of the movie [that] he didn't really kill
anyone. [I just liked] the clean aesthetic
and the way he was all about labels. I
wanted to express all of that in the video."

from Jocelyn Vena on Love Locked Down

Focusing on "artistic communities" we can see the materialism and consumerism that surrounds these aspects of culture and how it "bleeds" into every day society. For example, the materialism that we see associated to being "popular" and being a "celebrity". Once a name is associated with a brand, such as Michael Jordan, he becomes a commodity, and I think in the business world that Patrick Bateman lives in is very much this. His status as "fitting in" depends on his wearing the right suit and being seen in all the right places. With the "Hip-Hop community" it is also about looks and the right brand, otherwise it wouldn't matter if P. Diddy put his name behind this band or Kanye West decided to produce this song. Without their names on these records, backing these bands, there is a good chance that no one would care or even pay attention. There are so many "underground" and "indie" bands that never see the popular radio waves because they have yet to be discovered by some popular producer or record label.

We as consumers strive for recognition, especially in our teen years for the things we wear, realizing this, ad campaigns such as cigarette ads (in the past), cereal ads, shoe ads, etc. are tailored to appeal to younger generations. We, then become byproducts much like Bateman because some children will do anything to get their material needs met. Watching "Keeping Up With the Karashians" this weekend reminds me of this. One of the younger, less known daughters, Kendall (i believe) was
given chores to earn money to buy the latest thing she saw at the mall. Instead of doing the chores, she hired someone else at a lesser rate to do the same job, thus getting the chores done and making the money she needed to get what she wanted.

The need to have our consumer needs meet and our materialistic needs indulged, does cause us to lose a part of morality and sense of obligation because we become more focused on what we appear to be than what we really are. When people graduate from high school and some times college, the realization hits that we have not really done anything with our lives because we have just been going through the motions and making other people happy with the external self instead of our inner self.