Alright Kjell, we have some unfinished business to attend to, namely your roaring pleb tastes that you parade around like they were the very essence of what it means to be patrician. We need to start working on that right now. So when we are at dinner and Patrick the Elder is showing me business cards and I respond in a wounded but intense fashion, Impressive, very nice...lets see Paul Allens card Im referencing a cinematic masterpiece that actually explores the very same issues you hold so dearly to your heart. The movie is of course American Psycho and it is undeniable evidence that Christian Bale can act, even though he labored hard to convince us as a nation the very opposite in those Batman movies. The character he plays is a psychopathic corporate financier who desperately wants to fit in and project the right image of his self even though he is convinced that he doesnt have this self everyone else seems to have (who also has the name Patrick and why not? The name Patrick is derived from the Latin patricius which means, you guessed it, patrician). Materialism, consumption of luxury, issues of the self, and mental health. Sound familiar? Of course it does, review the image of the index card in my next comment. Now watch the short scene. Patrick is caught up in the glorious Reagan era where we were just beginning to see how much the consumer market can shape someones identity. This ever changing and flexible environment allowed people to adopt one identity after another merely by shopping around. Branding became a central concern in relation to meticulously keeping a prestigious identity that required a person to wear the right clothes at the right time, be seen eating at the right restaurants and even liking the right kind of music (Do you like Huey Lewis and the news?). Patrick is obsessed with all this and is a slave to the new class of cultural dictators whose authority alone could make or break any given brand. There is even a scene where Patricks girlfriend (the lovely Reese Witherspoon) demands to know why Patrick insists on keeping a job he hates and he replies tersely Because I want to fit in. This is why Paul Allens card leaves him a sweating and quivering mess. The man who lives the life he wants has an inside track on what proper signifiers he needs to display to secure the right identity. The audience sees three cards that are nearly identical, but Patrick is staring across the wide divide between the pleb and the patrician. And what is it with Patricks who have dapper and effeminate gingers always caught up in our orbit? Is the guy to Patricks right not Aaron Murphy with a bad ass haircut and bow tie? I digress. You said you didnt like this film, but I highly suggest you give it another viewing. Special appearances by some old friends like Williem Dafoe whom we suffered alongside in Anti-Christ and Chloë Sevigny whom we know from the masterpiece of American cinema Gummo. youtu.be/aZVkW9p-cCU
Posted on: Thu, 02 Oct 2014 06:14:55 +0000
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