Bret Easton Ellis American Psycho and Hitchcock's Psycho:DramaticIrony, Iconography of a Modern Psychopathy or the Legacy ofAmerican Transcendentalism

Abstract

American Psycho and Hitchcock's Psycho mirror each other, creating distorting effects of modern desires for subjecthood and identity while symbolising the end of the American dream. Patrick Bateman from Bret Easton Ellis' novel far surpasses Norman Bates from Hitchcock's 50-year classic in terms of cruelty and psychopathy and entangles the viewer in a disturbing dialectic of subjecivism and individualism. Against the backdrop of
psychoanalysis and transcendentalism, the American morality tale of modernity is deconstructed and re-examined.