padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
I think you are all being incredibly generous to a very dull and smug book
you're welcome to your opinion. I disagree, obviously, and some other folks seem to as well.

I think your reading is - due respect - what's surface

people glowingly flog art (of all kinds) all the time here that I think is mediocre/uninteresting/laughable. [shrugs] that's art.

I'm enjoying talking about it, so if other people want to keep doing so I probably will
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
It makes more sense to think of him in terms of an allegorical figure, like something from Bunyan or the Medieval Miracle Plays
that makes sense to me as well, though I've never read The Pilgrim's Progress (and can't imagine myself doing so)

I mentioned catabasis somewhere above, the first line literally being "abandon hope all ye who enter here"

tho the journey descent is an internal one into a metaphorical underworld
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
I think it's very different to Tom Wolfe... when I finally got round to reading him I found his works very... broad? Very simplistic I guess I mean. I was truly surprised at such straight-forward guileless stuff being so famous and highly regarded. Not to say I didn't enjoy some of them but to me it's not comparable to AP (I know I raised the question previously but that was cos I was interested in what people thought), I don't see more than one dimension in anything he's written (maybe the Acid Test one just about).
 

entertainment

Well-known member
People I grew up around who were in to that finance, suits, coke, hookers lifestyle portrayed in AP, they all loved that movie. Bateman with the axe as cover photo on facebook. I've always thought of that affection as a some kind of rosetta stone for their psychology. It's a bit weird to be in to a movie that satirizes something you like of course, but when you really get what they're about, it makes perfect sense.

It signals exactly the kind of detachment from any kind of inner or deeper meaning or morality they seemed to deify. It's not only a mocking of the attempt to criticise them, it's that they really don't care. You could call them reprehensible and they'd savor the fact that you're expending attention and energy at their command. Their only sacred doctrines are attention, interest, outer significance. Making a movie about them bolsters their confidence that they're at the center, whatever the intention. Money, external success, is the prime index of that doctrine and becomes the sublime object.

Since I loathed that whole ethos, I always wondered how you could actually get a punch in. I guess the only way is to deem them boring. To not care about them at all.
 
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craner

Beast of Burden
But that was the same with Wall Street, which simply made the film even better. The fact that it is adored by the people it satirises doesn't necessarily mean it has failed.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
But that was the same with Wall Street, which simply made the film even better. The fact that it is adored by the people it satirises doesn't necessarily mean it has failed.
I expect this was probably not really your scene, but you used to be able to pick up a free (and very funny) satirical publication called 'The Shoreditch Twat' at Mother Bar in (where else?) Shoreditch. And then a few years later there was Nathan Barley (the TV show, I mean), which required the viewer to have at least half a foot in that world to really work as satire.
 

craner

Beast of Burden
I expect this was probably not really your scene, but you used to be able to pick up a free (and very funny) satirical publication called 'The Shoreditch Twat' at Mother Bar in (where else?) Shoreditch. And then a few years later there was Nathan Barley (the TV show, I mean), which required the viewer to have at least half a foot in that world to really work as satire.

Yes I remember all of that and it is the same sort of thing, you're right.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
You could even say something similar about VICE, to an extent - at least, before it got all woke and finger-waggy and more or less turned into HuffPo but with more swearing and drug references.
 

DannyL

Wild Horses
I will say that when I reread it I skipped over all the violence, but it's important that it's there

there are definitely times when violence is gratuitous or excessive, but this is not one of them

as far as other Ellis, Less Than Zero is pretty great, basically a test run for American Psycho. Rules of Attraction is OK in an extended-universe sense of those two.

the rest, eh. he's yet another guy who's been rewriting the same book - sometimes literally for his entire career with diminishing returns.

but Less Than Zero/American Psycho are legitimate capital a Art about the gross heart of darkness of the American dream in the age of empire

one thing I've been doing during quarantine etc is reading a great deal about Rome - always an interest

and Easton Ellis reminds me not a little bit of Juvenal

There are a few passages in American Psycho that undercut the whole book for me, and when I first noticed them made me think it was an amazing novel. They're about the utter absence of enlightenment values at the heart of the American project and a lament for their loss. It's amazing stuff. I don't have the book anymore so I can't look 'em up but might see if I can find them online.
 

version

Well-known member
Something you can forget whilst reading it is none of them are ever really seen working. It's just a whirl of lunch meetings, dinners and so on.
 

catalog

Well-known member
where it fell down for me is where the detective gets involved and it's all very procedural and then slowly wraps up. film does this even worse. willem dafoe totally wasted.
 

version

Well-known member
I thought Harron's approach to those scenes was brilliant. She apparently did several takes of each and had Dafoe act as though he suspected him, didn't suspect him or wasn't sure then edited them together.
 

catalog

Well-known member
i just thought the film was over when it got bogged down in all that. usually i rate dafoe but he was all flat to me
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
I always wondered how you could actually get a punch in
attack their competence rather than their morality. anyone on that level obviously either has no moral qualms or has reconciled them.

i.e. the grimly hilarious aspect of the last financial crisis, that once the dust cleared it became apparent Wall Street had duped itself worse than anyone.

in general, does the target of a satire ever say "oh yeah, that's me, I'm terrible"?
 
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