Untitled - Sexey's School Moodle

and that in the face of the extensive boring passages enumerated above, the reader starts
longing for “something to happen” namely the sex and the violence, thus calling in a
sense of curiosity, a curiosity that is not only scopophilic, but also becomes the reader’s
main desire for reading the novel. This type of curiosity fully manifested itself during the
scandal surrounding the novel’s release and it also contributed to creating its main appeal.
The knowledge that the novel contained gruesome depictions of sexual aggression did not
intimidate readers. Quite on the contrary, readers—and possibly some who would have
never bought the book if they had been unaware of its contents—were compelled by their
sense of curiosity to acquire the novel and fulfill their expectations by experiencing for
themselves its blatant depiction of pornographic horror. Ironically, the mechanics of
controversy works rather well with the overall premise of American Psycho, for it is
partly this type of sick and perverted curiosity that the novel denounces, further
implicating the reader within the cycle of voyeuristic consumption. This particular form
of voyeurism is well exemplified in the novel with the repeated descriptions of scenes
from horror movies (Ellis 69) and pornographic videotapes (97-98), as well as the use of
the camera by Bateman to film acts of violence (304).
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As argued earlier, the reader is compellingly drawn into the narrative. What is to
be made, then, of Leigh Brock’s claim that “Ellis creates a character that distances
himself from his crimes and victims, and while doing so, the author sets up distance
between reader and text (6)”? Comparing Bateman to Ted Bundy and pointing out the
fact that both could “mask the fact that they were relentless psychopaths,” she argues that
“in addition to Bateman’s sociopathic removal and depersonalization,” Ellis’ unique style
[i.e. his ‘aesthetics of boredom’] “insulates the reader’s sensibilities (7).” However, as