Untitled - Sexey's School Moodle

dimension of criticism in reflecting the violence and the excesses of the system it
criticizes. On another level, Abel argues that Harron’s film clearly portrays Bateman as a
“monster” and that consequently “the audience can feel superior and thus is likely to
remain uninterested in identifying with him” (142). Hence, the film offers the audience
an “exit,” which is precisely what the novel does not by reducing the distance between
reader and narrator and a forced process of identification, as explained above.
Consequently, I would also argue that by removing the scenes of violence, Harron is
diminishing its standing as a transgressive work, because the film’s audience does not
respond on the same visceral level as the reader of the book. The elements of “shock” are
clearly absent from the film, because for the most part, the few violent scenes are
predictable and undisturbing. 29 Hence, in contrast to Ellis’ text, violence in the movie is
not deployed as a “stylistic strategy” as detailed above, which reduces the visceral level
of response from the audience. Abel claims that by privileging satire over violence, the
film stresses the “representational” qualities of American Psycho, and in doing so it
reflects a “tendency to judge a work of art in terms of its truth value” (138) but
diminishes the text’s potential in exploring the possibilities of writing at the “frontier”
represented by violence (147). Although Abel derives this last observation from
Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition, it is clear that he is referring to a framework similar
to transgression as it explores and questions the limits of creation and existence. Yet, in
some skewed way, Harron is reflecting Ellis' choice of including pornographic violence
in a genre of cultural production ("serious" literature) where it is both unexpected and
condemned (and hence, "transgressive"): since such displays are typical of visual media,
29 Abel goes so far as calling them “comical” (146).
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