American Psycho - Movie Review Example

In this essay, Messier analyzes the paradigm related to the term, eloquently propounded by Robert Stam as “intertextual dialogism”. The relation between the literary texts and its cinematic adaptations in the recent years as claimed by Vartan has suffered from a lack of narration between the literary text and its cinematic adaptation. Vartan claims that it would be a very logo centric approach and straightforward inference if the cinematic adaptations of the literary texts are coined as “unfaithful to and/or of lesser value” in relation to their mother text from which the cinematic production has evolved without taking into consideration the huge realm of socio-cultural context upon which they evolve and get dispersed.

In order to establish this content of the essay, Vartan meticulously chose one of the best cinemas of the recent times, which is an adaptation of a text. American Psycho is a novel by Bret Easton Ellis published in the year 1991. In the year 2000, director Marry Harron prepared a film out of the Ellis’ text which Vartan and the critics following the same school of thoughts considered for a close reading. They considered both the works from a very close contour resulting into the establishment of the discourse that would give a shape to the interpretations, receptions and dispersions of both the works under a critical and ideological light.

Vartan begins the paper by providing a short overview of the text, “American Psycho” by Ellis and then introduces the amount of controversy inherent within the content of the text before the essay intends to discuss the myriad ways by which the visual poetics of the novel operate as a cut-throat and dissecting critique by figuring the transition of the aesthetics related with the sexual violence which Vartan views as a potent trend in the contemporary consumer culture. Next, the essay takes a turn and launches the comparison of the text by Ellis with that of its cinematic adaptation of Harron and intends to discuss the shortcomings inherent in the novel which shocks the audiences.

Contrarily, according to Vartan, the film by Harron provides a social commentary keeping the plot of the film at a safe distance which actually facilitated it to became more soothing (Messier, “Visual Poetics, Intertextuality, and the Transfiguration of Ideology: An "Eye" for an "I" in Mary Harron's Cinematic Adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis's "American Psycho"). Vartan in order to establish the propositions suggested by him at the very outset of the essay divides the essay into four sub-sections with intriguing titles like, ‘ Shock and Scandal: American Psycho as Postmodern Pastiche’, ‘ From Pastiche to Parody, or, an “I” for an “Eye”, ‘ Transfigurations: Excess, Affect, and the Gaze’ and ‘The Politics of Adaptation: Poetics, Intertextuality, and Ideology’.

These sections individually throw elaborate light on the propositions inherent within the essay required to establish the point of Vartan effectively. The section, ‘ Shock and Scandal: American Psycho as Postmodern Pastiche’ discusses the amount of problem the film, ‘American Psycho’ was about to face long before its date of release owing to the fact that it was a cinematic adaptation of a text which was already condemned as, “ sadistic, pornographic , misogynistic and loathsome”.

The negative reception according to Vartan did create an inquisitive pursuit and rage to view the film as it was thought to capture a few of its turbulent sexually violent passages, but Vartan asserts that maintenance of the distance from the stark