Student 21

The story of American Psycho explores Patrick Bateman and the facade he maintains to match the transparent, and boring society to mask his utter insanity. I use this object because I personally relate to maintaining a facade for the specific situations I am in or the people I am talking to. There is an idea of who I am and what I represent and as Bateman says “some kind of abstraction” but there is no REAL me. To paraphrase the rest of the monologue, there is only an entity, something illusory and vague. Though my cold gaze and my true feelings towards certain portrayals of society can be hidden, and one can shake my hand and feel flesh gripping them, I simply am not there. Based on a few actions such as masking feelings and flashing a wide, fake smile, which is as easy as breathing, one can be open to interpretation of the knowledge of that person. This triggers our anchoring bias leading us to make assumptions about someone without even studying them completely. The depth of this phenomenon can vary but one can form these assumptions based on something as small as an accent when they first meet to still not trusting someone despite knowing them for years due to the lingering suspicion of the anchoring bias of when they first met. Despite this, one can never really know another’s true nature and in this case, I never presented my true self in most social affairs and gatherings. I maintain a certain facade at home, one completely different in class, one completely different with my friends, and one unrecognizable with my significant other.

Coorelatedly, the song “Perfect Girl” by Mareux, containing an eerie and mellow tune with a synthwave aesthetic, is used to portray or represent American Psycho. The song is repetitive with both, the lyrics and the tune. The singer’s love for a girl he encountered is explored in the song. Although the act of falling in love with someone can paint a picture of the person as the most unique and fascinating person, at the same time, one can fall in love with someone that everyone else writes off as “normal”, “basic” or fallen under the dereogotory stereotypes constructed by society. However, to an individual and only to said individual, they are perfect and different because of what they see in them that others don’t. So the multiplexual definition of the word “strange”, used to describe the girl in the song is brought to question. Up till an extent of ethical and moral actions in society, the strangeness, or the knowledge of how strange an individual is, is open to interpretation. The knowledge required to label someone or something as strange is subjective, therefore different things can be labled as strange according to different perspectives. Perspectives play a vital role in the openness of interpretations of knowledge and in this case, the interpretation of the strangeness the girl has to offer is subjective and open to interpretation, as discussed, she might be unique and different to the societal norms, marking her as strange or she could be a girl considered regular to the world but makes the singer feel unique and special which in turn leads to the singer calling her strange. The singer’s dwaming tone throughout the song combined with the eerie and mellow tune suggests a trance that the girl has put the singer in. The attraction the singer feels towards her which is emphaszied through the lyrics of the song where the singer states that she must be from another world and that she is extremely beautiful, could imply that the beauty is masked or unveiled and this challenges the certainty of what makes a person strange which at the end of the day is open to interpretation.

On a similar note, a song that explores the ambiguous comfort and bliss that comes with love is “After Dark” by Mr. Kitty. This song provides the listeners with the comfort and peace that comes with a comoforting lover. This knowledge presented through the ambigious love in this song offers subjectability in how this bliss is felt. The knowledge about the bliss is open to interpretation and as the lyrics states, the singer feels bliss by kissing his partner and feeling her lips on his. There is more explanation about the various ways the singer feels comforted by his lover such as through sharing stories while talking, listening to their voice, feeling the warmth of their closeness, etc. However most elements of bliss in this song are open to interpretation such as the discussion of insecurities, growth and rest. The motif of time usage throughout the song also implies that time passes rapidly if you are spending it with bliss and the singer’s bliss comes from his lover’s comfort. The knowledge about achieving bliss through comfort in this song is open to interpretation because of the subjectability of what the readers interpret true bliss is from this song. The uncertainty and lucidity of all 3 of my objects provide evidence that some knowledge is more open to interpretation than others.