Casting a white man as Patrick Bateman is extremely important
Fan casting for the role of Patrick Bateman in Luca Guadagnino and Scot Z. Burns take on American Psycho. The problem is that a lot of people are missing an important point about how the character exists in society.
Variety published a list of actors they thought could take on Bateman. On the list were a number of women and men of color. However, unless Guadagnino and Burns are planning on changing the setting and tone of the story, a gender-bent/color blind casting choice for Patrick Bateman won’t work given that Bateman’s villainy is tied to his own status as a white cis man.
American Psycho‘s setting in the novel, Mary Harron movie, and musical is the ’80s during the Wall Street boom. Bateman gets away with literal murder (if you think he is actually killing people) because people ignore the warning signs he exhibits because he’s a white man. His status in a patriarchal society allows him to operate through the world differently. He can say things like that he’s into “murders and executions” and everyone hears whatever they want to hear. They don’t listen to him talk about serial killers and murders and see any danger there.
Bateman’s whiteness and gender is what allows him to succeed in his career. This was the ’80s ,and he works in stocks. There is no way that someone like Bateman would get away with what he did had he not been a straight white male. Which is why the casting lists for Patrick Bateman and the dream casts online are showing a lack of understanding over the themes presented in this story.
He’s not just a serial killer, he’s a reflection on privilege
There is a misunderstanding about characters like Patrick Bateman. People think that a woman could play this role. To be honest, I don’t think that’d work and we already attempted that with American Psycho 2 and it didn’t work because Bateman isn’t just a random serial killer. He’s the product of a society that honors white men above all else.
Again, if Guadagnino and Burns changed the setting, let it reflect the power of a modern world, I could see a non-white and/or non-male Patrick working. But if we’re telling this American Psycho as a story that reflects the source material, his whiteness and male privilege is part of who Patrick Bateman is and how he gets away with it all.
It is the same argument I have for James Bond as a character. I think that Bond himself has to be a man because of the way he operates as a 00 agent. A woman would not exist in the world in that same way and unless that was the point of the franchise, he’d need to be male. You can look at real life examples of men like Ted Bundy and Jeffrey Dahmer who let their white make privilege work to their advantage. It’s the same principal with fictional Patrick Bateman.
With a character like Patrick Bateman, his proximity to the highest level of privilege allows him lto ook down upon others, kill them without remorse, and be the monster that he is. Sometimes, it is necessary to cast a white man, especially when that man is Patrick Bateman.
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