“American Psycho” satirizes the culture of the 1980s, and you can’t talk about the decade and leave out the era’s music.
The ’80s were a conservative decade, with an ascendant political right-wing, the financialization of the global economy, and more commercial art compared with the subversiveness of the 1960s and ’70s.Patrick Bateman (Christian Bale in Mary Harron’s film version), an avatar of ’80s banality and depravity, loves music.
Or at least, he tries to.
He’s frequently seen adorned with a pair of headphones connected to his Walkman.
The ’80s hits featured in the film are diegetic because they’re some of Bateman’s favorite songs.
The book, written by Bret Easton Ellis, includes these references to music but they pack a greater punch in Harron’s film.
As cinema has audio and literature does not, we actually hear the music in the scene itself, not just faint
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