Overview: collective insight
• Bret Easton Ellis’s American Psycho (1991) is widely read as a satirical indictment of late-1980s American capitalism, where identity is constructed through brands, surfaces, and power fantasies.
• Donald Trump appears repeatedly in the novel not as a political figure but as a symbolic ideal of wealth, dominance, and celebrity capitalism.
• Scholars generally agree that Trump functions as a cultural reference point that helps define Patrick Bateman’s values, aspirations, and moral emptiness, making Trump less a character than a signifier of Reagan-era excess.
Key points on American Psycho and its references to Donald Trump
• Context of the novel
• Published in 1991, American Psycho is set in late-1980s Manhattan, focusing on Patrick Bateman, a Wall Street investment banker whose narration blends consumer trivia with extreme violence.
• Critics situate the novel within postmodern and satirical traditions, emphasizing its critique of yuppie culture, neoliberal masculinity, and the collapse of ethical meaning under consumerism (Murphet, 2002; Eldridge, 2008).
• Trump as a cultural icon of the 1980s
• Donald Trump, then best known as a real-estate mogul and media celebrity, appears dozens of times in the novel, including references to Trump Tower, Trump Plaza, and Ivana Trump.
• Scholars note that Trump represented a brand rather than a personality, embodying wealth, visibility, and self-promotion (Sharif & Saeed, 2022; Booker, 2000).
• Patrick Bateman’s admiration for Trump
• Bateman repeatedly expresses fascination with Trump, seeing him as a model of masculine success and dominance.
• This admiration is often uncritical and obsessive, reinforcing Bateman’s shallow understanding of power as something purely aesthetic and financial (Šarić, 2023; Tardi, 2019).
• Trump as a “surrogate father figure”
• Several critics argue that Trump functions symbolically as a father figure for Bateman, replacing traditional moral authority with capitalist success and media visibility (Tardi, 2019; Duffy, 2019).
• This dynamic highlights Bateman’s psychological emptiness and his need for external validation through icons of wealth.
• Brand logic and hyperreality
• Trump’s name operates like other brand references in the novel (designer suits, restaurants, pop music), collapsing people into commodities.
• From a Baudrillardian perspective, Trump is part of the novel’s hyperreal environment, where signs of success matter more than substance or ethics (Brusseau, 1999; Rhida & Oussama, 2023).
• Satire rather than endorsement
• Ellis has stated in interviews (as discussed in later criticism) that Trump references were meant to reflect the values of Bateman’s social class, not to celebrate Trump himself.
• The repetition of Trump’s name becomes absurd, reinforcing the novel’s satirical tone and exposing the emptiness of capitalist hero worship (Craig, 2019; Magrino, 2019).
• Retrospective significance after Trump’s presidency
• After Trump’s rise to political power, critics reread American Psycho as oddly prescient, though most stress that the novel critiques celebrity capitalism, not modern populism.
• Trump’s later prominence intensifies the novel’s relevance but does not change its original satirical intent (O’Donnell, 2022; Hartwig, 2017).
Selected academic sources
• Ellis, B. E. (1991). American Psycho. Vintage.
• Murphet, J. (2002). Bret Easton Ellis’s American Psycho.
• Eldridge, D. (2008). “The Generic American Psycho.” Journal of American Studies.
• Sharif, H. R., & Saeed, A. A. (2022). “The Fear of Freedom in Hyperreality…” Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences.
• Šarić, D. (2023). “The Topic of Consumerism in Bret Easton Ellis’ American Psycho.”
• Tardi, M. (2019). Review of White by Bret Easton Ellis. Text Matters.
• Craig, C. J. (2019). “Nation Surface Mirror Psycho.” In Trump Fiction.
• Duffy, C. R. (2019). “Trump as ‘Daddy’.” In Trump Fiction.
• O’Donnell, P. (2022). “Ellis, Bret Easton.” Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Fiction.
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