At the end of the 1970s the United States was marked by the Iran Hostage Crisis, high unemployment and inflation. Ronald Reagan promised the nation an increase in military strength and laissez-faire economics. The Reagan Era was characterized by increased government spending in defense and more lax government restrictions for wealthier Americans. Furthermore, with the use of crack cocaine in poor urban environments and the war on drugs, crime became even more evident in the minds of citizens. Beginning in the Reagan Era, the United States experienced a rise in income equality that has remained a trend until even now. Mary Harron’s film American Psycho (2000), based on Bret Ellis’s 1991 novel of the same name, is a social criticism on the lives and consumer culture of Wall Street investors in the 1980s. Frank Miller’s reinvention of Batman in his 1986 graphic novel, Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, instead depicts ideas of urban crime and individualism. These texts serve as insights into how Americans since the Reagan Era have understood wealth inequality and urban crime, as well as a belief in capitalism having the ability to “work things out” on its own. These ideas can especially be seen in the rhetoric of the post 9/11 political right in regards to free-market capitalism, crime, and social unrest.
Mary Harron’s film focuses solely on the lives and interests of Wall Street executives in the 1980s. Though the film was produced in 2000 and the book in 1991, the criticisms of Wall Streeters is a trend that exists today. Harron depicts the greed and corruption of the rich through the life of disturbed serial killer Patrick Bateman. Bateman is a sociopath who is obsessed with controlling and owning everything from his extravagant lifestyle to the way he treats the people around him. Though Bateman is a serial killer, all of the businessmen in the film are frequently confused for one another, suggesting Bateman is really the same as all the others. His actions are motivated by a sentiment that “self-preservation [and] dignity” are crucial, and that it is “impossible in this world we live in to empathize with others, we can always empathize with ourselves.”[1] Bateman’s idea of self-preservation and dignity is never used for defending himself. Instead, it fuels his envy and greed, causing him to inflict harm on others.
The interests of the Wall Street investors in the film depict a greedy and shallow upper-class of men who never actually do any work. They spend their time wishing to get a table at Dorsia (a high-end exclusive restaurant) and obsessing over the subtle differences of their business cards. Regarding their relation to the rest of the world, they only express insincere interests in abstract foreign problems like terrorism in Sri Lanka. When Bateman sarcastically suggests domestic issues that should be fixed, they only joke and move on. Ultimately, Harron’s film suggests an upper class that does not produce anything and is antagonistic towards society as a result of their greed. This illustrates an idea in popular culture that, especially since the 1980s, the majority of the wealth in the United States is controlled by an indifferent class that remains in its own world.
Rather than focusing on the rich, Frank Miller’s Batman depicts a hostile culture of urban poverty and crime. In the 1980s, poor urban environments experienced the introduction of crack cocaine. Being cheap and highly addictive, it is undoubtedly one of the most harmful developments to ever influence poor communities. Ronald Reagan’s aggressiveness towards national defense influenced an individualistic approach toward self-preservation, resulting in a belief in the moral superiority of traditional American culture. This self-righteous sentiment and his strong opposition to drug use resulted in a hostile approach towards solving drug culture and crime. Rather than searching for ways to treat victims of substance abuse, Reagan’s approach consisted of a large scale war on drugs. Reagan outlined what he believed was the effectiveness of his approach in his speech on September 14th 1986, where he boasts a rise in the arrests of drug related criminals. Reagan’s approach, not surprisingly, coincides with the rise of the private prison industry in the 1980s, and its influences reaches into how the United States has reacted to drug culture ever since. For instance, the amount of people in prison for victimless drug crimes increased from 50,000 in 1980 to over 400,000 by 1997, and today it exceeds 2.3 million.[2]
The individualistic, self-preserving idealism that emerged in the 1980s is central to Miller’s reinvention of the Dark Knight. Some of the most obvious examples of this come from the public’s reactions in the media towards Batman’s crusade against crime in Gotham; Citizens are quoted stating “with stupid laws and social cowardice. He’s only taking back what is ours,” and, “I regard it as a symbolic resurgence of the common man’s will to resists… a rebirth of the American fighting spirit.”[3][4] Furthermore, the members of The Mutants (the gang depicted as the source of crime in Gotham) are illustrated as subhuman, heartless, and bloodthirsty, even though many of them align with batman after he defeats their leader. Miller demonstrates a belief that the only way to combat crime is with aggressive action, while at the same time showing how easily influenced the youths participating in criminal activities are. Though he demonstrates their impressionability, Miller’s solution remains aggressive. Despite working outside of authority, Batman protects the class structure of the bourgeoisie instead of searching for a solution to the crime that is merely a side effect of urban poverty and inequality.
In a talk given on March 15th, 2015, Atlantic columnists Ta-Nehisi Coates described one of the problems he finds with the way the United State’s combats social and economic problems. Part of the problem he finds is the United States’ insistence that it can always alleviate its problems with aggressive behavior. Rather than approaching issues involving persons with substance abuse issues reasonably, drug users are labeled as addicts and criminals. This approach is a result of the aggressive war on drugs that rose significantly in the Reagan Era.
The modern political right seems to be obsessed with what they believe to be the legacy of Ronald Reagan. Despite the most radical conservatives naming their movement for the Boston Tea Party, social unrests such as Occupy Wall Street or the Baltimore Uprising are labeled as un-American, destructive, and criminal. This is a result of the belief that laissez-faire capitalism naturally finds balance, and that police departments consist of morally responsible individuals. Part of the legacy of the Reagan Era is a misplaced trust in some of the post powerful groups in the United States. Just as the citizens of Gotham believed Batman was morally incorruptible and approached crime effectively, the political right today believes in the dignity of police departments, and ignores the social problems that have resulted in the Baltimore riots. Instead of listening and attempting to fix the issues that black Americans identify, they focus on condemning the rioting that is also a side effect of urban poverty and inequality.
The wealth gap that was greatly increased with supply-side economics resulted in the rise of an economically superior class concerned more with self-preservation than social problems, as well as an economically deprived lower class suffering from a lack of resources, opportunities, and proper education. The aggressive approach towards national and domestic security taken by Ronald Reagan has resulted in a middle-class that praises the principle of self preservation and the advancement of capitalism, while blaming the victims of its rampant misuse. The Wall Street investors in American Psycho are even more wealthy and hold even more influence in today’s politics and culture, while the members of society that were pushed to the bottom still experience an environment that makes upward mobility nearly impossible. While these texts illustrate the rise of these separate-but-related developments in the 1980s, it is important to recognize that the Reagan Era has a profound impact on today’s political and social environment.
[1] American Psycho, directed by Mary Harron (2000; Lions Gate Films).
[2] Herron Keyon Gaston, “Race, Morality, and Law: The Lingering Effects of the War on Drugs,” The Huffington Post, January 27, 2015, Web. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/herron-keyon-gaston/race-morality-and-law-the_b_6544286.html
[3] My Italics
[4] Frank Miller, Batman: The Dark Knight Returns (New York: DC Comics, 1986), 65, 41.
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