The English Psycho Page

There is a specific kind of horror that America does well. It is loud. It is gore-splattered. It is the chainsaw and the hockey mask and the screaming in the wide-open desert. But there is another kind of horror. A quiet one. A horror that apologizes before it slits your throat. A horror that brews you a cup of Earl Grey after it has dismembered your husband.

The English Psycho: Politeness, Repression, and the Monster Beneath the Crumpets the english psycho

What happens when that pressure has no release valve? There is a specific kind of horror that America does well

Archivist of the Eerie Reading time: 8 minutes It is the chainsaw and the hockey mask

In America, the psycho explodes outward. In England, the psycho implodes—or, more terrifyingly, the explosion is hidden behind a hedge of lavender.

Not the American Psycho. Patrick Bateman is a creature of Wall Street excess, of ’80s cocaine and Huey Lewis and the moral vacuum of late capitalism. He is a spectacle. He wants you to know he is there. He has a business card and a reservation at Dorsia.

You are taught from the cradle that to display emotion is to lose the game. To complain is vulgar. To raise one’s voice is a failure of breeding. The English man or woman is a pressure cooker wrapped in tweed.