ABSTRACT
Bathrooms in narrative film are primarily theorized as transgressive spaces of violence, vulnerability, encouraging illicit, secretive or disturbing acts. Either public bathroom where male homophobia and sexual vulnerability culminate in violence or domestic ones where gross-out humor displaces similar male anxieties and shame. In each film, the bathroom and mirrors are associated with status-motivated display not only of possessions but also the male body itself, with lingering also denoting changed masculine notions of display. While the bathroom mirror conventionally invokes a feminizing self-regard and vanity, mirrors in American Gigolo and American Psycho paradoxically portray their focus on appearance as incorporating the feminine to perfect the masculine. Registering the disappearance of the self rather than its absence, the bathroom mirror confirms Brundle's growing dislocation from his humanity, as he peels away his fingernail and shoots pus from his finger. Bathrooms and mirrors inevitably mark doubt, inadequacy or breakdown of the constructed, performed self and moments of painful revelation for younger males.
