Release and Punish

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Hitchcock’s Psycho shook something loose from America's popular imagination, something that fell from its perch and crawled into the shadows, and has been lurking there ever since--something heinous that his nineteen-sixties classic asks us to acknowledge. In this film, Hitchcock taunts us with the notion of the psycho and what he/she represents in relation to our moral values and visceral urges. There is one scene in particular, the parlor scene--arguably a microcosm of the larger message--in which we see an attractive couple having an innocuous conversation. The female lead, Marian, is almost lured by Norman who repeatedly changes the location of their dinner--first her room, then the office, then to the “parlor,” which suggests a romp, then a parley, then maybe just a polite conversation. It's if he can't decide what he wants. As if inside him there is something that can't make up its mind, something squirming, something to be shaken loose, released, and then punished.

On the surface, Norman’s demeanor is exceedingly sheepish, stuttering and soft-spoken. Marian by comparison is calm, confident, and self-possessed. To witness the subtext we must make ourselves aware of Hitchcock’s several references to birds throughout their exchange. Humans are said to eat like birds, get trapped like birds, scratch and claw like birds, click their tongues like birds—and, if that were not enough, behind the two actors are several birds that Norman himself has stuffed.** Two of these in particular seem to relate to our main characters. Marian’s bird is small, relaxed, and in a still pose. It also faces away from Norman’s bird. Norman’s bird, a larger bird of prey, is far from relaxed; it is poised with wings outstretched, beak open, and ready to pounce. It also faces Marian’s, so the 180° shot gives the impression that Marian's bird is vulnerable to to the imminent attack. It is almost as if behind each character we see their Greek daemon—the true representation of their inner self, the one they can never see but that always lurks. When the scene begins, Norman has just been scolded by his mother for having, in her estimation, licentious thoughts about their guest. Later we learn that Norman’s mother is in fact deceased, and thus this was an aspect of Norman’s psyche scolding the part of him that would wish to do untold things with his present company. The dynamic between the boyish Norman and the mother he claims he “wishes he could defy” portends the larger implicit theme of the film, which is that whenever lust is released it must be punished with violence. (Norman supplies both urges ultimately, but in our analysis I will speak as if he and his mother were separate.)

Upon her suggestion that he put his mother in a home, Norman tells Marion that he could never submit his mother to the “cruel eyes” of those who would house her in a mental institution. This is the only moment in which Norman becomes even slightly unhinged in front of Marian. And to understand why this happens is to begin to unravel the systemic implications of this film; it will be helpful to contrast these “cruel eyes,” which represent the eyes of societal institutions and accepted social/sexual mores against the Gaze of one who desires the Other sexually. For Norman, these two cannot exist harmoniously. Though murdered by his own hand, his mother's corpse continues to oppress Norman to the point of committing (most likely) multiple subsequent murders. Norman’s mother is connected with that first set of eyes, and here we also find the left-over values of an older generation that Hitchcock ultimately seeks to expose as having been scaffolded on uneven ground. The film was released in just the right cultural moment for Hitchcock's voice, in the  nineteen-sixties, a time when many societal norms, especially those surrounding sex, were just beginning to loosen. The film thus explores the tensions that arise as we give ourselves license to explore expanded sexual boundaries while trying to reconcile these explorations with older values.

To see just how much American culture and cinema had changed, compare Psycho for a moment with the film Meet Me In St. Louis. The latter, released just a decade and a half prior, is a celebration of established moral values. At the film’s close, Judy Garland’s character asks while staring out over the site of the World's Fair (a tribute to American exceptionalism), “They won’t ever tear it down will they?” As if to say, “All that is right and good in our culture is built to last right?” To which the family patriarch replies, “They better not!” Now return to Psycho. In it we see products of divorce, adultery, materialism, lust, and envy, all of which culminate with the on-screen murder of a naked woman in the shower. In Hitchcock’s film the patriarch is completely absent, and the distaff lineage is only present in the form of a corpse—the desiccated husk of a generational morality—which is kept in Norman’s family’s Victorian home. And just where is this Victorian vestige of bygone days? Why just up the hill from the Bate’s Motel! It's a seedy, and notably modern, counterpart to the family estate.

We are told in an earlier snippet of dialogue that “People pay who meet in hotels.” This line is out of place as Marian is only at the time considering a little travel. What are we to make of this portention? Is this character, a girl from the generation of "Meet me in St. Louis," saying that those who meet in hotels instead all get what they deserve? Maybe. This is not to say that Psycho is a morality tale. It is rather more like an “objective” reflection. Norman, despite his very name being an obvious pun on the “new norms” that society has embraced, is unable to cast off his upbringing, nor can he find comfort in his desires, and so he is led to madness. It would be a mistake to conclude that Hitchcock is preaching to us here. To do so would be to grossly oversimplify his artistic vision. What Hitchcock does with this film--despite titillating us probably for his own pleasure--is implicate us as taking part in our own psychological struggle. Hitchcock wants us to see that the psycho is not crouching somewhere in the darkness outside of our imagination; the psycho is in that darkness within our imagination. 

*It's true about the films release. Hitchcock held theaters to this in contract.

**I'll leave you to draw your own conclusions about that one.