‘She Isn’t Quite Herself Today’: How Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960) influenced problematic trans representation in Hollywood Horror
Please be warned, spoilers for Psycho (1960), Psycho II (1983), and Dressed to Kill (1980) lay within (and if you’re one of these people who thinks that there’s some kind of time limit on spoilers, well… that doesn’t make sense. People can only watch a movie when they watch a movie, and it doesn’t really matter whether it's a day old or 100 years old, if they’ve not seen it, then they’ve not seen it, end of).
“We all go a little mad sometimes…”
There’s no denying that Alfred Hitchcock’s 1960 horror Psycho is influential. As a film, it casts a long shadow not just over the horror genre, but over Hollywood cinema in general. From its iconic shower scene — parodied and referenced so much that it has become a recognizable trope beyond the film in which it originated — to Bernard Herman’s instantly recognizable score, the screeching of the violins setting the tone for countless imitators ever since, Psycho truly is one of the most important movies ever made. But while it is easy to discuss the overwhelming impact the film had on American cinema (and on the horror genre in particular), it’s less so to dive into the rather negative stereotypes it left in its wake — albeit inadvertently and against the film’s best efforts to distance itself from them. Yep, Psycho can be a bit of a problem. So… why do I love it so much?
Much has been made of Psycho’s place in Hollywood history. Hitchcock is often regarded as one of the all-time great filmmakers, pioneering techniques and ideas that are still used today. As Paige A. Driscoll writes, “The visual techniques Hitchcock employed are what made him the internationally recognized auteur that he is credited as today” (2014). His firm grip on the craft of film-making meant that not only was he able to create successful, enjoyable, and timeless classic films again and again but also that he did so while essentially laying down his own cinematic language, innovating and designing concepts and devices that would go on to be applied by other film-makers throughout history.
Whether it’s Spielberg and his use of suspense to build tension, De Palma and his constant Hitchcockian riffing, or even Tarantino and his love of slow build, knuckle-whitening dialogue sequences, the Master of Suspense’s presence can be felt throughout modern cinema. Psycho, meanwhile, remains his most recognizable and influential film. The ever-twisting and turning nature of the narrative not only toys with the audience’s expectations of what a then-contemporary thriller/horror should be but also exists in conversation with Hitchcock’s own prior cinematic output, directly commenting on and then subverting the very tropes the director himself helped define in the first place.
Hitchcock as an auteur is a well-worn topic. As Richard Allen points out in his essay, Hitchcock’s Legacy, “Hitchcock’s films employ the idioms of classical suspense informed by conventional morality, yet they take ludic pleasure in prolonging and stylizing suspense in ways that subvert the customary alliance between emotional identification and moral allegiance” (2011). His films share many common recurring elements — the man/woman on the run, the use of the MacGuffin (an object that propels the plot but ultimately matters little to it), and a distrust of the law, among others — and it is easy to apply the concept of a singular authorial voice to the man and his work.
Psycho, meanwhile, sits proudly within his filmography as a film that utilizes these recurring elements to deliberately place the audience in a false sense of security before pulling the rug out from under them and revealing its true hand, “taking the familiar and everyday as its starting point, the film plunges deeper and deeper into the abnormal” (Wood, R. 1960). We open with Marion Crane — played by the iconic and ethereal Janet Leigh — who, after a series of convoluted and typically Hitchcockian events, finds herself on the run with a stolen bag of money. While it is easy now to find yourself waiting for the killer, it is important to remember that one of the most important aspects of Psycho’s success comes from the fact that it isn’t actually a horror movie, at least not at first. Marion travels to the isolated Bates Motel merely as a place to stop off for the evening, but it is here that things take a now-infamous turn.
While showering, Marion — our heroine and the biggest star on the film’s credits — is suddenly, brutally, and rather unceremoniously killed off, leaving the audience baffled, confused, and unsure as to how the rest of the movie is going to play out. Of course, everybody knows the shower scene. If you haven’t seen the film itself you’ll have seen some variation of it (seriously, it’s referenced in everything from The Simpsons to Scream Queens; a show which cleverly utilizes the casting of Leigh’s daughter, Jamie Lee Curtis, in its own fun little homage), but the abrupt and unexpected nature of the way the scene plays out when the film was originally released shouldn’t be understated. The entire movie shifts gears, first offing its lead character and then proceeding to chuck out the rest of the established narrative as well, quite literally drowning it all in a lake.
The money, the affair, the whole ‘on-the-run’ element of the film simply doesn’t matter anymore. We’ve gone from well-worn, typical Hitchcockian hi-jinks to the birth of the entire slasher subgenre in the space of around a minute. Hitchcock essentially throws his own rulebook in the bin, and in doing so turns the entirety of horror cinema on its head. The image of Janet Leigh soaping herself up under the warm stream of water sprinkling from the shower head, blissfully unaware of the sinister and unknown shadowy figure lurking behind the shower curtain and brandishing a butcher’s knife, is perhaps one of the single most impactful frames ever committed to film. Without it, there is no Michael Myers, no Jason Voorhees, and no Freddy Krueger.
As Sven Mikulec wrote in his article, ‘Psycho’: The Proto-Slasher that Brought On a Revolution in Cinema, “Psycho is considered by many to be the first slasher movie, and the success of this film spurred a whole series of slasher films in the near future, ultimately opening the door for the subgenre’s golden era, the extremely bloody eighties” (2020). But while its incredible influence on cinema has had many positive outcomes (and who doesn’t love a good slasher movie, right?), it is also the beginning of a rather insidious and troublesome trend. One that still festers within society as a whole, and that Hollywood, and indeed Psycho itself, has been desperately clamoring to escape from for years.
And no, I’m not talking about the fact that we can now flush toilets in movies (thanks, Hitch!).
I am, of course, talking about the fact that Hollywood movies, and horror movies in particular, have a rather nasty habit of coding their trans characters as villains. That’s no big revelation, of course, we all know this to be true. In fact, until fairly recently, I suspect it’s fair to say that for the general public the most they knew of transgenderism came from these kinds of movies. After all, trans folk today still face an uphill struggle filled with misinformation, prejudice, and transphobia. It would be silly to assume all of that has simply gone away just because the community has become more vocal and more prevalent in the public consciousness.
Psycho may very well be the obvious trend-setter in this respect, but we have seen the trope take shape in everything from prestigious, Oscar-winning classics such as Jonathan Demme’s 1991 ‘psychological thriller’ — a subgenre that exists entirely for people who like a movie and therefore don’t want to call it a horror film — The Silence of the Lambs, to schlocky and exploitative popcorn trash like Sleepaway Camp (1980). Perhaps the most obvious example of this problematic trend, though, comes from Brian De Palma, a director who has confessed himself, “I’ve always felt that I have taken the ideas of Hitchcock and tried to develop them further”.
In Brian De Palma’s 1980 Psycho-riffing slasher/thriller Dressed to Kill, the ideas present in Psycho are taken and expanded in a more exploitative and grisly fashion. Unlike Psycho, here De Palma forgoes any pretense that the killer is not trans and instead outright states that his own murderous villain — portrayed in the film by Michael Caine — is “a woman trapped inside a man’s body” (Dressed to Kill, 1980). Moreover, in De Palma’s world not only is the killer trans, but they are definitively and unquestionably a killer because they’re trans. Unlike in Hitchcock’s movie, there’s no attempt by the film to distance itself from this problematic representation, and instead Dressed to Kill — in typically schlocky, exploitative, and insensitive De Palma fashion — leans heavily into this particular aspect as both a motive and an explanation. The confusion and conflict of gender within the character is definitively used as a reason for why they have become psychotic, and it’s one the film seems to take as perfectly logical and self-explanatory. As far as Dressed to Kill is concerned, the killer is trans and therefore of course they are a killer.
It’s a worrisome reading and one that has no doubt impacted general audiences, perhaps far more than they realize. Psycho, in many respects, aims to separate its villain from their coded transness, taking time out to offer exposition and to differentiate the psychological aspect of transgenderism (or “transvestitism” in the film, but it was the ’60s, and it is Hollywood, so we’ll give the movie a pass for lumping these groups together), but Dressed to Kill opts instead to lean directly into it, essentially making the transness the motive for the violence.
As John Phillips puts it in his book Transgender on Screen, in these films “the narrative is driven centrally by the quest for knowledge of the killer’s identity, and the denouement is dominated by the dramatic and surprising revelation of this identity” and that “the process involves two simultaneous unveilings: that of the murderer’s identity and that of [their] gender” (Phillips, J. 2006).
Such is the legacy of Hitchcock’s Psycho, ultimately different readings can be drawn, and the way the film presents Norman as ‘Mother’ is undeniably troublesome. It is clear De Palma certainly read it as negative with regards to transness. Maniacal, villainous, and murderous, despite the film's best efforts to explain and separate the two, trans folk don’t come off looking all that good on the basis of Hitchcock’s masterpiece. After all, the films that followed in its wake — including the ones mentioned above — have, more often than not, only acted to throw fuel on this particular fire, and there’s little point arguing that these haven’t had some sort of impact upon the public in terms of their perception of trans people in general and trans women in particular.
It is interesting, for example, that the two most iconic elements of Psycho are the shower sequence, which takes place in a bathroom, and the fact that Norman actually is ‘Mother’ all along, while out here in real life “the toilet has become an unexpected focal point for dissensus in contemporary feminism in the UK, spotlighting divisions over trans bodies, identities and freedoms” (Jones, C. 2020). But I’m not saying Psycho is solely or entirely responsible for the fear some… ugh, ‘gender critical’ self-proclaimed feminists claim to feel about who can and who can’t go pee-pee in a public toilet. That would be ridiculous…
But of course, we can’t have this conversation without noting that particular coincidence. After all, by depicting an act of such horrific and, ultimately, random and pointless violence within the would-be safety of the bathroom, “Hitchcock’s film imagined the site of horror in the quotidian world of the viewer, showing that horrifying violence was an integral part of middle-class America, repressed beneath its seemingly placid exterior” (Grant, B. 2010).
Part of what makes the now infamous shower sequence so impactful is that it takes place in a bathroom. Bathrooms are a space in which we as human beings are most vulnerable. No doubt Hitchcock knew this and deliberately played upon the psychology of his audience to create the tension and the shock of the scene. Ruben Fleischer’s 2009 comedy/horror Zombieland recognizes this, turning the concept of bathrooms as spaces of vulnerability into a joke with its Rules to Surviving the Apocalypse; rule number 3 is “Beware of Bathrooms”. Meanwhile, the bathroom has long been used post-Psycho as a space of danger and violence, precisely because it is a private space and where we are, arguably, at our most vulnerable. Arachnophobia (1990), What Lies Beneath (2000), and Scream 2 (1997) are just some of the films to do this.
Furthermore, there is a sense that ‘Mother’ has killed in order to cleanse. Of course, we know later that this is exactly the reason, to a certain degree, but even in the moment, the image of Marion innocently cleaning herself, having made the decision to return the money and do the right thing, can’t help but be associated with a sort of washing off the sin. As good old Robin Wood writes, Marion “moves toward the shower in order to feel the purifying water flow coolly down her face and body, frees herself from her anguish, and washes herself with the naturalness of a bird” (1960). That she is attacked and killed so brutally and so suddenly in that moment only furthers the idea that the killer’s presence in the bathroom is an invasion. Marion at her most vulnerable and most innocent is hacked to pieces by a shadowy figure who should not be there to witness her in such an intimate and private moment.
As Glen Donnar puts it in his essay, Monstrous Men and Bathroom Mirrors: The Bathroom as Revelatory Space in America Cinema, “although the bathroom remains a place of sexual vulnerability, violent death […] is thus perversely concomitant with “cleanliness” and privacy” (2016). It is the invasion of that would-be safe space that really heightens the discomfort and the cruelty of Marion’s demise, and the way the film preys upon this deeply installed psychological aspect of the audience has, surely, been cause to, in many ways, conflate the ‘issues’ of transgenderism and of gender-specific spaces.
Of course, we have to acknowledge the deeper meaning that shower scene conjures up. Sure, it’s a fantastic twist, and it’s easily one of the most exceptional blendings of editing, visuals, and music ever committed to screen, but it’s also a nasty, violent sequence that sees a beautiful woman gruesomely slashed to pieces by a man who identifies — at least at that moment in time — as a woman. Like Buffalo Bill in the aforementioned The Silence of the Lambs, here Bates is mutilating and destroying the very body he wishes to possess. And while his motives may be less outwardly grotesque than Buffalo Bill’s — Bates as ‘Mother’ is jealous, killing Marion because of the lust and desire she evokes in Norman — the ultimate outcome is much the same; trans folk are dangerous, not because of some complex and well-established motive, but simply because they are trans.
It is probably important to note here that Norman Bates isn’t actually a transgender character, but such is the way Hollywood presents complex issues like gender and the way audiences inevitably receive them, that basically anyone who is presented as having some kind of gender issues is automatically coded “trans” for simplicity. In the world of movies, there is no real differentiation between Norman Bates and someone like Lili Elbe in The Danish Girl (2015). Beyond the fact that societal acceptance and understanding of such subjects have moved forward (slightly… sigh), both are still demonstrably presented as the dreaded “other”, despite the disparate levels of sympathy the filmmakers present their subjects with. The simple fact is that as far as Hollywood is concerned, and especially as far as horror movies are concerned, gender basically falls into three categories.
There’s the “overcoming gender” subgenre, whereby a character may face certain issues or problems because of their gender (most often in the form of societal expectations or perceived weaknesses due to gender) that they must then overcome or disprove. Perhaps the most obvious example of this I can think of would be Mulan (1998), but this is probably the most common of all the gender-centric film genres, and it includes movies from as broad and varied a style as Erin Brockovich (2000), Hidden Figures (2016), and Miss Congeniality (2000).
Then there’s the “gender-swap” subgenre, in which a character (usually male) must present as the opposite sex — either due to some sort of undercover requirement, or occasionally a supernatural occurrence — most often to “hilarious” effect. These predominantly take the form of comedies and often see their protagonist face off against a society that views their attitudes or behaviors as problematic, but who ultimately proves society wrong by overcoming some prejudice based on their presumed gender. I’m willing to bet you know these movies well. They are everywhere. Mrs. Doubtfire (1993), Tootsie (1982), and White Chicks (2004) are three that spring to mind, but there are countless others, of that you can be sure.
And finally, we have the “nightmarish gender” subgenre, the one that resides most predominantly in the horror genre. This is where gender is presented as something which we should fear, and it is here that the problematic representation of transgenderism lives. And in Hollywood’s desire to simplistically express ideas to audiences we get gender as a monster, and a confused and overly simplified take on a complicated and difficult issue. Ultimately, this does more harm than good in terms of representation, because the movies (and then by turn the audiences) wind up conflating the two. Although Norman Bates is not a trans character — and neither are a lot of the other trans-coded characters in horror cinema, for that matter — the language of cinema is such that it doesn’t really make the distinction. Norman Bates isn’t trans, and yet he is trans, and because of that, he is simplistically “other”, and therefore dangerous, frightening, and villainous.
In the language of cinema, men presenting as women (and it is the male to female folk who face the brunt of this unsettling and ridiculous cliché) has become an easy shorthand for filmmakers to explain away the terrible things their villains do. This is a problem, of course, because — as Tina Kubrak notes in her essay, Impact of Films: Changes in Young People’s Attitudes after Watching a Movie — movies can “change [audience’s] attitudes towards certain groups of people and cause newly formed opinions on various issues” (Kubrak, T. 2020). Whether we care to admit it or not, cinema — and especially mainstream Hollywood cinema — both reflects and then shapes societal mindsets. It’s an unfair and dangerous stereotype that harms trans people for simply existing and encourages the less tolerant and more ignorant members of society to continue in their intolerance and ignorance.
Now, that’s not to say that Psycho is itself overtly transphobic or hateful as a text. These things are often far more complex and nuanced than the twitter-sphere may have you believe, and indeed, as I have mentioned already, the film does go to great efforts to separate its villainous and troubled killer from the trans community. To quote John Phillips once more, “the narrative is at pains to dissociate itself from a negative representation of transgender” even going so far as to insert a rather cumbersome and exposition-heavy sequence at the end of the movie in which “a police psychiatrist explains that Bates is not a transvestite because he does not dress in women’s clothes to achieve an erotic thrill: ‘He was simply doing everything possible to keep alive the illusion of his mother being alive. He tried to be his mother’” (Phillips, J. 2006). But while the film does do this, and its effort is appreciated, I think it’s pretty hard to deny that Psycho quite clearly plays the revelation of Mother’s true identity for shocks.
I mean, if the image of poor, helpless Vera Miles spinning around to find herself face-to-face with the monstrous figure of young Norman Bates manically brandishing his butcher’s knife, dressed fully in his mother’s clothing and a wig, while the light bulb swings moodily from side to side casting harsh shadows on his face isn’t designed to elicit some kind of gasp of horror or surprise in the audience, then I don’t know what is. And, of course, the fact that he’s framed slightly from below, the camera peering up at him while he looms over our heroine with bloodlust in his eyes and his mouth maniacally slung open only further enforces that fact. As he screams “I’m Norma Bates! I’m Norma Bates!”, while his wig falls off and he is restrained, the intent of the film becomes all the clearer. Norman is psychotic, and part of that is that he presents himself and believes himself to be a woman.
In this moment the film is toying with the uncanny. Societal norms of the time were such that a man presenting as a woman — or indeed revealing any aspect of their femininity — was an unusual sight (it was even played for laughs to incredibly successful effect a year earlier in Billy Wilder’s classic comedy Some Like It Hot), and one brandishing a weapon and leering over his victim was no doubt terrifying and unsettling in equal measure. The fact that Norman doesn’t so much present as feminine in this moment, but rather as merely ‘a man in a dress’ is also important to note. He is still coded as male, thus coded as a male killer, and this is in part a core aspect of the problem. Transgenderism as depicted on screen doesn’t recognize the true nature of gender dysphoria, or of identifying as a gender one feels most at ease with. Transgenderism as depicted on screen is, more often than not, psychotic men dressed as women. Norman isn’t ‘Mother’, it’s just that he thinks he is in this moment, and that is the key. The film essentially invites and encourages audiences to make the conflation it will not five minutes later go through great effort to distance itself from.
Of course, Psycho as a text is far more concerned with Norman’s sexual repression than it is his trans-ness. Indeed, one could argue the very idea of gender dysphoria never even cross the filmmakers’ minds, and it would be difficult to disprove. 1960 was, after all, a very different time and the film does focus far more on Norman’s sexual repression than it does any notion that he may actually personally identify as a woman, and he doesn’t. Norman and ‘Mother’ are not, despite what the film tells us, “one and the same”.
The fact is the film doesn’t even attempt to explore Norman’s gender as gender, rather presenting the two different sides of his personality as entirely different entities altogether. When Norman discovers Marion’s body after that infamous shower scene, he is genuinely unaware of what has happened and horrified by Mother’s actions. That both Norman and ‘Mother’ can exist in the same scene, hold conversations with one another, and act independently of one another is important. It is why Norman Bates isn’t actually trans, and it is why the conflation of these many complex and difficult-to-understand issues is all the more troubling.
Norman’s mental health problems are to do with an inability to deal with an overbearing and abusive mother, a struggle with loss and grief, and his own deep-seated sexual repression. These are his true motives, and his supposed transness doesn’t even really enter into it. Norman leers at Marion in the shower, spying on her through the peephole in the wall, and then ‘Mother’ kills her because of his arousal. His repressed sexual desires are the biggest cause of the murders, and the film constantly illustrates this and alludes to that point. Norman spying on Marion through the peephole is just one such example, elsewhere the film employs a constant use of symbols and iconography recognizable as tropes of Victorian melodrama — a haunted house, a sinister figure locked away upstairs, dark, shadowy cellars and attics — and, as Robin Wood points out in his excellent essay on the movie, Psychoanalysis of ‘Psycho’, “these symbols were in wide circulation at a time when the subconscious suffered the repercussions of severe sexual repression” (1960).
Norman’s unstable mental state is something that would be explored in more depth (and arguably to far better effect and more care) in the underseen 1983 sequel, Psycho II. Directed by Richard Franklin and based on a script by Child’s Play and Fright Night helmsman Tom Holland (not to be confused with Spider-Man), the film sees a now supposedly reformed Norman Bates — played by a returning Anthony Perkins — head home to Bates Motel and attempt to readjust to life outside the psychiatric hospital he has spent his time in since the events of the original movie. But, since this is a horror movie, soon people start showing up dead, and Norman starts to worry that ‘Mother’ is also making a comeback.
Incidentally, if you’ve not seen Psycho II because you’ve either missed it accidentally or because you like I did for the longest time, have sort of sneered at it as a belated cash-grab of a movie that capitalizes o a classic and important film from an iconic and important film-maker, then do yourself a favor and check it out. It’s a brilliantly crafted little movie that builds on Psycho in a similar way to how all great sequels build upon the originals, such as James Cameron’s Aliens (1986) or Mike Flannagan’s Doctor Sleep (2019). As a film, it stands on its own, but it also works in conversation with Hitchcock’s masterpiece, rounding out a story that you didn’t even know needed a second part. And the third one ain’t too bad either.
But while Psycho II is a film that builds upon the original’s ideas, it also does a lot more to distance Norman from his supposed transness than the original ever could. The threat and inner turmoil explored throughout Psycho II focuses almost entirely on the idea that Norman and ‘Mother’ are two separate entities inhabiting one single body and not that Norman actively believes he is ‘Mother’, or that he is in some way suffering from a form of gender dysphoria. As already mentioned, the original 1960 film does allude to this, and its representation of Norman as trans is flawed anyway, but it also struggles to adequately express these ideas. Of course, it does, it was the ’60s. And while Psycho II is hardly a shining beacon of trans representation itself, the film does explore this particular facet of Norman with a little more clarity and a little more distance from the “nightmarish gender” aspects present in the original.
In fact, Norman as presented in Psycho II spends the bulk of the film fearful of ‘Mother’ and of her return. Psycho II makes it clear that it isn’t so much that Norman is ‘Mother’, but rather that ‘Mother’ is taking over Norman. In Psycho II the Norman/‘Mother’ relationship bears far closer a resemblance to something like a possession, with ‘Mother’ acting as some kind of sinister entity entirely separate from Norman who wishes to merely use his body in order to have corporeal form. Indeed, Norman actively makes efforts to prevent ‘Mother’ from taking control, and the film is especially interesting in that Norman is our protagonist while it is arguably the unseen, mysterious specter of ‘Mother’ who is our villain.
In a sense, the film actually forgoes a lot of problematic trans representation altogether through this angle, with a focus entirely on the psychological fear of this now clearly separate character intruding upon Norman’s psyche. We still have certain uncomfortable undertones, most of which ripple out from the original and through the sequels, but for the most part the narrative has shifted away from the idea. Of course, Norman is still cross-dressing and killing when he becomes ‘Mother’, and so ultimately the character is still coded as trans. And, as we established earlier, that’s a problem when cinema continues to conflate these issues into one big “other” category that basically acts as nothing more than a shorthand for the filmmakers to go “hey, look! This person is different, and that’s why they’re bad!”
It is in this aspect that Psycho and then the films that it inspired are truly troublesome. The lack of nuance and thoughtfulness paid to its trans-coded characters, whether through purposeful neglect or simply misinformed opinion, often leads to the misinterpretation and then villainization of them. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, it is again worth pointing out that Norman Bates isn’t trans, at least not in the real world definitions of the word, but as far as film is concerned he — along with many others — falls into a big ball of gender-bending “other” that is simplistically coded trans and is simplistically coded bad. That’s not strictly the movie’s fault, either, as Psycho does very specifically make the distinction (at least, as specifically as it could for the time it was made), but it is a sad fact that this is how movies work, and this is how audiences receive them.
As I said, it’s way more complicated than the twitter-sphere will have you believe.
The point is that while it’s very easy to tar Psycho with the transphobic brush and point to it as the problematic first domino in a long line of horror movie-shaped dominoes, the film itself actually deserves far more shade for its troublesome depiction of mental health and personality disorder than it does for its supposed transphobic attitudes. But for all its problematic tropes and difficult takes on complex topics, what Psycho is ultimately is a Hitchcock movie. And that means, above all else, that it is meant only as a work of escapist entertainment. A twisting, turning narrative designed solely to instill awe, shock, and terror in its audience. A rollercoaster, not a literary thought exercise. Hitchcock, after all, was an entertainer first and foremost. Indeed, as David Boyd and R. Barton Palmer put it in their introduction to the book Hitchcock at the Source: The Auteur as Adapter, “Hitchcock never conceived of himself as a literary adapter, nor did he want his public to perceive him as one” (2011).
Of course, there’s no denying that transphobic elements exist within Psycho, but as outlined above, the film does make some hefty efforts to distance itself from any potential negative reading the imagery and narrative might throw up. Not that that excuses it of course, and nor is the film all that successful in said distancing, but, as a male-to-female trans woman myself, and as someone who loves and enjoys Psycho for the smart, twisty, schlocky, moody piece of Hitchcockian entertainment that it is, I do sometimes worry that the film is unfairly maligned among my own circles for being far worse at something that it sort of really isn’t. Really we should try to focus our attention on celebrating a movie that blew traditional film-making to smithereens and set a new standard by which all studio pictures and mainstream cinematic releases continue to be held to today.
Not to sound like a broken record, but as is always the case with these kinds of things, Psycho is a lot more complicated than many would have you believe, and while there’s no argument here against the obvious troublesome elements (after all, Norman in that dress and wig, brandishing that knife is demonstrably an image that has done more harm than good), the problem isn’t so much the movie itself as it is the people too thick, too stubborn, or too bias in their prejudices to recognize a movie as presenting a work of entertaining fiction and not as presenting a viable world view or way of life. I mean, this is why we should teach Film Studies in schools, but that’s an argument for another time.
Psycho, despite its flaws, remains a masterpiece of suspense and a fantastic example of a pioneering and influential filmmaker at the top of his game. It is a smart, engaging, atmospheric, and enjoyable piece of schlocky entertainment, as well as a fascinating example of a masterful director who has total control of his craft and as a film that can provide us with multiple readings, interesting takes, and countless imaginative and well-reasoned analysis.
At least, that’s how I view it. And that’s why I love it so much.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Allen, R. (2011) ‘Hitchcock’s Legacy’, A Companion to Alfred Hitchcock.
Boyd, D. and Barton Palmer, B. (2011) ‘Introduction: Recontextualising Hitchcock’s Authorship’, Hitchcock at the Source: The Auteur as Adapter.
Donnar, G. (2016) ‘Monstrous Men and Bathroom Mirrors: The Bathroom as Revelatory Space in America Cinema’, Spaces of the Cinematic Home: Behind the Screen Door.
Driscoll, P, A. (2014) ‘“The Hitchcock Touch”: Visual Techniques in the Work of Alfred Hitchcock’, International ResearchScape Journal: Vol. 1, Article 4.
Grant, B. K. (2010) ‘Screams on Screens: Paradigms of Horror”, Thinking After Dark.
Jones, C. and Slater, J. (2020) ‘The toilet debate: Stalling trans possibilities and defending ‘women’s protected spaces’, The Sociological Review: Vol. 68, Issue 4.
Kubrak, T. (2020) ‘Impact of Films: Changes in Young People’s Attitudes after Watching a Movie’, Behavioural Sciences.
Mikulec, S. (2020) ‘’Psycho’: The Proto-Slasher that Brought On a Revolution in Cinema’, Cinephelia & Beyond.
Phillips, J. (2006) ‘Psycho — Trans’, Transgender on Screen.
Wood, R. (1960) ‘Psychoanalysis of ‘Psycho’’, Cahiers du cinéma.
