Birds and Voyeurism in ‘Psycho’

The following essay was written for my Introduction to Film course during the Fall 2017 semester at Susquehanna University.

 

There’s a lot to dissect about Alfred Hitchcock’s seminal 1960 film Psycho. Many elements went into the production of the film, with two of the most important being the visual motif of birds and the heavy theme of voyeurism.

The film opens using both, with an establishing shot that pans around the city of Phoenix, Arizona, for a few moments before stopping on a building and moving in on one of the building’s windows. Inside are Marion Crane, whose last name is a clear allusion to the bird of the same name, and her boyfriend Sam Loomis. Unlike traditional zooms, this shot is done differently, making the viewer feel like a voyeur themselves as the camera focuses in on the couple after a very private moment.

These two elements can be noticed throughout the film, but where they’re most apparent is later in the film, during the scene where Marion and Norman speak in the parlor just after she’s arrived at the Bates Motel. As soon as Norman turns on the lights, we’re met with bird imagery in the stuffed birds he has positioned throughout the room. Not only does Norman’s hobby of taxidermy increase his creepiness factor, it also uses the bird motif to clue the audience in on Norman’s true nature.

The very first bird we see is leaning over with its wings spread out, looking as if it’s about to strike – clearly foreshadowing what Norman will do to Marion just a couple scenes later. Marion is noticeably uncomfortable at the sight of the stuffed birds, feeling as though they’re watching her. She is in fact being watched and studied, not by the birds of course, but by Norman.

Once she begins eating, Norman tells Marion that she eats like one. However, he then tells her that he’s heard that the phrase “eats like a bird,” which is used to describe people who eat very little at a time, is false because birds eat a lot. He then goes on talk about how he likes to stuff birds because they look passive, further foreshadowing Marion’s fate.

From the moment they meet, Norman is studying Marion and figuring her out. He can tell that she’s attempting to run away from something, and that she’s in over her head. Later in the scene, he even outright asks her what she’s running away from.

Marion tells Norman “A man should have hobby,” regarding his interest in taxidermy, but he tells her that it’s more than a hobby, saying “A hobby is supposed to pass the time, not fill it.”

After this, he says “I think that we’re all in our private traps, clamped in them, and none of us can ever get out. We scratch and claw, but only at the air, only at each other, and for all of it we never budge an inch.” Marion tells him that sometimes people step into those traps, likely referring to her own predicament. Norman then says that he was born into his, but he doesn’t mind it anymore. Immediately, Marion knows he’s referring to his mother, as she overheard the argument the two were having as she arrived at the motel. At the mention of his mother, we begin to see Norman show his true colors.

Marion tries to get Norman to wonder if she’d be better off in a mental hospital, where she’d be taken care of by professionals. Upon hearing this, Norman’s behavior visibly changes. He leans forward and asks “You mean an institution? A madhouse? People always call a madhouse ‘someplace,’ don’t they? ‘Put her in someplace.’”

She apologizes, telling Norman she didn’t mean to sound uncaring, to which Norman responds with “What do you know about caring? Have you ever seen the inside of one of those places? The laughing and the tears, and the cruel eyes studying you. My mother, there? But she harmless, she’s as harmless as one of those stuffed birds.”

In a sense, Norman is right. His mother is as harmless as the stuffed birds because, like the stuffed birds, she’s also dead. And, like the stuffed birds, she was killed by Norman. The audience doesn’t know it yet, but this also serves to foreshadow the reveal at the end of the film, that Norman killed his mother, developed another personality resembling hers, and had dressed as her to commit the murders of both Marion and Arbogast.

What’s also interesting about this bit is how the mere mention of a mental institution sets Norman off. The way he delivers the line “the laughing and the tears, and the cruel eyes studying you,” gives the impression that he’s speaking from personal experience, like he’s been in a mental institution before.

After saying this, the eerie background music begins to build as Norman tells her that he’s thought about sending her to an institution in the past but decided against it. “She needs me,” he tells her. “It’s not as if she were a maniac or a raving thing, she just goes a little mad sometimes. We all go a little mad sometimes.”

As Norman says this, the camera back and forth between him and Marion, who has begun to look more and more disturbed. After his “We all go a little mad sometimes” line, Norman slowly reclines back, smiles a little, and asks “Haven’t you?”

At this point in the film, the viewer doesn’t know the full extent of Norman’s madness, but it’s still very apparent that there’s a much darker side to him that’s only just been glimpsed.

The bird motif in this scene establishes a clear predator/prey relationship between Norman and Marion, which H. Perry Horton sums up well in his article “[Watch] Women as Prey: The Symbolism of Birds in ‘Psycho’” about the video “Bird Symbolism in Psycho: Women as Prey,” by the YouTube channel Screen Prism.

As he says in the article, “Hitch chose birds specifically for their fragile, vulnerable nature, wanting to establish Norman’s relation to them – and thus later to his victim – as predatory, someone capable of controlling them via death. How the character is framed in relation to stuffed birds reflects his mental state, and how Marion is framed in a similar fashion reveals her condition as unwitting prey.”

There’s a brief silence when Norman asks, “Haven’t you?” during which Marion is clearly disturbed, but eventually she responds with “Yes, sometimes just one time can be enough,” showing how much she laments her current situation.

To Marion, her theft of her employer’s money was her going mad, and after seeing how far astray it led her, she realizes that it was a mistake. She stands up to leave, immediately prompting Norman to ask if she’s going to bed, to which she responds that she has a long drive the next day.

She tells him “I stepped into a private trap back there, and I’d like to go back and try to pull myself out of it. Before it’s too late for me to.” Marion has fully decided to go back to Phoenix and return the money in hopes that she can salvage whatever she can from the damage she’s likely caused. Unfortunately for her, she’s now fully in Norman’s sights.

Before she leaves, Norman tells her that he’ll bring her breakfast in the morning, and then asks her name, to which she replies “Crane.” Once Marion has left the parlor and is out of sight, Norman looks at the sign-in book at the front desk, where she signed the fake name of “Marie Samuels.” There’s a closeup shot of the name from Norman’s perspective, and then a medium shot of him with a slight smirk on his face before he returns to the parlor. He’s caught Marion in her lie and she doesn’t realize it. At this point, her fate is sealed.

It’s clear that Norman could tell that Marion was lying about her name when she signed in, and now he’s confirmed it. What makes it more terrifying is that, for one, the viewer never gets the impression that Marion has realized what she’s done. She’s so preoccupied with getting out of the parlor and away from Norman because she’s so disturbed by him that she doesn’t realize that she slipped up and gave away her true name.

Secondly, her last name is Crane. The beginning of this scene established the relationship between Norman and birds as well as what it’s meant to represent, and this is what that’s built towards. Marion slipping up and telling Norman her real name is telling of who had the power in their conversation. Marion didn’t know what she was getting into, so when she began to see a hint of Norman’s dark side, she started to not think straight. The only thing on her mind was escaping the encounter. All the while Norman was figuring her out, and the moment he confirms his suspicions and gets her to tell him her real name of “Crane,” is the moment where she’s become his next victim – another fragile, unsuspecting bird, and she never realizes it.

After Marion returns to her room and Norman is left alone in the parlor, the theme of voyeurism makes its return in the most explicit way possible. Norman removes one of the pictures on the wall, revealing a small hole which he peers through to watch the unsuspecting Marion as she gets undressed.

Another important detail to note about this scene is that the hole in the wall can’t possibly be freshly made. Marion had only arrived at the motel 20 minutes before, Norman wouldn’t have had any time to make a hole to spy on here in that time. We learn later that Norman will have guests typically sleep in the room adjacent to the parlor. The only conclusion the viewer can come to is that Norman made the hole at some point in the past and has consistently used it to spy on guests who stay in that room, guests who likely end up being his victims.

After Marion enters the bathroom, Norman returns the picture to its spot, covering up the hole. There’s a pause where he simply stands there in thought until he leaves the motel. At this point, the mother personality has kicked in. As we learn at the end of the film from the psychiatrist’s evaluation of him, Norman felt a sexual attraction to Marion, which was obvious when he spied on her as she undressed. Once those sexual feelings were internalized, the jealous, possessive mother personality took over, which is seen when Norman leaves the motel, looks up at the house, and begins walking up the hill to go inside.

On first viewing this might seem like Norman is just returning to his house to go to bed, but with the ending of the film and what we find out about Norman’s psychosis in mind, its true meaning becomes clear. The mother personality has taken over, and Norman is walking up to the house to put on the wig and dress to complete the transformation. After that comes the iconic shower scene, where everything that was going on in thematically in the parlor scene culminates in gruesome fashion.

The theme of voyeurism and the visual motif of birds are two of the most important and substantive elements that went into Psycho. They build a creepy, ominous atmosphere that hangs over the entire film, but they also inform the character of Norman Bates and how he interacts with others, as demonstrated through his encounter with Marion. We may not get to see Norman’s past in explicit detail, but the parlor scene serves as the perfect microcosm for telling us exactly who he is.

 

Citations

Hitchcock, Alfred, director. Psycho. Paramount Pictures, 1960.

Horton, H. Perry. “[WATCH] WOMEN AS PREY: THE SYMBOLISM OF BIRDS IN ‘PSYCHO’.” Film School Rejects, 21 Apr. 2017, https://filmschoolrejects.com/watch-women-as-prey-the-symbolism-of-birds-in-psycho-3fa9d4968f51/.