When reading Carroll’s work, I was truly surprised to find out that he did not consider Alfred Hitchcock’s film Psycho to be a work of horror. Instead, he perceives it as perching precariously on the cusp of horror but resolutely remaining a work of terror. Carroll argues that, although the film illustrates some of the integral aspects of the horror genre (such as a dark, unsettling atmosphere; facets of the complex discovery plot; and eerie, violent imagery), it cannot be placed within the context of the genre because of the character of Norman Bates. This approach in analyzing Psycho seems…nearsighted. Carroll, striving to place the film outside the horror genre, claims that Bates does not fulfill all the requirements for being a monster. Carroll acknowledges that Bates is both threatening and impure as an interstitial being, blurring the lines between man and woman, living and dead, victim and victimizer. Nonetheless, this is not enough. For Carroll, because Bates’ state of psychosis can be described and defined in the field of psychology today, he is not a monster; however, I do not believe Carroll has taken into account a key aspect of the film in his argument – the decade in which the film was released.
In the late 1950s and early 1960s, mental illness was widely regarded as something unnatural and shameful in society. Although some advances were being made in the world of science concerning certain stages of psychosis and neurosis, their origins were in large part unknown and their treatments were primitive at best. Science was unable to provide society with any knowledge about illnesses such as schizophrenia. As a result, those who were diagnosed with having some form of psychosis were usually ostracized from society, taken away from their families, and forced to undergo treatments such as electroshock therapy or (in extreme cases) a lobotomy. These negative attitudes toward mental illness can be seen in works from the same period such as Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar (published in 1963) and in Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1962). In both of these works, mental illness and the public’s reaction to it is studied in depth with both authors commenting on the ignorance, fear, and repulsion associated with the disorders. Undeniably, the public watching Hitchcock’s Psycho would have had a reaction similar to that of the uninformed public described in these two literary works. Thus, wouldn’t Norman Bates be considered a monster by the public of the 1960s not only because he is threatening and impure but also because he represents a portion of society that should not exist according to the science of the 1960s?
My main questions, then, are these: Given the knowledge available about mental illness during the 1960s, couldn’t Norman Bates be considered an “art horror” monster? Taking this a step further, if examined in the context in which it was released, could Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho fit into Carroll’s overall concept of horror?
1 comment:
Rachel brings up something very important that I haven't yet given much thought to--the time period in which the work is released and whether or not this could affect the genre in which it's placed. I'm inclined to agree with you, Rachel, that Norman Bates' mental illness would be understood and thus feared more when Psycho was released, making it a horror film. If you say that you have to judge a story based on what we know now then you might run into some problems. Stephenson may have believed that his ants acted supernaturally when they made the leaf-rafts to get over the stream. But what if tomorrow a scientist finds out that ants are naturally capable of acting in just the same way? Should this new knowledge affect how we classify the work? Or should it be judged by the desired affect the author was working toward when he/she wrote it? The latter seems to make a lot more sense to me.
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