If Thine Eye Offend Thee
Psycho and the Art of Infection
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 10668285 |
|---|---|
| Authors | George Toles (corresponding author) |
| Year | 1984 |
| Volume | 15 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 631 |
| Publication date | 1984-01-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | New Literary History (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0028-6087 • E-ISSN: 1080-661X |
| Publisher | JSTOR (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.2307/468723 |
| OpenAlex | W2317881633 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
O NCE all the narrative surprises of Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho have been discovered and its more obvious emotional provocations understood, I find that the most potent sources of my uneasiness while viewing it are still unaccounted for. Discomfort with this work is, in my experience, an endlessly renewable response; it is like a slowly spreading stain in the memory. The film feels as stifled and stifling as the indecipherable mind of its protagonist, Norman Bates. Not only does Psycho contain no point of release for the viewer-it also remains unclear what precisely the viewer expects (or needs) to be released from. Psycho offers a number of gestures of release-a snarling tow chain craning a vehicle out of a swamp, Marion's slowly upraised arm as she sits in the tub after the shower stabbing-which turn out to be no release at all. In the latter episode, for example, Hitchcock caresses us, in the dying woman's presence, with a hope of recovery, then immediately crushes it out as Marion's arm extends beseechingly to us (Why don't you do something?), clutches the shower curtain and collapses to the floor. Marion's gesture to save herself answers our felt need, then instantly turns that need against us. Part of Hitchcock's complex achievement in the film is gradually to deprive us of our sense of what safe ground looks like or feels like
Art · Psychoanalysis · Cinema and Media Studies · Film in Education and Therapy · Media Influence and Health · Medicine · Psychology · Optometry
| Citations per year | 0.04 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2001 - 2001 (1) |
| Highly cited | No |