Choose one of the following prompts to blog about. Remember to give your blog entry an interesting title, and make as many clever connections to other texts and ideas as you can. Don’t forget Freud, “The Cat in the Hat”, “The Yellow Wallpaper”, “Allal” and “The Father-thing”. Also consider music, camera technique, and acting.

1.  Norman Bates: She just goes a little mad sometimes. We all go a little mad sometimes. Haven’t you?
Marion Crane: Yes. Sometimes just one time can be enough.

2.  Norman Bates: You know what I think? I think that we’re all in our private traps, clamped in them, and none of us can ever get out. We scratch and we claw, but only at the air, only at each other, and for all of it, we never budge an inch.
Marion Crane: Sometimes, we deliberately step into those traps.
Norman Bates: I was born into mine. I don’t mind it anymore.
Marion Crane: Oh, but you should. You should mind it.
Norman Bates: Oh, I do
[laughs]
Norman Bates: but I say I don’t.
Marion Crane: You know – if anyone ever talked to me the way I heard – the way she spoke to you…
Norman Bates: Sometimes – when she talks to me like that – I feel I’d like to go up there – and curse her – and-and-and leave her forever! Or at least defy her! But I know I can’t. She’s ill.

3.  Norma Bates: [voiceover in police custody, as Norman is thinking] It’s sad, when a mother has to speak the words that condemn her own son. But I couldn’t allow them to believe that I would commit murder. They’ll put him away now, as I should have years ago. He was always bad, and in the end he intended to tell them I killed those girls and that man… as if I could do anything but just sit and stare, like one of his stuffed birds. They know I can’t move a finger, and I won’t. I’ll just sit here and be quiet, just in case they do… suspect me. They’re probably watching me. Well, let them. Let them see what kind of a person I am. I’m not even going to swat that fly. I hope they are watching… they’ll see. They’ll see and they’ll know, and they’ll say, “Why, she wouldn’t even harm a fly…”

4.  Nearly a third of the movie is about Marion Crane and her problems. She escapes with a large amount of money, she wants to marry Sam, etc. Then she is suddenly killed in the shower and dumped with her car into the swamp. What is the effect of the plot line on the audience? Why do you think the filmmakers chose to structure the movie in this way?

{ 0 comments }