Psycho with Leila Latif

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
On the Bechdel Cast.

Speaker 2 (00:02):
The questions asked if movies have.

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Women and them, are all their discussions just boyfriends and
husbands or do they have individualism? It's the patriarchy. Zeph
and bast start changing with the Bechdel Cast.

Speaker 3 (00:16):
Hello, Jamie, would you like to come eat some sandwiches
with me in my room full of taxidermy birds?

Speaker 1 (00:25):
Okay?

Speaker 4 (00:26):
I felt personally attacked by that scene as someone who
recently asked you to take care of the taxidermy bird
that I taxidermied this year.

Speaker 1 (00:36):
I was like, that is I.

Speaker 4 (00:38):
Mean, there are a lot of communities that are poorly
represented in this movie, but true, I have yet to
see the essay on taxidermists.

Speaker 3 (00:46):
Respond, well, maybe that's your responsibility.

Speaker 4 (00:50):
Exidermists are regular people, just like you and me, And
I think that the one thing that Norman Babs does
correctly say is that it's actually a very affordable hobby.
People think it's going to be expensive. The only real
expense is your time and your ability to wish to
dissect things. Yeah, but I think that as long as

(01:14):
you're doing it legally and good. So sorry to start
with my stumping for fellow taxidermists.

Speaker 3 (01:21):
No no, no, please, I.

Speaker 1 (01:23):
Used to a symbol in a Hitchcock movie.

Speaker 4 (01:26):
I mean it's good, but taxidermists didn't recover for years
after this movie.

Speaker 3 (01:31):
Maybe yes, it protected class of people taxidermists.

Speaker 4 (01:37):
The wild thing is there's like all these laws around taxidermy,
which is good, but essentially you cannot and should not
taxidermy an animal that is in any way endangered or protected.
There's all these laws around it. But you can taxidermy
any animal that is technically an invasive species as long
as they are already dead.

Speaker 1 (01:57):
So there's all.

Speaker 4 (01:57):
These complicated rules. But when it was explained to me
by my gorgeous, amazing taxidermy instructor, I.

Speaker 1 (02:04):
Was like, wow, it all does make sense.

Speaker 4 (02:06):
But she sources the birds that we taxidermied in her
class like they were like ethically, I don't know. I
mean they were invasive species and on a farm and
killing animals, and so I guess then you're allowed to.

Speaker 1 (02:19):
Kill the birds.

Speaker 4 (02:20):
But she bought the birds from this guy who like
owned a farm in Wisconsin, and she's been buying European
starling bird corpses from this man for a decade and
he has never asked her what she's using the birds for.

Speaker 1 (02:35):
Isn't that so scary? He's like that, I don't want
to know?

Speaker 2 (02:39):
Is why?

Speaker 1 (02:40):
Just if the check clears, it's all good.

Speaker 3 (02:42):
Also, it all comes full circle because someone who had
a farm in Wisconsin, ed Gean, aka the person who
the book of this movie was loosely based on.

Speaker 1 (02:55):
So no, well not mister ed that's a different guy.
That's a horse.

Speaker 3 (03:01):
So yeah, it all comes full circle.

Speaker 1 (03:03):
It's true.

Speaker 3 (03:03):
Anyway, Hello, and welcome to the Bechdel Cast. I think
that was a good trip, perfect, flawless, no notes. My
name is Caitlin Derante, my name is Jamie Loftus, and
this is the podcast where we discuss either taxidermy or
looking at your favorite movies from an intersectional feminist lens.
That long conversation about taxidermy mostly past the Bechdel test,

(03:27):
I believe, until we got to the pharm owner.

Speaker 1 (03:29):
I think it did. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (03:30):
And also on the record, our friend Bryant is watching
my bird.

Speaker 1 (03:35):
I checked in on him a couple of times. He's
doing good. Glad to hear it. But that didn't pass
the Bechtel test. But why is that?

Speaker 4 (03:42):
It's a media metric that we use as a jumping
off point for discussion. Certainly not the be all and
all of discussion at all, but Kitlin.

Speaker 1 (03:50):
What the hell is it?

Speaker 3 (03:51):
Well, it's a media metric created by queer cartoonist Alison Bechdel,
sometimes called the Bechdel Wallace Test, first appearing in Alison
bechtel comic Dex To Watch Out For in nineteen eighty five.
Intended originally as just like a one off goof a
bit a joke that has since been kind of co

(04:12):
opted into this pretty widespread media metric. There are many
versions of it. The one that we use is this,
two characters of a marginalized gender have to have names,
they have to speak to each other, and their conversation
has to be about something other than a man, and

(04:32):
ideally for us, it's a big meaty conversation. Yeah, okay, sure,
sorry to say meaty.

Speaker 4 (04:42):
Now, as a member of the tax star of his community,
I know a thing or two about meat.

Speaker 3 (04:48):
Sure. So that's our show, today's episode. It's it's a big.

Speaker 1 (04:54):
One, A long time coming, I think, yeah, because at
this point this show has been running long enough that
we've covered it lee.

Speaker 4 (05:00):
One or so of the whatever considered the big director Ouvra.

Speaker 1 (05:06):
Which is mostly white guys. It includes this one. Yeah,
but we've never covered this guy. And here we are.
The day has come.

Speaker 4 (05:13):
We are covering nineteen sixty Alfred Hitchcock Psycho. It's true
and we have an amazing guest. I'm so excited for
our guests.

Speaker 3 (05:22):
Yes, she is a film critic, podcaster, and columnist for
Total Film Magazine. It's Leila Latif.

Speaker 5 (05:29):
Hi, Welcome, I'm so excited. Longtime listener, first time cooler, welcome.

Speaker 1 (05:37):
Never stop calling.

Speaker 2 (05:40):
But yeah, like this is not a soft landing.

Speaker 3 (05:44):
This is heavy.

Speaker 5 (05:46):
Yeah, I'm excited. This is a challenging movie in many
many regards, so it seems to be a different movie
every time I watch it.

Speaker 4 (05:55):
It really is, I mean, and this is I think
part of the reason we haven't been acting avoiding Hitchcock.
But part of the reason that I've avoided it is
just logistically, there is so much written about this movie
and this director that you're like, how do you even
prepare for this episode?

Speaker 1 (06:15):
And we're about to find out.

Speaker 3 (06:17):
Right, Yeah, Jamie, you and I were both talking off
Mike about how we did a lot to prepare, like
the normal amount, but because there's just so much with
this movie. We feel like we've barely scratched the surface.
I kind of took approach where I was like, well,
there's just too much, so I'm going to do almost nothing.

Speaker 1 (06:38):
Huh.

Speaker 3 (06:39):
Except I read like Anthony perkins entire Wikipedia page. I
read a bunch of stuff about ed Gean. I listened
to part one of the Behind the Bastards episode on
Alfred Hitchcock. I obviously watched the movie several times.

Speaker 1 (06:54):
I would say, that's not almost nothing. Why are you
being down with yourself? I was like, quite a bit.

Speaker 2 (07:01):
You're right, it's like a working week.

Speaker 3 (07:03):
Yeah, it's been a lot. Yeah, but I still feel
very unprepared.

Speaker 4 (07:09):
I think it's kind of hard not to. I mean,
I think between the three of us, you know, we've
I think it's interesting with this movie. There's so many
ways into talking about it, and it just seems sort
of like what stands out to you personally that you're
kind of drawn to. I was really drawn to how
serial killers and like mental illness are portrayed in this

(07:30):
movie and how it influenced other movies.

Speaker 1 (07:32):
Maybe we should just get into our personal histories.

Speaker 4 (07:34):
Because when I was rewatching it I haven't seen this
movie in probably close to ten years, and I kind
of forgot how well we get to know Marian before
she dies, right, which there's a lot to talk about
with Marion for sure, which I feel like you wouldn't
know by the scenes from this movie that are the
most famous.

Speaker 1 (07:56):
But we'll get to.

Speaker 3 (07:56):
That, yeah, because it's just like she's getting stabbed.

Speaker 4 (08:00):
But first let's get through what our personal history is
with I guess this movie and also just Alfred Hitchcock
in general.

Speaker 3 (08:07):
Yeah, Leila, what's your experience with the overall?

Speaker 5 (08:11):
Psycho just feels like something that I'd like never not
seen in a weird way, like I think is like
by the time I came to it, I just like
I'd seen so many parodies and references, and I knew
exactly what was going to happen with like the chest
spinning around, and I knew that there was this whole
thing where you know, she kind of dies at this
like midway point and stuff. So like I had so

(08:32):
much knowledge coming into it, and I watched every horror
movie like way too young.

Speaker 2 (08:36):
It is probably like seven when I watched this for
the first time.

Speaker 5 (08:39):
Like it just feels like omnipresent in my life in
a weird way, but like as a result like coming
back to it, and I'm kind of like you, Jamie,
Like it probably been about ten years since I've seen
it last, but it feels like the parodies could kind
of like gotten away from it, And it was really
nice to come back to because I reimagined Marian because

(09:02):
it's kind of like what she'd been in the culture
is like Drew Barron more from The Scream basically of
like the big star who like shot gets killed off,
rather than like she's in it till like the midway point.

Speaker 3 (09:13):
I would say, yeah, the first forty five minutes or so, and.

Speaker 4 (09:16):
She has like in a whole arc. It's like, it's
why I totally I didn't remember.

Speaker 5 (09:22):
Yeah, it didn't feel like the rug pull that i'd
like remembered. Like I've still left this feeling like she
was the star of this movie. She was still the
protagonist rather than just some kind of plot twist device.

Speaker 3 (09:35):
Yeah, right, Jamie, how about you?

Speaker 4 (09:39):
My history with this movie, same thing. I mean, I
found myself as I was watching it this time. It
surprised me in a lot of ways. And it also
I don't know This feels like one of the few
movies where it's impossible to have a clean reading of
it because everyone knows what happens at the midpoint of
the movie. I would love to be able to see
this movie and not know that happens, but it's impossible.

(10:03):
By the time I saw it for the first time
in probably high school, everyone knows what happens, and I
think I remembered it as happening earlier in the movie.
But yeah, I mean, it's like you, it's so cultural
osmosisy that everyone knows the chair turning, everyone knows the
shower scene, and so it's it's an interesting watch because

(10:26):
you can't not know that kind of against your will.
And I think my relationship with Hitchcock I was in
fifth grade. For I had this amazing teacher who for
some reason decided he was going to show a bunch
of nine year olds The Birds, and there were two
kids that peeded themselves during the movie. It's just it

(10:49):
was an iconic fifth grade experience. Every kid in that
class remember seeing The Birds. Parents were upset. My mom
was like, huh, and then I didn't sleep for like
a week. And so that's I think my most vivid
Hitchcock related movie, and then learned more about him as
a person as an adult. It's like a wild ride

(11:11):
with his work, which we can get into later. And also,
I mean I listened to the Hitchcock episodes of Behind
the Bastards when they first came out, and.

Speaker 1 (11:23):
I mean, holy shit, I mean.

Speaker 4 (11:25):
This literally said quote women are a nuisance. So there's
a lot to get into. But this movie, I think
I came away from it surprised and with way more
to talk about than I originally thought. I went so
excited to talk about it, Caitlin, was your history with
Psycho the Hitchcock expanded Universe.

Speaker 3 (11:47):
I saw it for the first time in college. I
think when I was watching a bunch of Hitchcock for
the first time, and like you, Jamie, I already knew
the iconic means the twist at the end, you know,
just through cultural osmosis. And then I think I didn't

(12:08):
watch it since, but I will think about the movie
basically anytime, because in the past few years, the conversation
about trans representation in media is more present in the zeitgeist,
and part of that conversation is the representation of like

(12:28):
trans and or gender non conforming people as murderers in media,
and I'd be like, oh, Psycho, Like Psycho is such
an early example of that, so like it just like
comes to mind every time that particular topic gets brought up.
And then rewatching the movie, I was like, oh, yes, confirmed,

(12:51):
So that will be I imagine a huge part of
our discussion later on. But yeah, it's it's just weird
to me that such a huge like piece of cinema,
like an iconic piece of cinema, like such an influential
thing in American cinema that's so celebrated is also so

(13:15):
damaging and harmful to so many communities. So that's those
those are my initial thoughts on it. But yeah, I
haven't seen this movie. I think since I've watched it
that first time, probably like well over fifteen years ago.
But I generally like Hitchcock movies. It's weird, like I

(13:39):
like Strangers on a Train. I like Rear Window, I
like north By Northwest. I haven't seen Rope and a
few of his other like pretty major ones.

Speaker 2 (13:48):
I'm with you, there are some like really tiny gems.

Speaker 5 (13:51):
I mean, I about every decade I'll do like a
big Hitchcock rewatch and like the minor ones are so good,
like Lifeboat is amazing, rope Rocks, there's like.

Speaker 2 (14:01):
Less problematic than Psycho in many regards.

Speaker 5 (14:06):
But I think, like with that same nasty spirit, really
recommend Frenzy, which is basically his last good one. I mean,
and just like and I don't know, maybe it's like
my Britishness, but like I think he's like I love
his humor, Like There's a Lady Vanishes is so funny.

Speaker 1 (14:25):
I never seen it.

Speaker 2 (14:26):
It's really really funny.

Speaker 5 (14:27):
And I always feel like humidates more than any other
genre of film, and like it's still like laugh at
loud funny and just stupid and like the best ways interesting.

Speaker 4 (14:40):
I think we're having a conversation like this recently where
it's like, for all of this movie's difficult and often
just outright prejudiced ways of viewing the world.

Speaker 1 (14:50):
It's a good movie.

Speaker 4 (14:51):
And that's kind of why it has the cultural influence
that it does and why we're talking about it and
why it's like, I don't know, if you can make
a good movie and project those values, it's.

Speaker 1 (15:03):
Kind of a scary amount of power to have.

Speaker 4 (15:07):
I haven't done Hitchcock B Sides viewing before. I did
recently go back and watch the birds to see if
it was as scary as I remembered, and it was not.

Speaker 1 (15:17):
It's pretty funny, though, it's a very fun It's terrible.

Speaker 2 (15:21):
It's so bad.

Speaker 1 (15:22):
Not good.

Speaker 3 (15:23):
It's bad.

Speaker 4 (15:25):
Yeah, okay, try being nine god yeah.

Speaker 5 (15:30):
Fair, But like it all kind of like brings the
question of like the kind of autistic male genius were
in a way like I'll do mental gymnastics to like
make Psycho okay, and like try and like justify it
to myself. I can in no way justify that, like
Tippy Hedron was like tortured to make the buds.

Speaker 4 (15:51):
It's so popular, absolutely, yeah, yeah, And it's so interesting
that there was only a care about it in any
cultural way in like five years years ago, because as
far as I know, she had spoken about it before
and no one cared. And then all of a sudden,
when the Me Too movement started getting some momentum, all
of a sudden, people cared and we're like, I can't

(16:13):
believe I didn't know this, And.

Speaker 3 (16:14):
It's like, well you could have a long time ago. Yeah, yeah, Well,
shall we take a quick break and then come back
to recap the movie. Let's do it all right, We'll
be right back, and we're back. Here is the recap

(16:42):
of Psycho. We are in Phoenix, Arizona. Ever heard of it?
And we meet Marion Crane that's Janet Lee, of course.
She is in a hotel room SMO coaching her boyfriend
Sam played by John Gavin. They are talking about getting married,

(17:06):
but they can't because he is in debt and he's
paying his ex his ex wife's alimony, and he can't
support her, and so they can't get married. Then we
see Marion at work at a real estate office where

(17:26):
a rich guy named mister Cassidy is there to buy
a house with a load of cash.

Speaker 4 (17:33):
This fucking guy, this guy, he's so horrible. And then
he crossed into like campy territory for me when he
said I need a drinker, Rooney.

Speaker 1 (17:44):
And he's like, well, what are we gonna do with
this guy?

Speaker 2 (17:49):
He's just and it's just like tax evasion.

Speaker 4 (17:54):
He's like, my daughter is my baby and my property.
I don't pay my taxes and I I want to
drink at work right now.

Speaker 5 (18:02):
And I am such a terrible father that I assume
you can be an eighteen year old girl and never
had a sad day, And.

Speaker 4 (18:11):
We learn all of this while he is sexually harassing
our protagonist.

Speaker 1 (18:17):
It really is kind of an all timer.

Speaker 4 (18:20):
And to be fair, the movie is aware that he's horrible,
but it was just like I didn't remember that character,
and I watched that scene three times because I was
just like, I don't know if I'm catching everything.

Speaker 1 (18:30):
He's moving so fast he's Among.

Speaker 3 (18:33):
The things is the fact that he has a lot
of cash of forty thousand dollars that he's just carrying around.

Speaker 4 (18:40):
On him in nineteen sixty money, it's ninety six money
fucking juggled it.

Speaker 5 (18:45):
You can just add a zero, which is very helpful mathwise,
So it's it's about four hundred, one.

Speaker 3 (18:50):
Hundred thousand dollars.

Speaker 1 (18:52):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (18:52):
Okay, so houses were expensive back then, too.

Speaker 1 (18:56):
Well that's like I'm probably a huge state.

Speaker 3 (19:00):
Big ass house.

Speaker 1 (19:01):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (19:02):
Anyway, So point is he's got cash.

Speaker 4 (19:04):
One thing I loved about Marian right from the jump
was that she is giving it about two percent at
her job. I feel like that is rare to see
in any movie in a way that the movie is
sort of ambivalent about, Like she comes back really late
to work because she was having sex and then she

(19:24):
leaves twenty minutes later.

Speaker 1 (19:26):
She's like, oh, my head, and then like I gotta go.

Speaker 4 (19:30):
Like I just that's how I acted at my jobs
in my early twenties, and I kind of was like,
maybe I should bring it back.

Speaker 1 (19:36):
Yeah, No, one seems bothered.

Speaker 3 (19:39):
She's quietly quitting, no doubt about it.

Speaker 5 (19:43):
She's given capitalism about the level of respect that it deserves.

Speaker 4 (19:47):
Exactly, she does not give a shit, but she's worked
there for ten years. Like, you're just like, good for Marian, honestly,
like we should try less hard.

Speaker 2 (19:58):
Yeah, it's true read wealth, go for it, Marian.

Speaker 3 (20:02):
That was her plan.

Speaker 4 (20:03):
Also, yeah, what she does a victimless crime. I think
you're just like, yeah, steal forty thousand dollars for someone
who's actually her as to you. You know, he's already rich,
he's the worst.

Speaker 3 (20:15):
Do it, yeah, for sure, steal, eat the rich, steal
from the rich, et cetera. So he comes in with
this forty thousand dollars. Marian's boss, mister Lowry, tells her
to take it directly to the bank. So Marian leaves
with the cash, but she doesn't go to the bank. Instead,

(20:36):
she packs the suitcase and heads out of town with
the money. On her way out, her boss sees Marion
in her car and he's like, hmm, that's weird, and
she's like, oh no, and then the string instruments are
playing loudly and it's an anxious moment. Then for a

(20:59):
while a cop is tailing her. He follows her to California,
where she trades in her car for another car in
a transaction that takes like five minutes because it's the sixties,
and then she takes off again in a hurry. She's driving,
it's dark, it's pouring rain, so she pulls over at

(21:22):
the Bates Motel, which big mistake.

Speaker 1 (21:25):
Big mistake, babe.

Speaker 4 (21:27):
I really appreciated in that whole sequence because even when
the scenes are like kind of weirdly long, it feels
very intentional and like, you just I didn't really remember
the last time I saw this movie how intentional.

Speaker 1 (21:40):
This movie is about setting up.

Speaker 4 (21:42):
How Marian has to navigate her way through the world
like as a woman and as like an attractive woman,
very very intentionally, and it's like it's I don't know,
I feel a time.

Speaker 1 (21:56):
Where you could easily get away with showing.

Speaker 4 (22:00):
Woman or any character really just kind of moving through
the world like ah hahi.

Speaker 1 (22:05):
Whatever, and just like half assing it.

Speaker 4 (22:08):
There is like a menacing undertone to how every man
in the story treats her right up to her arriving
at base motel, and then by Norman as well, and
that whole sequence where she's driving towards the motel and
you hear kind of her fantasizing about how people will
react to her disappearance and all this stuff. It's just

(22:29):
it's more than I remembered getting in terms of context
for who she is and why she's running.

Speaker 3 (22:34):
And I thought it was cool, and it's something that
a lot of contemporary horror movies fail to do in
terms of like showing the unease in which a woman
moves about the world. People and particularly men around her
will be menacing and creepy, and in a lot of

(22:59):
like female protagonists in more modern horror movies, they're just like, what,
I don't even notice anything. Everything seems fine, no danger here,
nothing to worry about. In a way that always bugs
me because I'm like, that is not how women move
about the world. We're like very cognizant of the dangers

(23:19):
around And I feel like this movie successfully does that
in a way that a lot of other horror movies
do not.

Speaker 5 (23:28):
Yeah, I think it's something that was really articulated pretty
beautifully in like the recent Barbie movie. Very different movie,
but like like that with women, like attention often just
has this like undertone of violence, and like obviously Marin
is a like ludicrously beautiful and glamorous woman. And there's

(23:49):
the what I found interesting about like because she's kind
of always moving with this undertone of violence, that there
is always this attention which has this like sinis to
like you said, menace edge to it, like that hyper
vigilance can of get her so far. So actually she
drops her guard whilst where with Norman in a way

(24:10):
that kind of makes sense if you've seen like her
journey so far, because of course he is being unsettling
and disturbing in a way that we can identify. But
that is simply every interaction she has with a.

Speaker 2 (24:22):
Man to a certain degree up till that point.

Speaker 4 (24:25):
Mm hmmm, and we see her like advocate for I
don't know, I like that it's like also clear that
she understands what's happening. She's kind of choosing her battles
as this sort of continues to happen. She chooses them
very intentionally, like with the cop where the cop is
arassing her. He wants to know what she's doing. Why

(24:45):
is she sleeping on the side of the road, And
she's just like, what have I done? Why do I
need to show you my license and registration?

Speaker 1 (24:51):
What is necessary? Like why are you doing this?

Speaker 4 (24:54):
And I really appreciate how it's such a hard balance
to strike, and I feel like it's really I don't know,
I was thinking about the Barbie movie as well.

Speaker 1 (25:04):
I just said for the second time the very night.

Speaker 4 (25:07):
But yeah, like striking the fact that she is, like
she's hyper competent, she's very aware of what's happening. But
being aware of what's happening is not necessarily enough to
protect you. And it felt like this movie did a
better job than I remembered at like making that clear
and striking that balance.

Speaker 3 (25:28):
M hm for sure. Okay, So she is now at
the Bates Motel, which is run by Norman Bates played
by Anthony Perkins, who lives in the house just up
the hill overlooking the motel. He checks her into room one.
She gives him a fake name like in the registry,

(25:51):
and she's also the only guest staying there, because the
whole thing with this motel is that it used to
be along a main highway, but they made a new highway,
so there's basically no traffic going past this place, and
no one stays there anymore, so it's very secluded. Then
he invites her to his house for dinner, but as

(26:13):
she's getting settled and hiding the cash by rolling it
up in a newspaper and sitting it on the bedside table,
amazing hiding spot.

Speaker 1 (26:24):
To be fair with her first time stealing forty thousand dollars.

Speaker 2 (26:27):
True.

Speaker 1 (26:28):
True, True.

Speaker 5 (26:29):
It also seems like getting away with crime was pretty
easy back then, like a cop could watch you as
you switch costs.

Speaker 1 (26:36):
Yeah, And he's just like, well, I don't know, I know,
And he's like, Wow, this lady knows the law. She knows.
I guess what she's doing isn't technically against the law.

Speaker 5 (26:49):
I mean, of all the things about Hitchcock that have
like aged really badly, how much in basically every movie
he hates the police.

Speaker 2 (26:57):
True, And it's just or is the delightful to me?

Speaker 3 (27:01):
Yeah, they're like portrayed as bumbling, incompetent getting in the way,
never helping that kind of thing.

Speaker 4 (27:08):
Yeah, And it's like the whole third act of this
movie relies on like it's barely discussed. It's just like
assumed by Sam and by oh my gosh, what's her name,
her sister, Lila, Lilah, that the cops are not competent
enough or don't care enough to solve this crime, and
they have to take it into their own hands, which

(27:29):
is like, it's great.

Speaker 3 (27:33):
For sure, Okay. So as she's getting settled into her room,
she overhears Norman Bates arguing with his mother about inviting
a strange woman over for dinner, and the mother is
like shaming him and shaming Marian. And then he shows
back up with some food and she's like, oh, your

(27:55):
mom sounds awesome. And then they dine together, but in
the parlor area behind his office, which is that room
full of taxidermy birds. He tells her she eats like
a bird. Then he's like a boy's best friend is
his mother, and he talks about how his mother is

(28:18):
mentally unwell and how he feels trapped there having to
take care of her. She's very controlling all of this stuff,
and Marian's like, well, why don't you put her in
a facility And he's like, no, those places are horrible,
and he gets pretty scary for a moment, and she's like, yikes, bro,

(28:41):
But things kind of return to normal ish and she
goes back to her room, where he then peeps on
her via a hole in the wall while she's undressing.
Then she gets in the shower, we get the iconic
shower scene where Norman bay his mother comes in and

(29:02):
stabs Marian in the shower multiple times. The violins are screeching.
It's iconic.

Speaker 1 (29:11):
It's like that music cue in the Jaws music cue.

Speaker 4 (29:14):
Mmm, Like that's those are the two they just maybe
there's others, maybe Star Wars, whatever doesn't.

Speaker 3 (29:23):
As far as like horror movies go.

Speaker 1 (29:26):
Yeah, yeah, I want to say.

Speaker 5 (29:27):
That it's a Jurassic Park one, but yeah, nothing's quite
as evogetive as.

Speaker 1 (29:36):
It's so good.

Speaker 4 (29:37):
Yeah that I'm excited to come back to that scene
between the two of them right before the death scene too,
because that scene is just like full of things to.

Speaker 1 (29:46):
Talk about for sure.

Speaker 5 (29:48):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (29:49):
So Marian has been stabbed to death, and moments later
Norman discovers what his mother has done. He rushes to
help Marian, but it's too late. She's dead, so he
cleans up the crime scene, packs up her body and
her belongings, including the money that's tucked in the newspaper

(30:09):
that he doesn't realize is there, into her car, and
then pushes her car into this like swamp tarpit kind
of place. Cut to Marian's sister Lilah played by Vera Miles,
approaching Marian's boyfriend Sam to try to find out where

(30:30):
Marian is because it's been several days and no one
has heard from her.

Speaker 4 (30:36):
Then this guy Arbagast, great name, truly sounds like a
guy in a horror movie to me.

Speaker 3 (30:45):
He's played by Martin Balsom. Arbagast is a private investigator
who I think was hired by mister Cassidy, the guy
who's forty thousand dollars is missing. And Arbagas starts going
around to different motels in the area to try to
find Marion, including the Bates Motel, and he's able to

(31:09):
match Marian's handwriting in the registry book with a sample
that he has, so he starts asking Norman a bunch
of questions about did Marion stay there and blah blah blah,
and mister norm is being pretty suspicious, and then Arbagast
sees Norman's mother sitting in the window of the house

(31:32):
and Arbagast wants to question her, but Norman is like no, thanks,
now go away please. Obviously, Arbagast is very suspicious, and
he comes back a little later and goes to the
house to question missus Bates because he thinks that she
has information about Marion's whereabouts. But missus Bates promptly stabs

(31:58):
Arbagast to death in another pretty iconic scene where he's
falling backwards down the stairs. Meanwhile, Lila and Sam are like,
where's our friend, mister Arbagast. He was supposed to call
us back several hours ago. So Sam goes off to
find the Baits motel to see what's going on.

Speaker 2 (32:20):
Quick stop off with some useless police.

Speaker 4 (32:23):
Yeah right, yeah, I guess that the best you could
say of the police in this movie is that at
one point they were kind of doing their best.

Speaker 3 (32:33):
And that's not saying much. So Sam finds the motel,
he can't find Arbagast, so he comes back to Lila.
Then they go to this like deputy sheriff guy who
is like, well, sounds like your private investigator doesn't even
have his facts straight because Norman Bates's mother died ten

(32:56):
years ago, and Sam is like, well, I saw an
old woman sitting in the window, and so there's like
a lot of confusion about who she is and what's
going on.

Speaker 4 (33:08):
God, there's so many moments in this movie that it's
like it really kept hitting for me how iconic the
big beats of this movie are. Because there are multiple
times when I was rewatching it last night when I
was just like, how.

Speaker 1 (33:23):
Could he not know that? Like it's psycho, Like you
should know that. But then if it were possible to
have a clean reading of this movie, would I have
picked up on it? Maybe not. I don't know, We'll
never know.

Speaker 3 (33:37):
It's triaky.

Speaker 5 (33:39):
It does seem a bit weird though that apparently like
Hitchcock emphasis like so so dedicated to preserving these twists,
and like was buying up every copy of like the
book that it was based on to like make sure
people wouldn't know, and like that before it happens, this
that like small shadowing of just like oh no, she's dead,

(34:00):
why would you put right?

Speaker 4 (34:02):
That kind of gives a lot away, and like those
characters have no incentive to lie about it, like, but
it is kind of just like passed over as the
movie goes forward, and they're like, no, no, there's an
old lady up there. We know it.

Speaker 3 (34:18):
Maybe they try to cover their tracks because the sheriff
guy is like, well, if missus Bates is still alive,
then who's that woman buried in the cemetery? And it's like,
well that doesn't do quite enough.

Speaker 5 (34:32):
Sorry, you've still planted the idea, right, Yeah, but I mean,
I guess it's very different because like it's not like
we saw Psycho fresh. We saw it like knowing that
that was going to happen, But that does seem in
retrospect like a little taking the wind out of the sails. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (34:48):
Anyway, so Lila and Sam, realizing that the police are useless,
go to the motel to investigate on their own. They
check in pretending to be a married couple and sneak
into room one. So their suspicion is that Norman Bates
stole the forty thousand dollars from Marion, but they don't

(35:08):
find any conclusive evidence in room one. So Lila wants
to talk to the mother while Sam distracts Norman and
Lila goes into the house. She snoops around the mother's bedroom.
She snoops around Norman's bedroom, which is very like childlike

(35:29):
and creepy. Meanwhile, Norman Bates does not like the things
that Sam is insinuating, so he knocks Sam out and
rushes up to the house. Lilah meanwhile heads down to
the fruit cellar, where she sees Missus Bates from behind,

(35:50):
sitting in a chair. But then Missus Bates spins around
and twist She's a skeleton.

Speaker 1 (36:01):
Who would have know.

Speaker 2 (36:02):
How you spin an old lady around when you yeah,
look at me.

Speaker 4 (36:10):
I do appreciate in this whole sequence, like Sam, I guess,
I don't know like how intentional the movie is making this,
but it felt clear to me where it's like Sam
is I guess well intentioned, but he is just like
not good at doing any any of the things he's
supposed to be doing. Lyla takes control from him multiple times,
and he's always like, I don't know, but then always

(36:32):
ends up going with your plan, and then he executes
his portion of the plan poorly without like I was like,
why would you say I'm going to go distract Norman Bath?

Speaker 1 (36:40):
And then immediately get into an argument with him. What
are you doing?

Speaker 3 (36:43):
Yeah, he's not being subtle at all. He should be like, hey,
let's talk about taxidermy.

Speaker 1 (36:49):
Or something like, right, distract him.

Speaker 3 (36:52):
Instead he's just like you stole money, didn't you?

Speaker 2 (36:57):
And yeah, I mean, if we know anything about Norman
of this point is that he can be let on
a tangent.

Speaker 4 (37:03):
Yeah right, it's like he hasn't talked to anybody in years,
Like he's down to chat, just like, don't talk to
him about his mom or crimes two topics to avoid
and what.

Speaker 3 (37:16):
Does Sam do? But talks about both of those? Yep, okay,
so missus Bates is a Skelington. And just then Norman Bates,
dressed as his mother in a wig and a dress
and he's holding a knife, pops in about to stab Lila,
but then Sam comes in behind Norman and stops him

(37:37):
and saves Lila. Then we cut to a courthouse where
a psychiatrist who has just spoken to Norman Bates off
screen explains a whole bunch of stuff that will unpack,
but basically that Norman Bates has a dual personality where
sometimes he's Norman, sometimes he's his mother and how Norman

(38:03):
had murdered his mother and her lover ten years prior
and then stole her body and preserved it and becomes
his mother. And then the movie ends with a shot
of Norman Bates, but with voiceover from his mother saying,
my son is a bad boy. He's the one who

(38:25):
murdered those people. I wouldn't even harm a fly.

Speaker 1 (38:29):
And then he has that shot that looks just like
Janetly when she's in the car. They're both like like
narrow eyes.

Speaker 4 (38:38):
Almost like stealing forty thousand dollars from a rich guy
is the same as being a serial killer.

Speaker 3 (38:47):
Yeah, not the same. So that's the movie. Let's take
another quick break and we'll come.

Speaker 4 (38:51):
Right back, and we're back. We're back, okay, Leila. We
always defer to our guests. What would you like to
discuss first? What jumped out at you?

Speaker 5 (39:12):
I mean, I've seen it so many times, but I
think this time I kind of ended up going down
like a little bit of a.

Speaker 2 (39:22):
I don't know, like a different perspective on it.

Speaker 5 (39:25):
And I was reminded in like the early days of YouTube,
you know, when people were doing like these things where
they'd re edit movie trailers to make them look like
they were a different genres when Mary Poppins was like
a horror movie and somebody did like Psycho as being
like a romantic comedy, and like, weirdly I found myself
watching this as.

Speaker 2 (39:44):
Being like this is like kind of a Hallmark Christmas
movie ooh, and like hit me out.

Speaker 5 (39:49):
It's they specify it starts on December eleventh, and she's
got like two days in Phoenix, Arizona, and then she
has an overnight drive and then they specify that it's
a week till people start looking for her.

Speaker 2 (40:06):
That's say two three days of the investigation.

Speaker 5 (40:08):
In the end, I swear to god, I think Norman
Baits that final scene happens on Christmas.

Speaker 2 (40:13):
Whoa, And then the whole thing just.

Speaker 5 (40:16):
Like I kind of work backwards from that where I
was like, is this like the most searing satire on
like bullshit romantic comedy Christmas movies? Wow?

Speaker 2 (40:29):
Because we have our like Gal from the city, this kind.

Speaker 5 (40:34):
Of career gal who kind of is like ambitious in
all of these ways and kind of cutthroat, and then
she's kind of got the boyfriend who won't really commit,
but she's really very interested in him. And then this
like folksy guy who loves his mom and has hobbies
takes her in and it kind of fell at like
the forty seven minute mark, I was like, there is

(40:56):
a version of this where he is about to he's
going to spend forty k investing in this motel and
he's about to teach her the meaning of Christmas. And yeah,
it's it's not what I expected to think coming into
this podcast. Part of me and I think the Anthony

(41:17):
Perkins being like such an insane dream boat was just
like I'm actually watching what promising young woman wishes. It
was where we are having like this like Syrian critique
of like the nice guy in like the cultural imagination.

Speaker 1 (41:33):
That's so yeah, fascinating.

Speaker 4 (41:37):
I didn't know very much about Anthony Perkins as a person.
I I mean, he has a fascinating and in many
ways I think tragic life in the way that I
mean he was like a dream boat. He was like
a an icon long before this movie came out, but
was also a very talented actor. He was closeted, I

(41:57):
think for his entire life, and at different points in
his life underwent abusive kind of conversion therapy to try
to not be gay. Anymore, which is very of the
time that's well documented, and ultimately died of AIDS, but
also just had this incredible life and this incredible career

(42:18):
and was an activist his entire career. And it was like,
I really loved learning about him, and I was curious
why he was thought of for this part, because he's
in his late twenties when he did this, and he
was advocated for by Hitchcock, even though I don't know.
I was curious about because it's an adaptation from the

(42:41):
book you were referencing Leila, and Hitchcock got wind of
it and basically bought it out of a stock so
no one could find out about all the Dune kinds
of moments. But originally I was pleasantly surprised at the
changes that Hitchcock and the screenwriter, whose name is Joseph Stefano,

(43:05):
chose to make from the book. I have not read
the book, probably never won. Yeah, But originally I think
it was written in sort of far more broad stereotype strokes,
where the character of Norman is written to be I
think an alcoholic who quote unquote SWAP's personalities when he

(43:28):
drinks too much. He's written to be middle aged, he's
written to be not stereotypically handsome, and it was sort
of suggested, like, what if we cast a young, kind
of iconically hot guy to do.

Speaker 1 (43:41):
This, and how will that affect it? And I think
it was a really.

Speaker 4 (43:45):
Interesting switch that definitely affected my read of the movie
and sort of challenges what you expect from people who
look a certain way when you see them on screen.
Other changes I saw was in the book Marian and
Sam do not have a hotel tryst in the book
that was added for the movie. But something that they

(44:08):
took out that I couldn't really remember if it happened
or not, and it was pleasantly surprised, was that because
Lila and Sam were spending so much time together, I'm
like two hot people in nineteen sixty, They're probably were
probably going to force them together arbitrarily, but they don't.

Speaker 1 (44:25):
And I guess in the book that did happen, where
like Lila and Sam fell in love over the recent
death of someone they both loved.

Speaker 4 (44:34):
So I mostly thought that the changes that they made
for the movie were pretty cool and like serve the story.

Speaker 3 (44:44):
I agree. And then also, as we mentioned, the book,
which was written by Robert block was loosely based on
real life murderer slash grave robber ed Gan, which I

(45:06):
guess might kind of inform like the really bizarre psychoanalysis
that the psychiatrist gives of Norman Bates at the end
of the movie, which again we'll talk about.

Speaker 2 (45:20):
But give him a break. It's Christmas.

Speaker 3 (45:24):
He's like, Merry Christmas.

Speaker 4 (45:25):
By the way, It's true he has to close one
of the most famous movies of all time on Christmas.

Speaker 1 (45:32):
No less, he's having a hard time that scene.

Speaker 4 (45:36):
I also kind of forgot of like I think that
happens in a lot of Hitchcock movies and maybe just
older movies in general, where at the end everything has
to be wrapped up and you're like, wait, there's only
two minutes left, and then a guy gives a speech
and then you're like, oh, okay, I guess that.

Speaker 1 (45:52):
I guess that's how it ends. It's just so abrupt.

Speaker 2 (45:55):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (45:55):
But yeah, so did you, Caitlin, did you go sort
of down the rabbit hole on Edge? I didn't learn
a lot about him personally.

Speaker 1 (46:02):
I just knew that the.

Speaker 4 (46:04):
Author of the book like lived locally, and so it
was something that was like local lore that existed in
his mind.

Speaker 3 (46:11):
I read a large chunk of ed Dean's Wikipedia page
on Scholarly Journal of course Wikipedia. Basically it so I
know everything now, so I don't have a whole lot
of insight here, although I was curious because like the

(46:32):
wikiped again, I should, you know, do more research than
just scholarly Journal Wikipedia. But the Wikipedia page for the
movie Psycho says like, oh, here are the similarities between
Norman Bates and ed Gean. They both like live in
these secluded areas. They both had domineering mothers where they

(46:54):
like had a shrine to them in their house. They
both wore women's clothing. And then I looked into ed
Gean more and I was like, wait a minute, that
may or may not be true. I couldn't. What I
did find is that ed Green made a suit or
started to and this is gonna be graphic and gory,

(47:17):
but he started to make like a woman suit literally
a like skin suit from his victims and or like
bodies that he had grave robbed.

Speaker 4 (47:29):
The list of things found at his house, if you're beware,
you're in for his care, it is are al, steign, scary, scary, bad, horrible,
and yeah, because I also read that very scary Wikipedia page.

Speaker 1 (47:44):
It felt like.

Speaker 4 (47:46):
Because it seems basically impossible and maybe for the best
that that was not shown on screen and like fully
adapted into Norman Bates's character.

Speaker 1 (47:57):
The sub in was a.

Speaker 4 (48:00):
Very transphobic and just generally queer phobic narrative around gender
nonconforming clothing. They're like, well, it's basically the same thing,
and you're like, well, wait, hold.

Speaker 1 (48:10):
On, no, it's not. It's not.

Speaker 3 (48:14):
So yeah, I guess that leads into so I want
to kind of unpack what the psychiatrist says about Norman
Baits and then what the implications of that are. So
the psychiatrist is describing Norman Bates as having some sort
of like quote unquote split personality disorder, and I know

(48:37):
that's like not the real name of anything, but also
the disorder that's being depicted in the movie is like
not a real thing. It's some you know, like Hollywood
version of a disorder. But the point is the psychiatrist
is saying that sometimes he's Norman Baits, sometimes he's inhabiting

(48:58):
the personality and likeness of his mother. He describes Norman
as having been quote unquote disturbed ever since his father died.
That his mother was clingy, demanding, and it seems like
she and Norman had a very codependent relationship until missus

(49:19):
Bates met a man. She took a lover, and Norman
became very jealous. So he murdered his mother and her lover.
But he knew that murdering his mother was bad, that
he was a bad boy, and so he had to
erase this crime in his mind by becoming his mother.

(49:43):
So he stole her corpse and preserved it. And he
was also again he was jealous of his mother and
assumed that she was just as jealous of him as
he was of her. And so if he ever felt
an attraction to woman, you know, the mother side of
him would take control. Again, this is the psychiatrist describing this.

(50:07):
The mother side of Norman would take control. And so
like when he met Marion and he was attracted to her,
that set off the mother, and then he as his mother,
like inhabiting the personality and mindset of his mother. That's
who killed Marion. And then as far as why he
was wearing a dress and a wig, another person in

(50:31):
the courtroom speculates that Norman was a and then he
uses like a very dated term to refer to people
who wear clothes that quote unquote don't match the gender
that they're assigned at birth. But the psychiatrist is like, no, no,
that's not true. Norman Bates wore those clothes to become

(50:52):
his mother and to maintain the illusion that his mother
is alive. So we have this just like really like
quack science, quack medicine explanation of what is going on
in the psychology of Norman Bates. And the movie does

(51:13):
not come right out and say like, this person is
trans and or gender non conforming and therefore they are
a murderer. But this is one of many movies that
equates gender non conformity kind of to use that as
an umbrella term here with mental illness, which, like at

(51:36):
the time, you know, in the sixties and before and beyond,
this was a very popularly held belief.

Speaker 4 (51:43):
Which I think you can trace in Anthony Perkins's own life.
Kind of ironically, it's like this was very much the
normalized opinion to have at the time, to the point
where the lead actor in the movie, whose character is
being subscribed to all this bullshit like was experiencing obviously

(52:04):
not the exact same thing, but was also being treated
as if being queer was a fundamental failure in a
medical condition. I mean, and that was for a decade
after this movie came out, and like what, I think,
it's like these different I don't know, there's so many
different issues and discussions inside of that like minute long

(52:28):
monologue where it's conflating gender non conformity and transness and
queerness with mental illness, and this is like a very
typical problem for horror movies to have. Still is like
completely mis understanding the mental illness that they think that
they're describing, that they are needlessly conflating with gender non conformity.

Speaker 1 (52:53):
So it's just like all of this stuff all at once.
I know.

Speaker 4 (52:58):
We've talked about how in movies, and often in horror movies,
there will be a specific mental illness that is prescribed
as like this is why this character is violent, you know,
needs to be put away, needs to be killed, whatever
the movie sort of prescribes to, and it is like

(53:21):
almost always the better choice to just not attach a
specific diagnosis to something like that. Like no one's asking
that horror movie villains don't exist, but it is still,
I mean, the one that always comes up for me
because I think it just like upset me personally. Was
in the opening sequence of Midsomar, where it's implied that

(53:45):
Florence Pugh's sister murders the entire family because she is bipolar,
which is just like such a huge false swing. Then
that was a couple of years ago, and so it's like,
you know, very normalized within this genre to do that.
But I just wanted to share it quick because I'm
not a mental health professional, Like I was, like, it's

(54:05):
safe to say, like I'm assuming that they're getting this
diagnosis wrong, but I wonder if anyone's written about it.
So I have just a quick passage from the American
Journal of Psychiatry from twenty twenty from Riley manscene Bs,
writing about horror movies and mental conditions throughout the ages.

(54:25):
They write quote. One of horror's most iconic portrayals of
a psychiatric condition was in Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho. The protagonist
Norman Bates, who commit several murders, demonstrates many features of
dissociative identity disorder. Because the ID was not well explored
in media at the time, many interpreted the delusions and
disorganized thought of Norman Bates as schizophrenia. As a result,

(54:49):
audiences generalized the two disorders as one. Psycho portrayed a
psychiatric condition coupled with a new heightened level of violence
on the silver screen, which perpetuated negative stereotypes of violence
by psychiatric patients unquote. And so it's not psycho that
invented this, but it's definitely one of the most popular examples.

Speaker 3 (55:10):
Right, And so to go back to conflating gender nonconformity
with mental illness, which this movie very much does among
many others, And again that was and still is until
pretty recently, was a belief held by medical science and psychiatry.

(55:31):
It wasn't until twenty thirteen when the DSM five was
published that quote gender identity disorder was eliminated and replaced
with gender dysphoria, pulling that from psychiatry dot org.

Speaker 1 (55:48):
Yeah, we're all waiting for the DSM six to drop
because yeah.

Speaker 3 (55:53):
Yeah, so medical science was historically very much in the
mindset of conflating gender non conformity with mental illness, but
not just mental illness, specifically with violence, because there are
many many mental illnesses and I have several of them
that are nonviolent, you know, but like this and many

(56:15):
many movies say like, if you have any characteristics of
gender non conformity, you are mentally ill and therefore violent.
You're an abuser, you're a murderer, you're a psychopath, basically,
And this was basically the only way that trans people

(56:38):
and any gender non conforming people were represented in media
for the longest time, which has obviously had like an
incredibly damaging effect on that community, to the point where
there's still constant legislation trying to bar trans people from
using the appropriate bathrooms because they think that trans people

(57:01):
are going to prey on people in bathroom things like that, and.

Speaker 4 (57:05):
Just legislating trans people out of existence altogether. Which we've
talked about this on the show before. But the doc
that came out a couple of years ago, Disclosure, it like, yes,
illustrates this point very clearly.

Speaker 5 (57:19):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (57:19):
I even pulled a quote from it because I as
part of my prep, I also watched a chunk of
that movie and Laverne Cox points out that quote, Alfred
Hitchcock seems to be obsessed with people who traverse gender
stereotypes as murderers. And then there are clips of Psycho.

(57:40):
There's a clip of the Alfred Hitchcock Hour from nineteen
sixty five. There's also a clip from a movie called
Murder exclamation Point from nineteen thirty, so Hitchcock had a
habit of doing this quite a lot.

Speaker 4 (57:56):
Me.

Speaker 5 (57:56):
One of the things that I find also like kind
of on a next level kind of upsessing about the
narrative that this starts is that also kind of gender
nonconformity comes from like a nugget of abuse that like,
there has to be kind of like an inciting incident,
there has to be something that horribly wrong with your
childhood that kind of like sent you off on this spiral.

Speaker 2 (58:18):
But also like in a broader context, like I hate
these sort of stories.

Speaker 5 (58:25):
About abuse victims necessarily themselves evolving into.

Speaker 2 (58:31):
What it is that damaged them in the first place.

Speaker 5 (58:33):
And I mean, I'm not a scientist, but like I
believe the numbers do not actually manifest in that way.
Like if you are someone who has been through a
horrifically abusive childhood, the idea that you are necessarily doomed
to reenact that. I think it's very very difficult for
survivors of abuse to feel that you are necessarily trapped
in that cycle, but also just like not helpful, and

(58:55):
you know, in any degree, and you know that faces
like the people that most likely to suffer from that
sort of abuse are people from marginalized genders. So it
just all feels like it's buying something very insidious.

Speaker 3 (59:11):
To me, especially because this movie blames normans, like the
thing that makes him become quote unquote disturbed is the
death of his father, almost as if to say, like,
without the presence of another male figure in his life,
like setting him on the right path, he becomes this murderer.

(59:36):
And it also blames his mother for like all of
his bad behavior. And that's not to say that like
there aren't abusive dynamics between parents and children, and that
an abusive parent can't like, you know, affect a person's
behavior and kind of the way their life pans out.

(59:59):
But like the this movie is very much like this mother,
she it's all her fault, and mothers are to be blamed.

Speaker 4 (01:00:07):
Well, I guess I was a little confused about that
by the end, because I feel like, I mean, and
I don't know how intentionally this was done, but by
the end of the movie, just because obviously from Norman,
we get an inaccurate depiction of his relationship with his
mother because he's acting as if she is still alive,
and then at the end we get kind of a
glazed over version of their relationship where it was not

(01:00:30):
clear to me by the end of the movie the
mother and son were deeply codependent, sure, but outside of that,
it was unclear to me what degree of abuse had occurred.
Or it seems like in some ways that you read
it as like Norman was presented as this bad seed,

(01:00:51):
or that a close relationship with his mother manifested a
mental illness, which is just like I was just confused
by the end.

Speaker 1 (01:01:00):
I was like, what sequence of events is it? Is
it trying to push.

Speaker 5 (01:01:04):
Well, because fundamentally we are presented that Norman is like
completely like sexually shut down, like he mean, I think,
kind of give the impression that he's never had any
sort of intimacy with women, whilst his mother, by all accounts,
has had too committed relationships. She was married and then
she had like this fiance as well. So it does

(01:01:25):
kind of beg the question of like how much of
this is sort of his psychosexual obsession with her rather
than necessarily how it really was right, right.

Speaker 1 (01:01:38):
Because it isn't.

Speaker 4 (01:01:38):
I mean, in the movie, it is implied that like
Norman is attracted to women and is attracted to Janet
Lee's character to Marian, and that like that is something
to be resisted and pushed away, and that's I don't know,
maybe that is like a way in of talking about

(01:02:00):
a little bit, because I think just Marian was a
character who I think was better covered and more thoughtfully
covered than I remembered. Because I think a big turn
in Norman's narrative is that he is doing what a
lot of men are doing to Marian in this movie.
He is trying to, you know, lure her and get

(01:02:24):
her alone and spend time with her and have her attention.
But he's doing it in a gentler way than we've
seen men in this movie do it.

Speaker 1 (01:02:33):
So far. It doesn't make her less on guard, but
it's a different approach.

Speaker 4 (01:02:37):
And at this point in the movie where like we're
not really sure who Norman is or what he's like,
and that conversation between them takes a turn where he
gets very prickly and defensive and frustrated when his mother
comes up and the decisions around his family come up
and then when she leaves, he immediately begins spying on

(01:03:00):
her and watching her take off her clothes, which is
not the first time that even happens in the movie,
because that's like how the movie starts, is by us
looking at a window at like Marian topless with Sam
So it's I don't know. I thought they were like
interesting choices of how she's framed where you're always I mean,

(01:03:21):
there are moments where your the camera's very intentionally like
leering at her, and with Norman it's a character driven leering,
but that's not even the first time that you're staring
at Marian through a window with her clothes off, Like
it's just I don't know, the way that she's framed
seems intentional in that way.

Speaker 3 (01:03:43):
Well, it made me wonder because this is like one
of the first, if not the first, slasher movies, and
such a big trope about slasher movies, as we've discussed,
is the punishment of sexuality, specifically women's sexuality, with violence.

(01:04:05):
So if you see teenagers and teen girls having sex,
they are bound to get murdered violently in a way
that's often framed extremely sexually, like the murder itself and
this is the case for this movie, because she gets
murdered while she's naked in the shower in a way

(01:04:26):
that you could argue is sexualized. Where it made me wonder,
is Marian being punished for kind of having The movie
frames what she's doing as having this like secret torrid affair.
It's not quite that. But it took me on my
second watch to realize the dynamic of the relationship because

(01:04:50):
they're talking about like, oh, or should we get married,
or who has been married.

Speaker 1 (01:04:54):
Before or not?

Speaker 3 (01:04:55):
And I was confused by a lot of it, and
I thought maybe at least one of them, between Marian
and Sam, was already married and they were cheating and
having this you know, secret affair where they have to
meet up in a hotel room and all this stuff.
And then it turns out that no, it's just that

(01:05:15):
he can't marry her because he is in debt and
can't support her or something. But I feel like the
movie is still framing it as like this is a
secret torrid affair out of wedlock, and they're having sex
out of wedlock, and therefore Marian has to be punished,

(01:05:37):
and you know, punished violently and in a very sexually
charged way. I don't have like necessarily even conclusive thoughts
or totally fully formed thoughts on it, but it was
just like a lot of different things I was picking
up on.

Speaker 5 (01:05:54):
I think that's how I kind of previously felt, and
like this viewing change that a little bit for me.
I kind of saw the Dynamicus being a bit like
Sex and the City, Mister Big kind of like Sam
is kind of making excuses and she is like wanting
to commit and settled down, and then when she's in
the car, she kind of fantasizes about what he'll say

(01:06:15):
when he sees her, and she's going to be so
like happy to see him in all of you know,
and all of those things. And I didn't feel that
like the movie was necessarily judging her for those desires.
And then like the shower scene is just so kind
of overplayed in my head. But what struck me this

(01:06:36):
type watching it is that she kind of lies out
of the bath, you know, out of the shower, and
you know, he has this really long shot that's just
on her eye, and the water from the shower is
like dripping, and it kind of does appear to be
almost like tears and forst moment you think she's dead,
and then you kind of see that she's It's like
the last flickers of life kind of coming out of her.

(01:06:58):
And the thing she's looking at is the money. It's
a pot of me that it's just like that was
the sin.

Speaker 1 (01:07:08):
Yeah, I didn't know where to fall on.

Speaker 4 (01:07:10):
I guess I was surprised at the amount of grace
the movie shows to Marian. I mean, and maybe that's
me putting too much of a modern view on it,
but it felt to me like the movie was, you know,
not judgmental of Marion's actions.

Speaker 1 (01:07:26):
I don't know.

Speaker 4 (01:07:26):
I mean, I know that there's gendered stuff in this too,
where you know, in movies where male protagonists, you know,
steals or robs someone, it's the pressure to justify it
is not as great. But I felt like the movie
did a good job of making it clear what Marian
was trying to do and how frustrating her life was,

(01:07:49):
and that she wanted out and she didn't want I mean,
I think that there's a way to see it both ways,
but it felt like it was a frustration of feeling
like she had to hide a relationship and a frustration
of feeling like having this relationship would result in her
and her partner being judged on top of being treated

(01:08:12):
like shit at work, on top of being harassed by
every man she comes into contact with.

Speaker 1 (01:08:18):
Not that stealing this money would change that, but it was.
It's a very.

Speaker 4 (01:08:22):
Active decision by her. I mean, I think a lesser
movie would have someone suggest it to her. But it's like,
she gets access to this money, this is her chance,
and she decides to do it.

Speaker 1 (01:08:32):
I like that part.

Speaker 4 (01:08:33):
I don't really feel was done judgmentally. I think the
way that she dies and when she dies was how
I I don't know. I mean, I didn't come down
hard in one way. But I think it is really
interesting that it's like the moment that she decides to
come clean is when she's killed, And I don't know

(01:08:55):
how that sort of affects the way that the movie
seems to be viewing her. I think the way the
movie frames her versus the way she's written are often
kind of in conflict, which we've talked about in a
pajillion movies. I don't really understand why we're leering at
her at the beginning of the movie. I guess I
do understand it more when it's done from the character

(01:09:15):
perspective of Norman, but there is other times it happens
that I don't understand. But there was a quote from
that Hitchcock and True Faux book, which is just extended
interviews with Hitchcock discussing how the shower scene was filmed
and what was supposed to be motivating it, And this
is a quote from Janet Lee within that book, Marian

(01:09:38):
had decided to go back to Phoenix, come clean, and
take the consequence. So when she stepped into the bathtub,
it was as if she were stepping into the baptismal waters.
The spray beating down on her was purifying the corruption
from her mind, purging the evil from her soul. She
was like a virgin again, tranquil at peace, unquote. And
so choosing to kill her at that moment, I don't

(01:09:59):
know what trying to do there, because it doesn't feel
like a punished I mean, I feel like you can
argue that she's killed as a punishment for considering the
sin of stealing or the sin of a relationship that
was not acceptable at the time. But we've just seen
her decide that she's not going to do that, and

(01:10:21):
she's going to return to her virtuous life. Yeah, and
that's when she's killed. And I don't I mean, I
don't know.

Speaker 5 (01:10:28):
It's such a fascinating scene that one with you know,
when they're having the sandwiches in the living room. Given that,
like I think what Hitchcock managers to like do so
skillfully is like you can, I mean the music and
the birds and like the lighting and everything, you know
that this woman is in like grave danger and it's
under threat. But because Giantly's performance is just so good

(01:10:48):
that you can kind of see why she's in like
the mode of like this is just like a harmless
meet you in this is kind of like some eccentric
guy and he's kind of dreamy, and it's like her
why her God is down still comes across in that scene.
But I had completely forgotten that there's something about that
conversation that she has with Norman that makes her change

(01:11:08):
her mind and like decide that she's going to like
go back and make it all okay again and like
give back the money and like change it. And I
and I've rewatched it like two or three times and
I couldn't quite pick up on it. What Hitchcock thinks
Norman is doing to Marian because she seems of like
such a kind of stronger constitution than he is. And like,

(01:11:32):
as much as you know Anthony Perkins's dreamy.

Speaker 2 (01:11:37):
Like that persuasion never felt quite right to me. Beyond
that maybe she has like a moment to pause and reflect, but.

Speaker 3 (01:11:46):
Right, yeah, I couldn't identify anything specific that he says,
unless maybe it's just like him talking about like being
trapped and you know, under the control of his mother basically,
and like she worries that by running away, and like

(01:12:07):
because she'll eventually have to deal with the consequences of
like stealing this money, if she will feel trapped just
by like that stress and the burden or not even
the guilt, the stress of getting potentially caught, right, maybe
she decides it won't be worth it. But whatever it is,

(01:12:27):
I agree that it's not clear.

Speaker 5 (01:12:30):
Yeah, yeah, I mean, but that's why this is a
you know, Christmas romcom movie, like kind of deep, incredibly compelling,
intelligent woman gets like persuaded by this like.

Speaker 4 (01:12:40):
Lame right, the purpose of that scene because I agree,
like I didn't feel like that that conversation resulting in
her deciding to undo what she just started doing like
their predicaments are not similar.

Speaker 1 (01:12:57):
It was confusing why it was switched. I read and like, this.

Speaker 4 (01:13:03):
Makes sense to me, but maybe the execution just like
doesn't work for a modern audience, or maybe it just
doesn't work at all.

Speaker 1 (01:13:09):
Was that that scene was put there?

Speaker 4 (01:13:12):
That scene doesn't appear in the book, and it was
put there so that it's like almost this moment of
like transference, so that you know enough about Norman that
when when Janetly's character dies in a couple of minutes,
your sort of sympathies have been transferred from Marian to Norman.
Which that makes sense that you have to do that,

(01:13:35):
But maybe but I think that like I honestly don't
even know that that had to happen, Like why did
she need to change her mind in order to leave
that room and take a shower?

Speaker 1 (01:13:45):
Like her plan could have been the same. I guess
I don't know.

Speaker 4 (01:13:48):
I mean, I don't like object to it, but I
don't really understand why that switch happened.

Speaker 2 (01:13:53):
But do you think that's just.

Speaker 5 (01:13:55):
Kind of like male gaze in that like Hitchcock felt
that we needed to have like additional reasons to find
her death to be a bad thing. Yeah, because I
ONMI kind of really needed that interaction with the guy
who's doing the tax evasion and the eighteen year old
daughter to be just like I am fully.

Speaker 4 (01:14:13):
On right her and her victimless crimes, like I don't
give Yeah, maybe that is like, oh, we need to
show that she has made the upright, morally pure choice.

Speaker 1 (01:14:24):
And so then when she dies, it's sadder because she
was going to do the right thing. She just didn't
get the chance. She was tempted. Oh that sucks. I wouldn't.

Speaker 4 (01:14:33):
I would rather die stealing forty thousand dollars than die
about and steal forty thousand dollars exactly.

Speaker 3 (01:14:41):
I also wish that Lilah had been poised more front
and center as like the new protagonist after Marion dies.
Then she is because as we were discussing earlier, like
she's better at like going about this whole thing as
far as like investigating her sister's disappearance. She has better ideas,

(01:15:04):
she's got better execution, Like I just I wish that
she had been allowed to be a bit more important
to the story because instead it becomes about like it's
her and it's Sam and it's Arbagaust and then Norman
Bates is the person that we're like, Actually, I don't

(01:15:26):
even know what the movie who. The movie is like
trying to get you to identify with as like the
character you're rooting for post Marian's death, because a protagonist
dying forty five minutes into the movie is a really
weird narrative choice, and like, I don't know what to
I think it rocks. It's interesting, but like audiences aren't

(01:15:48):
trained how to like redirect their empathy to like who now,
and like it's now spread over a bunch of different characters,
and I guess I just wish like that Lila would
have been POI there's like the new main person that
we were supposed to direct our empathy toward.

Speaker 2 (01:16:05):
Yeah, well, I mean I do love that.

Speaker 5 (01:16:08):
Like I said, I love horror movies, but like you know,
sometimes in the beginning of them, you can just kind
of quickly identify who's like cannon fodder that this is
kind of the opposite of that. But I know, I
don't want to kind of bring new bad news. But
like I mean, Hitchcock treats Vera Miles, who played Lilah
Crane like that because he was really angry at her for.

Speaker 2 (01:16:29):
Getting pregnant, so she gives her not much to do,
and he kind.

Speaker 5 (01:16:35):
Of dresses her to be like really like Dowdy, and
she doesn't kind of get like the heroic moment, and
he like really downplays her to me.

Speaker 2 (01:16:46):
He kind of positions her as big, like the the
lesser sister, and.

Speaker 3 (01:16:50):
She's damseled at the end where she has to be
saved by Sam who comes in and saves her from Norman. Wow,
Hitchcock is a monster.

Speaker 4 (01:17:01):
I was really frustrated, like how difficult that information was
to find as well, Like that is not presented as
even in the like sort of reappraisal of Alfred Hitchcock
and female actors and women characters and all this stuff
that doesn't come up a lot, which I guess maybe
is because it's kind of a blip comparatively, but like logistically,

(01:17:25):
even if you're trying to streamline this movie, Sam is
very much in the way in the back half of
that movie. It would have been very simple to give
Lila kind of an elevated role, and you know, maybe
it is more realistic that she'd have to bump up
against this guy that thinks he knows what he's doing
or thinks that he knows her sister better than cheetahs

(01:17:50):
or whatever. Different kind of blips come up between them,
but it's like he's mostly in the way, And like
Lilah's character, we also just don't really know anything about
her outside of the fact that she's Mary and sister.
We don't know like, is she also a single girl?
Are they super close? It seems like they are, but
we don't really.

Speaker 3 (01:18:09):
Know what are her hobbies.

Speaker 5 (01:18:11):
Yeah, there's just that throwaway line at the beginning where
I mean, they do you kind of like off handby
kind of suggests that she's like a bit pathetic or
it's just like, well, you know when Sam talks about her,
like we'll send her off to the movies and turn
the picture of your mother around and kind of get busy.

Speaker 1 (01:18:27):
It's frustrating.

Speaker 4 (01:18:29):
Yeah, I think like we could have I don't know
if the way she would have been written in nineteen sixty.
I also don't really have a clear idea of how
she's presented in the book and how much that was changed.
But it just felt like I was happy she was there,
and I was happy that she was I guess, yeah,
more active than I would have expected, especially because Sam
is in all of those scenes and you sort of

(01:18:50):
half expect that he's going to be like, we have
to do this, this, and this, where most of the
actions they take are orchestrated by her. But ultimately I
feel like we're kind of short changed. The opportunity to
see kind of who she is, and the fact that
that's connected to Hitchcock's malicious treatment of women he worked
with just sort of puts a bow in it. I mean,

(01:19:13):
I guess that this is worth going through in brief
will include links to more thorough sources on this, but
because this is the first time we've talked about a
Hitchcock movie on this show, if you have not encountered
not really a feminist hero that Alfred Hitchcock was famously

(01:19:35):
abusive and coercive to a number of women that he
worked with, I think most famously and the women that
he worked with who has spoken out about it most extensively.

Speaker 1 (01:19:47):
Lele.

Speaker 4 (01:19:47):
You referenced earlier Tippy Hedron in the movie That Made
My Classmates and definitely not me p The Birds, where
not only was she treated brutally on the set of
that shoot, he was also relentlessly sexually harassing her behind
the scenes, controlling her behavior, controlling her food intake, and
just generally making her entire early career a living hell.

(01:20:11):
She spoke out on this in a number of times
starting in the nineteen eighties, but was mostly brushed to
the side until she released mmoir in I think it
was twenty sixteen or seventeen and spoke about it in
more detail. Similar stories exist for the actor Brigitte o'bert,
who played a part in To Catch a Thief, who

(01:20:34):
was sort.

Speaker 1 (01:20:35):
Of taken on as a you know, mentee by Alfred Hitchcock.

Speaker 4 (01:20:40):
She was thrilled about it, she is a young actor,
and then he you know, sexually assaulted her in a car,
lunged at her, tried to kiss her, et cetera. That's
well documented different women who worked.

Speaker 1 (01:20:51):
In his offices.

Speaker 4 (01:20:52):
It was just like a very clear pattern of behavior
that was I think in the way that these stories
very often are just like an open secret internally, but
it's almost tacitly expected that no one should know or
should care because of the looming shadow of like what
this director means to culture and you know, bloody fucking black.

Speaker 5 (01:21:17):
Yeah, yeah, I I'm feeling like very protective of like
my kind of twelve year old film found self, who's
just like, oh my god.

Speaker 2 (01:21:24):
A Hitchcock box set and a Kubrick box set.

Speaker 4 (01:21:27):
What could the role?

Speaker 3 (01:21:29):
It's not there.

Speaker 5 (01:21:35):
I mean, I think the interesting thing about Hitchcock is
I'm not in any way trying to like excuse like
the rank misogyny, and I think you can see it
on the screen, and like, you know, he's a wonderfully
talented director in many regards, Like that doesn't make any
of that suck less. But I think there's a weird
kind of cyclical thing happens that because he's so convinced

(01:21:57):
of like the kind of passivity of men and like
connected to like essentially blaming women for their actions where
they weakly end up being like the most compelling character
in each one of his films is like the men
are kind of like useless babies a lot of the
time because like the original sin must go back to

(01:22:18):
the woman, so she ends up being like inadversently the
most like the.

Speaker 2 (01:22:25):
Core of it all.

Speaker 4 (01:22:26):
I think Married is like a good example of that too,
where it's like the compelling parts of Marian's character, I
genuinely don't know at every turn whether I am supposed
to be fascinated by her and excited by like who
she is and the choices she's making, but I am
If it's an accident, I guess I don't really give

(01:22:47):
a shit, Like it's good that you can find that
inside of her and yeah, like you're saying, Leila, it
doesn't make Hitchcock less of a monster in the way
that he both treated women and viewed them.

Speaker 1 (01:22:59):
This was in the Hitchcock Trufau interviews as well.

Speaker 4 (01:23:04):
He was asked why do you hate women, and he answered,
I don't exactly hate them, but I certainly don't think
they're as good actors as men, and then goes on
to explain at length why women suck at acting and
that's why he has to be mean to them and
be harder on them and dress them suggestively to distract

(01:23:26):
from the fact that they are worse actors than men.

Speaker 1 (01:23:30):
So it's so weird.

Speaker 4 (01:23:31):
It's like he I mean, not weird, it's I guess normal,
But I think he engaged in a mask off discussion
of it that is pretty wild, where he was pretty
open about his misogynist views on women's skills and ability
and valuing them for looks over talent, but also was

(01:23:51):
sort of really determined that how that manifested in his
behavior was never public till well after he died.

Speaker 5 (01:24:01):
Like, gee, Alfred, is there anything else that maybe be
dealing with on the set that the man.

Speaker 2 (01:24:07):
Might be making that job's hot?

Speaker 1 (01:24:09):
Ah, it didn't occur to him.

Speaker 3 (01:24:11):
God And speaking of like blaming women and women are
sinners who must be punted, like the speech that the
psychiatrist is giving at the end, where like poor Lilah,
she just keeps being like, is my sister dead or what?
Like she still doesn't even know what happened to her sister,

(01:24:32):
and the psychiatrist, yeah, just said, well, she was really
sexy and that's why she's dead because she was so
attractive and Norman Bates was so attracted to her and
so aroused by her that he had to kill her. Okay,
she dude, read the room frame this a little bit.

Speaker 4 (01:24:54):
Seriously.

Speaker 1 (01:24:56):
Yeah, her sister literally died.

Speaker 5 (01:25:00):
Yeah, I mean that needs to I mean I did
kind of think that the Bobby movie doesn't need a sequel,
but maybe it's ken watching.

Speaker 1 (01:25:07):
Psycho truly they showed in the Godfather, but there's a
whole world out there.

Speaker 3 (01:25:14):
There's other movies. I don't even know what to make
of this line exactly, but there's a part where when
Arbagast goes to question Norman Bates and he's just like,
was it like this woman was here? I know she was,
and you know, maybe she tricked you, or like maybe
she's trying to scheme you, And Norman Bates says something like,

(01:25:36):
I'm not a fool and I'm not capable of being fooled,
not even by a woman I.

Speaker 5 (01:25:41):
Know, and then like, just to kind of make it
all the more twisted, it was just like, but even
if I was fulled, my mother wouldn't be pulled.

Speaker 2 (01:25:48):
She's okay. Way to make it all the women's fault again.

Speaker 1 (01:25:54):
They're like, what it did? Seem like?

Speaker 4 (01:25:56):
That seems was making an effort to blame every woman
we have seen in the entire movie before or heard of,
because we don't ever see them on What a Treat.

Speaker 5 (01:26:06):
Yeah, this is just my favorite thing of fiction though,
Like these like unassuming man babies, I mean, like the
true evil in the world.

Speaker 2 (01:26:15):
I really like it when they're identified.

Speaker 3 (01:26:17):
Yeah that is Norman Baits to a tea. Yeah, I
mean the point where he still has like stuffed animals
in his bedroom and like, okay, a little tiny baby bed.

Speaker 2 (01:26:29):
Okay, I feel like this is going to be pitch.

Speaker 5 (01:26:33):
This is my next piece, the kind of Norman Baits
to five hundred Days of Summer Pipeline.

Speaker 3 (01:26:38):
Yes, I would read that one percent on it. Does
anyone else have anything they'd like to discuss?

Speaker 4 (01:26:48):
I have one more quick thing just about going kind
of back to the discussion of Norman Baits as an
iconic movie serial killer and how serial killers are this
fixation of and to some extent, invention of the media
and media narratives, and just watching it again. It's not

(01:27:12):
a movie that's discussed in this piece, but it's one
of my favorites and by friend of the cast and
a dear pal, Sarah Marshall wrote a great piece in
The Believer last year called Violent Delights, sort of about
the specifically American media fixation on serial killers and sort
of examining true crime fandom as it exists today. The

(01:27:35):
passage I was thinking of while we're looking at Norman
Bates and the fact that he was inspired by a
real life serial killer.

Speaker 1 (01:27:44):
Although, as you.

Speaker 4 (01:27:45):
Explained, Caitlin, the gender non conforming elements were way mis
translated onto Norman Bates. But just how the serial killers
that media narratives and movies tend to focus on are
serial killers who are other in some kind of way

(01:28:06):
and ignore the most common type of serial murder, which
is a straight man. And so the example that she
uses in the piece is someone who had never heard
of before I met Sarah and she told me about
all these serial killers is Ronald Gene Simmons, who is

(01:28:27):
not a well known American serial killer, but committed at
the time one of the most horrific mass murders, including
his entire family, over the course of two days. And
she speculates the reason that he has not fixated on
is because there is nothing that's other about him. He
is a regular guy who committed a horrible atrocity. And

(01:28:51):
how that is framed as kind of the way of
the world, even though it is like far more criminal
act of murder than we see when women kill people
and when queer people kill other people, it's presented in
a different way where it's like fundamentally evil, this is
at the core of their being, versus when we hear

(01:29:12):
about straight men killing people and usually white straight men
killing people that it's presented as well they were reacting
to the world, not that they are evil to their core.
And so just in the way that Norman Bates is
othered and made to seem effeminate and dresses, you know,

(01:29:34):
like we were saying gender nonconforming, it feels like those
are the characters that really get fixated on and made
examples of in this completely disingenuous way. And I'd recommend
reading the piece. It's really interesting.

Speaker 5 (01:29:47):
I mean, it's fascinating to me that like ed Gean
has generally got like problematic elements aside eight great movies,
and like nobody else I didn't think comes like close
to that.

Speaker 1 (01:30:02):
It's wild. I didn't realize we've got.

Speaker 5 (01:30:04):
This, We've got Texas Chainsaw, we got Silence of the
like that, Like ed Gean, it's really interesting how he
in particular captured like the cultural imagination, the way that
they are yet to make a decent Ted Bundy movie,
and like I mean that, you know, for a million
gross reasons. And I don't even want to like get
into like the way that Ted Bundy has been freed

(01:30:26):
by the media because it just will meersen it is.
But like it is very interesting that like this one
guy and just these couple of details where it's like
we've got it's essentially the grave robbing. It's the kind
of taxi and we maybe doing leather work something with
like people's skin, and it's like just the hint of quickness,
and like that was enough to inspire, Like it was

(01:30:48):
like Helen Detroita, he'd like launched a thousand ships in
terms of like cultural imagination.

Speaker 3 (01:30:54):
Similarly, the movie Psycho, where the last thing I want
to talk about is and I'm not an expert in
film history, but this movie was made in nineteen sixty
when the production code, which we've talked about on the
show before in various episodes, just very quick refresher if

(01:31:14):
any listeners are not familiar. It was this code that
Hollywood movies had to follow from nineteen thirty four to
I believe nineteen sixty eight, I think was when it
was replaced by the MPAA rating system. But basically it
was this like set of guidelines that was overseen by

(01:31:36):
the Catholic Church, where like there could be no nudity
or overt sexuality on screen. A lot of things had
to be implied rather than shown there could be no
graphic violence, all these different things just as a way
to censor movies.

Speaker 5 (01:31:52):
No interracial relationships where they work to treat it as equals,
and that was a fun one.

Speaker 3 (01:31:56):
All kinds of like really disgusting stuff that was scene
as a way to like, you know, promote good American
religious values, when it was really just censoring art and
being nasty. But anyway, by the sixties, the code, the
restrictions of the Code were becoming a bit more lax.

(01:32:18):
They're still being enforced, but filmmakers were like finding ways
to like try to circumvent the restrictions and stuff like that,
and a lot of the things that were in the
original cut of Psycho, you know, the board were like,
you can't have this scene where they're in a hotel
room where she's half naked, like you know, she's topless

(01:32:41):
with just a bra on and they're kissing and they're
not marry, Like, you can't have stuff like that, the
shower scene that you know, they obviously had a lot
of problems with the shower scene, but eventually, like Hitchcock
wormed his way out of it, and a lot of
the stuff that he originally wanted stayed in the film,
and because this was such a huge, like box office hit.

(01:33:05):
This movie was made on a tight budget even for
the time. It was made for less than a million
dollars and it grossed fifty million dollars at the box office.
Like it was just a huge smash hit, to the
point where the original critical reception of this movie was
like pretty mixed, where people were like, this is so controversial,

(01:33:26):
I don't know about this, it's scandalous. But because like
audiences loved it, critics were like, maybe it is awesome.
And then it was like nominated for various Academy Awards
all this stuff not Anthony Perkins, which is a crime ridiculous.
But anyway, this movie basically set a new level of

(01:33:48):
like acceptability in terms of what you could show on
screen with violence and sexuality and quote unquote deviant behavior,
which is a very low noted idea, but this movie
kind of like set a new standard. And again, this
isn't the first movie that showed, you know, like a

(01:34:09):
gender nonconforming person as a violent murderer. The documentary that
we referenced earlier, Disclosure dives into that a lot more deeply.
I'd recommend everyone watching that film. There's also another docuseries
on Shutter called Queer for Fear, which is all about

(01:34:30):
representation of queerness in horror movies. I haven't watched it,
so I wouldn't necessarily recommend it, but it seems interesting
and I'm going to watch it anyway. All this to
say that this movie was so influential in sort of
like shaping the way certain things were represented on screen.

(01:34:51):
And I think so much of the way mental illness
is like widely misunderstood by Hollywood and gender nonconformity is
widely misunderstood by Holiday can be attributed to this movie.
So it has a lasting impact in many ways, and

(01:35:13):
not all of them are good. In fact, many of
them are very bad. Anyway, the end of my tirade.

Speaker 2 (01:35:20):
About that it's a tough one. Like I have to
just like resist the mental gymnastics where I try to
be like it's okay actually.

Speaker 5 (01:35:30):
Because you know, I appreciate a great edit, but no,
I mean, like you have to kind of reconcile even
things that you appreciate, art that you think is great
with its like negative impact on the world, and like
that needs to.

Speaker 2 (01:35:46):
Be I think the priority.

Speaker 3 (01:35:49):
I agree anything else before we do Bechdel tests.

Speaker 1 (01:35:56):
I like this movie. Unfortunately, I think.

Speaker 4 (01:36:01):
In spite of everything we've talked about and it's complete validity,
this movie rips and so that's challenging.

Speaker 3 (01:36:06):
It is tricky, it is I call it.

Speaker 2 (01:36:10):
I kind of created a name for it based on
like Jered Carbichael has a.

Speaker 5 (01:36:14):
Really great episode of The Carmichael Show where he talks
about how like fundamentally we all have to kind of
make a decision based on like how talented and because
something is versus how like damaging it is. It's an
episode where they're discussing Bill Cosby. But I have like
taken that on mentally, and I call it the Elia
Kazan index. He sucked, but he was really good at movies.

(01:36:36):
But so I consider that an index. And it's like you, I,
this is how talented you need. I need you to
be in order for me to recover from it that
you are a force foot.

Speaker 1 (01:36:50):
And everyone's smile ish varies with that, right.

Speaker 5 (01:36:54):
I mean, I trust myself to watch Hitchcock and like
not become like an agent of the patriot right, right.

Speaker 3 (01:37:03):
I know there's certain things that I struggle to let
go of because they were made by someone very problematic,
but they are such a terrific piece of media that
it's a constant battle that I fight every day.

Speaker 1 (01:37:20):
And you're braver than the troops. For that, I we
have to say it again. We run the front lines
of watching movies, all three of us.

Speaker 3 (01:37:28):
Yeah, damn.

Speaker 2 (01:37:31):
The only thing that I would add because it's in
all caps, so I.

Speaker 1 (01:37:35):
Feel like I have to mention simply perfect.

Speaker 2 (01:37:38):
This is the best eyebrow movie I've ever seen in
my entire life.

Speaker 1 (01:37:41):
Oh, you're right.

Speaker 5 (01:37:44):
Yes, every single character, like the Sheriff has like these
tough Yeah, Anthony Papkins, Janet Lye strong brow coming.

Speaker 2 (01:37:55):
On from Sam.

Speaker 1 (01:37:57):
It's true again, Like I.

Speaker 2 (01:37:59):
Don't want to be like reductive, but like what an
eraror for the eyebrow.

Speaker 3 (01:38:05):
I'll allow it. Yeah, you're absolutely right.

Speaker 5 (01:38:09):
I came out of like you know, I'm a millennial.
Like we had a rough time and then we had
to try and grow them.

Speaker 1 (01:38:14):
Back with varying degrees of success. It takes years and
beforward your backward. It's challenging, truly.

Speaker 5 (01:38:24):
So lucky that I was too lazy and too poor
to get regular facing. But it's so nice to see
such a full set of brows across the.

Speaker 1 (01:38:35):
Cast is nice.

Speaker 3 (01:38:36):
I'm glad it's back. I'm glad of thick brow is
back in vogue.

Speaker 2 (01:38:40):
My preference, when does that ever happen?

Speaker 5 (01:38:42):
That like the thing that's like really in fashion and
like really esthetically peasing to everyone. It's a thing that
requires you should do nothing, just leave them.

Speaker 3 (01:38:49):
Can we have more of that?

Speaker 5 (01:38:51):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (01:38:52):
As for the basel tiest, I do believe that this
movie passes.

Speaker 3 (01:38:56):
Is it between Marian and her colleague in the office
is at the beginning?

Speaker 1 (01:39:01):
Yes, whose name is Caroline?

Speaker 5 (01:39:03):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (01:39:03):
Who's Hitchcock's daughter?

Speaker 3 (01:39:04):
Oh, that's Hitchcock's daughter.

Speaker 1 (01:39:07):
Yeah, okay.

Speaker 5 (01:39:08):
Which is a brutal role for your dad to write
you because like there is like a really like damning
line at the end where she's just like, oh, he
would have flootered at me, but he must have spotted
my wedding ring. And that's like a punchline, like of
course he didn't rude Alfred.

Speaker 1 (01:39:23):
I don't think they say her name out loud, but
she does have like her name is like on her desk,
so I considered her to be a named character. She's
credited as Caroline.

Speaker 6 (01:39:34):
They talk about I was actually I was watching this
movie with my boyfriend, and we were like, I don't
know if I have enough like knowledge of nineteen sixty
to understand what the joke is with the sedatives. If
it's a mother's little helper joke, if it's a more
insidious joke than that, I was not clear.

Speaker 4 (01:39:52):
But she was like, don't take astrain. Take this like
tranquil my mom doctor gave me or something. And I
was like, this seems like a joke that probably made
sense at the time. It doesn't seem awesome, but I
don't fucking understand it same anyways, that passed.

Speaker 3 (01:40:10):
That does pass.

Speaker 5 (01:40:11):
Everyone's mother's just coming in and messing up, truly. Yeah,
my assumption with that joke is that like she took
it and then passed out and was able to like
consummate the marriage.

Speaker 2 (01:40:26):
But like maybe that's just oh god.

Speaker 1 (01:40:29):
Oh, I mean that that was one of the theories floated,
But there just was.

Speaker 2 (01:40:34):
She was like so nervous.

Speaker 1 (01:40:37):
That joke was so dated that I found it actively confusing.
But it did technically pass the vecyl tense did there
you go?

Speaker 5 (01:40:44):
There you go?

Speaker 3 (01:40:45):
But onto our perfect metric the nipple.

Speaker 1 (01:40:49):
Scale wofully titled metric.

Speaker 3 (01:40:52):
Not to be confused with. Uh no, never mind. I
was going to make a reference to something that ed
Geen had made, but I won't even if you want
to look it up. Ooh you can, I think one
you're thinking that, yeah, So instead I'll just breeze right
past it. The nipple scale zero to five nipples where
we rate the movie based on examining it through an

(01:41:14):
intersectional feminist lens. I guess I'll give this like a
one one nipple for because it does have interesting female
characters to some degree. Granted, one of them is murdered

(01:41:36):
forty five minutes into the movie. The other one doesn't
get a whole lot of screen time or active participation
in the narrative. But I like both Marion and Lila
as characters. They are strong willed, they are active to

(01:41:56):
some degree. They are damseled and or killed, so they're
kind of they befall. Not a great fate befalls them,
but the time they are on screen there I would
say more interesting than a lot of the male characters.

(01:42:16):
But ultimately, this is a movie that wildly misunderstands mental
illness and conflates gender nonconformity with violence being violent and
does a whole lot of extremely reductive and harmful things

(01:42:41):
to extremely vulnerable communities and kind of paves the way
for a lot of movies to do similar things later on.
So it kind of again doesn't completely lay the groundwork
for this. Earlier movies had done something similar, but this
is a one of the most iconic movies in American

(01:43:02):
cinema history, and the implications of what happens in the
movie have had a very lasting impact for worse. So
I can only give it one nipple, and I'll give
that nipple to janetly because she is cool. I don't

(01:43:23):
know much about her personal life, but she rocked.

Speaker 1 (01:43:26):
She's famously Jamie Lee Curtis's mom, Mommy, and this movie
is about Mommy's.

Speaker 2 (01:43:33):
Went through the nightmare being married to Tony Kasis.

Speaker 4 (01:43:35):
Yeah, she's a survivor, but also not because she died,
but only because she result Anyways, Well, on that note,
I guess, and I meant that critical.

Speaker 1 (01:43:57):
I meant that how dare is she? Technically, if you
live long enough, no one's a survivor.

Speaker 2 (01:44:08):
That is the direction that survivors goes.

Speaker 3 (01:44:11):
Yeah, it's survivor damas temporary.

Speaker 1 (01:44:14):
It's a finite di finishing returns on being alive.

Speaker 4 (01:44:19):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, Okay, Well, I guess I will go one.
I guess I'm tempded to go one and a half because.

Speaker 1 (01:44:24):
Of how surprised I was at what was available in
this movie and what had.

Speaker 4 (01:44:28):
Changed to scale back the misogyny present in the original text,
which I feel like usually that is flipped, but I
don't know. I guess whoever edits the Wikipedia these days
you can choose.

Speaker 1 (01:44:42):
One or one and a half depending on how you
personally feel.

Speaker 4 (01:44:46):
But I mean, obviously, I think that the biggest issue
with this movie is, as we've talked about, how the
character of Norman Bates contains all of these conflicting things
being presented as evil, with the gender nonconformity being front
and center for what has this legacy of harm, and

(01:45:08):
then also mental illness being mischaracterized as inherently incurable, untreatable, violent,
murderous bad. So that I think is the part of
this movie that is just kind of impossible for me
to reconcile to some extent. Then I think that, you know,
whether intentionally or not, there's wait, okay, sorry, my cat's here.

Speaker 1 (01:45:33):
Flee present.

Speaker 4 (01:45:35):
Flee has entered the chating, So loud, But I think
as far as how much we get to know Marian,
how her perspective is prioritized.

Speaker 1 (01:45:46):
For the first half of the movie, I was pleasantly
surprised by I was on her side. It felt like
the movie was on her side.

Speaker 4 (01:45:53):
I felt like Lilah was underplayed, and then that leads
to Hitchcock's like see of misogyny and why Lyla's.

Speaker 1 (01:46:02):
Character was underplayed.

Speaker 4 (01:46:03):
So for everything we've talked about today, I guess I'm
gonna go one and a half for some reason arbitrarily,
and I'm gonna give one to Janet Lee and I'll
give the other half two Vera miles because she had
to endure a lot and didn't get to do what
she should have been able.

Speaker 1 (01:46:17):
To do on this movie.

Speaker 5 (01:46:19):
I mean, I think I'm meantually gonna like do a
reasonably big boost and go with like two and a half.
But like, I don't credit any of that, particularly to Hitchcark.
I think it's sort of he inadvertently centered queer stories
in women's stories, like within this movie in a way

(01:46:42):
that like, for all that it's problematic, it is at
least compelling and like particularly like within the job that
I do, and like I have to just like review
like film for a week and stuff. It's like so
often where I'm just having to see women and anybody
from mardualized gender like use this kind of like narrative

(01:47:04):
tools to kind of help straight suspens character arcs that
like this still feels like refreshing that I was just
like I don't think Psycho expects me to give a
shit about what Sam's up to, and like that's still
kind of.

Speaker 2 (01:47:21):
For all of like the problems with it.

Speaker 5 (01:47:25):
That feels nice to like actually be like ganantly was
given the space to make a character like we are
kind of going into for all of its issue. All
of Norman bates his relationship with Muy is the central
thing in his life. It's not all about him just
trying to like trying to impress other dudes. Like I
don't give a crap in those scenes, but like Sam

(01:47:46):
and Norman are kind of like having some weird alpha
beta male kind of like stand off.

Speaker 2 (01:47:51):
So like, yeah, I don't credit Hitchcock.

Speaker 5 (01:47:55):
With like doing this on purpose, but like where he
made the the people in the film that mattered most
like strangely like suberversive and progressive and exciting to me,
and I I don't know how much like janetly brought
to that, how much like you know the story that

(01:48:15):
I don't know how much like Anthony Perkins bought of
his like personal story. But I feel now watching it
seeing the way that like obviously an actress like Janitely
would have been objectified her whole life, the way that
like Anthony Perkins would have to have like suppressed so
much of his identity, I feel like I'm watching that
on screen and like that's me is like genuinely exciting
and cool.

Speaker 1 (01:48:36):
Oh that's such a cool word about it.

Speaker 3 (01:48:37):
Yeah, do you have anyone you want to give your
nipples too?

Speaker 5 (01:48:40):
I think I feel like I need to give them
to Jamie Lee Curtis, because like what a burden to
charry when your career. I like, and I love that,
like when a NEPO baby is just like so open
with just like hey got down to me and like
three other people for Halloween and they were like, well,
make a couple of headlines if it's like the syrup
Psycher's daughter and just fully open about it.

Speaker 2 (01:49:02):
Like I mean, I love Jamie Lee curs I do too.

Speaker 4 (01:49:05):
I'm like that's I guess the least you could ask
of someone in that position is just to be honest
about it, And it seems like she is like uniquely
able to be honest about it because most people are like,
I don't know, I guess they just did my best
and worked harder.

Speaker 1 (01:49:20):
You're just like okay, But you.

Speaker 5 (01:49:23):
Know, Jack Quaid is like seems to be like the
gen Z version of Jamie Leaue curses because he's out
on those picket lines.

Speaker 2 (01:49:30):
I saw him pictures of him today, so it's like, yeah,
some of that get.

Speaker 1 (01:49:34):
Oh is he Dennis Quaid's song Meg Ryan and Dennis.

Speaker 2 (01:49:37):
Nis Quaid and Meghan right, Meg Ryan?

Speaker 3 (01:49:40):
I remember they have a kid together.

Speaker 2 (01:49:43):
I think they have multiple damn.

Speaker 3 (01:49:46):
Well, well, thank you so much for joining us. Do
you want to talk at all about the Latif Test.
I feel like it's like such a great thing that
you did, and I'd love to like give it credit
if you liked.

Speaker 1 (01:50:00):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (01:50:01):
I mean, it's like the Bechdel Test was my path
into like this being my job essentially, Like I was
working in a completely different field. I had a catering
and events company and then like one night I was
doing till my parents went stoned, and like I just
just like texting my.

Speaker 2 (01:50:18):
Sister and I was just like, ah, there should be
like a Bechdel test for race.

Speaker 5 (01:50:23):
And this was like twenty sixteen, I want to say,
and I promised this wasn't really a thing before I
poined it.

Speaker 2 (01:50:31):
But my sister is very much like a movie note
as well.

Speaker 5 (01:50:34):
She's a film director, and we were just texting about
how like, well, what would a Bechdel test for race be?
And it's like, you know, similar beats of like you
got to have two characters that aren't white, they got
to talk to each other about something aside from what's
going on with a white character. One of them is
definitely not magic, kind of just like silly stuff, and

(01:50:56):
it like really like took off and it was one
of those very stre things were like that's the first
thing I ever wrote. And I remember like meeting with
this editor and he was, you know, full the Guardian,
which is like a big paper in the UK, and
him being just like we're putting it on the cover.
And I had this like completely false belief about like
what being a journalist is. It's just like wait a second,

(01:51:18):
you have an idea and they're like three thousand words,
it got two months see you and a bit kid.
But yeah, like that was that was my intro to
it all, and it was just also, I mean, from
my perspective, like such a kind of interesting delve into
white feminism in like a weird way, because I had

(01:51:38):
a huge number of white female journalists within like the
next couple of weeks just like take my work and
like fully rip it off. And I didn't really understand
what was going on at the time, and in retrospect it's.

Speaker 2 (01:51:53):
Like really messed up.

Speaker 5 (01:51:54):
I had like actually like the editor of the paper
that had published my work write or a talk to
me saying that, like creativity is being wiped out as
we demand diversity.

Speaker 2 (01:52:06):
I mean, like it's it really is. Like twenty sixteen
was like the wild West of intersectionual.

Speaker 1 (01:52:11):
Feminism for sure.

Speaker 5 (01:52:14):
And yeah, in a way, I kind of wish I
knew what I knew now because I would have been
able to stand up myself a bit better. But like, yeah,
the sort of Bechdel test was kind of like my
intro but also like a bit of a curse of
like I've always been interested in like the way that
we like framed these things in the way that we

(01:52:35):
sort of address representation. But it bit me on the ass,
like I had every kind of of retort coming back
to it.

Speaker 2 (01:52:47):
And sometimes I do think now that, like.

Speaker 5 (01:52:51):
As much as like that was kind of just like
something that I tried out, and like now this is
like my full time job, which is awesome. It's tricky
because I think some of those retorts, some of that
ripping off wouldn't happen now, but maybe it would.

Speaker 2 (01:53:06):
I don't know, like if things got that much better
since nineteen sixties.

Speaker 3 (01:53:09):
Psycho not a ton.

Speaker 4 (01:53:12):
It's so absurdly frustrating to me that it's like your
first of all that you were ripped off is fucking ridiculous.

Speaker 3 (01:53:22):
Oh I'm so sorry.

Speaker 2 (01:53:23):
Yeah, check out the dates for the Latif test.

Speaker 5 (01:53:26):
And then two weeks later the New York Times were
renaming it the Diverne test.

Speaker 1 (01:53:31):
Okay, okay, like yeah, that's horseshit. And then on top
of that, I think that there is like a disingenuous
way of framing tests like the Latif test, like the
Bechdel test as a demand when it's just a way
to have a discussion.

Speaker 4 (01:53:49):
And like I think it even today and by people
that I'm generally like minded with I get frustrated when
it's a framework to set a baseline and discuss moving forward.
It's not like you're trying to I don't know, Like
I feel like it's presented very disingenuously, very often as

(01:54:11):
a way to not have an intersectional discussion.

Speaker 3 (01:54:16):
It's why I don't even pay attention if a movie
passes the Bechdel test or not for this podcast, because
it's so little of what we actually talk about, and
so it's such again, it's a jumping off point, and
we have left that jumping off point years ago, at

(01:54:36):
least for the sake of this podcast. Like we are
so far beyond that, and I understand how it still
can be a useful tool, but like in the context
of this podcast, I'm just like, yeah, but what about
the other like one hundred minutes we spend talking about
everything else about the movie?

Speaker 5 (01:54:54):
So yeah, I mean Passon's aren't interesting. I mean, like
they just like and like whether it's kind of even
looking at something like Psycho. Would we be so worried
about the transgender on performing representation Psycho if it was
not part of like something larger and more insidious, it
would just be like a quirk of the movie, but

(01:55:15):
like everything has to be contextualized, and.

Speaker 2 (01:55:20):
You know it's it's about there.

Speaker 3 (01:55:24):
Yes, where else can people check out your writing? Follow
you on social media, et cetera.

Speaker 5 (01:55:31):
So I'm at Leila Underschool Latif on Twitter before at
least before Yeah, I've got a host Truth of Movies,
which is a podcast where we review like the week's
latest releases.

Speaker 2 (01:55:49):
Yeah, I'm a contributing.

Speaker 5 (01:55:50):
Editor and Columbus for Total Film right for the White
Lives Sit and Sound about to be the Indie Wire
representative on the ground for the Venice.

Speaker 2 (01:55:59):
Film first should be fun. Yeah, oh my god, no
celebrities or actors is gonna come. But like I'm hoping
that they like put that budget into giving us free food.

Speaker 3 (01:56:09):
That'd be nice.

Speaker 1 (01:56:10):
Yeah, I'm so excited to read your cover.

Speaker 3 (01:56:13):
And thank you so much for coming on the show.
Come back anytime, you so much.

Speaker 2 (01:56:18):
I'm making this show. I freak love this show.

Speaker 1 (01:56:20):
Thank you, I love making it. Thanks for being a
part of it. And yeah, come back anytime, bring back anything.

Speaker 2 (01:56:26):
I'm just trying to think, like what could be like
a more hardcore thing than this.

Speaker 1 (01:56:32):
Undiscussable movies guests, I.

Speaker 3 (01:56:37):
Still feel like we've only just scratched the surface.

Speaker 2 (01:56:40):
Like I'm like, God, yipes, let's not do that.

Speaker 1 (01:56:47):
Let's not.

Speaker 3 (01:56:48):
But hey, you can follow us at Bechdel Cast. You
can subscribe to our Matreon at patreon dot com slash
Bechtel Cast, where you get two bonus episodes every mon month,
plus access to the back catalog, and it's all for
five dollars a month.

Speaker 4 (01:57:07):
Yes, you can also get our merchover at teapublic dot
com slash d Bechtel Cast. And with that, let's get
pulled out of that scary bog at the end of
the movie.

Speaker 3 (01:57:20):
Oh yeah

Speaker 5 (01:57:24):
Bye.

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