On Sat, 5 Apr 2008 00:02:43 -0500, bill harris <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>When people add "Voice of god" to their inner repertoire they're just
offering a cover story; which is to say that Bates, indeed, was god-like in
his non-Abrahamic refusal to do so. To trot out another Philosopher of
record, then, it would seem as if Bates were the Nietzschean hero who
refuses the supernatural crutch; thereby taking full responsibility for the
delusional life.
Hi again Bill. Norman Bates god-like and/or an exemplary Nietzschean?
That's a new one! There ARE Nietzschean aspirants in Hitchcock (e.g., in
ROPE and perhaps in VERTIGO), whom the respective films pretty much put in
their place by the end (as I said the birds do to the humans in THE BIRDS),
but Norman Bates is an absolute parody of such a being. I do in fact see
Norman as a parody of a 'tragic hero' or even of Napoleon (the film's
reference to the 'Eroica' Symphony). At the end, as he sits contemplatively
in his cell and intones (in Mother's voice), 'He wouldn't even harm a fly',
the moment parodies both Buddhism and 'all passion spent', to quote the last
line of Milton's poetic tragedy 'Samson Agonistes'. Despite the 'blinding'
imagery in the film, Norman is not Samson, blinded by his enemies and
extracting a terrible revenge. Norman is a nut-case.
However, a related matter:
>As far as your pan-archetypes go, perhaps I might delicately mention that
we're talking here of murder; so no, I don't consider life-taking to fall
within the same genre as professor, husband, father [i.e., role-playing].
I meant of course, Norman as an 'archetype' of the human situation, but in
extremis (the archetype, not the human situation). This is the lesson,
after all, of Raymond Bellour's celebrated essay on PSYCHO, "Psychosis,
neurosis, perversion". The film begins in normality, and ends with Norman
('Nor man nor woman' perhaps? Or simply 'Not normal'?).
Norman is a psychotic, the most extreme point of the spectrum that includes
LESS extreme instances of deception and perversion and lust and aberrant
behaviour (we meet four of them in the realty office at the start: impetuous
Marion, soon to steal $40,000; timid Caroline, who took sleeping-pills on
her wedding night; affable Lowery, who keeps a bottle of liquor hidden in
his desk; and sleazy Cassidy, who defrauds the tax people and covets a dirty
weekend with Marion).
Norman is a role-player, too. As the psychiatrist says, 'When reality came
too close' he dressed up, even wearing a cheap wig of female hair.
>Epistemologically, this is to say that at a certain point symbolic
interactionism loses its ability to coherently describe the world, thereby
becoming nonsense.
The alternative to 'symbolic interactionism' is, I take it, good healthy sex
(or even one of Cassidy's dirty weekends)?
In Abraham's day, they didn't have the Pill. Could that have been how all
the 'nonsense' got started?
I'm (at least half-) serious!
- Ken M
http://www.labyrinth.net.au/~muffin/news-home_c.html
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