Hi Ken,
"As the psychiatrist says...." (!?). Ah ha! You're dealing within the realm
of prete a porter explanations: As Abe is not really crazy because we
all know that the god he heard was real, so likewise, Bates, by contrast,
is because the psychobabble Hitch gave us absolutely must be believed as
true. Not.
What Hitch offers the viewer is not a conclusive view of Bastes, but
rather yet just another scene; which in this case offers us nothing but the
received wisdom that we "want" to hear. Pursuant to "the Code", please remember
that happy conclusions were demanded, and so received--albeit by those of genus
with a deep sense of irony.
Bates likes to kill people and also likes to dress up like momma to do it,
yet no where in the film is Bates shown to be a potential
killer. Rather, again, it's only a coda that pulls things together for the
naïve viewer.
Simply put, the world is full of people who derive pleasure from killing.
True, the overwhelming majority of us need to be threatened with death in order
to take a life; and the "message" from Hitch, so to speak, is precisely the
opposite of what the foolish perceive it to be. In short measure, natural-born
killers are among us, and we have no real way of determining who they might be.
Moreover, if we listen to the offices of psychiatric medicine--thereby inferring
that the emotional pain of a dead mother is transferred into a Thanatos of sorts
which, in turn is manifested in the subject's taking on her identity, blah,
blah, then we're totally screwed. Lesson one of The Hitch is never listen to
authority.
In the simplest of language, ignoring society's number one rule for the
sake of personal pleasure is about as Nietzschean as one can get. The
cross dressing falls into that category, too; but cannot predict homicide any
more than I can walk the streets and "see" which of a dozen or so young men in
my field of vision has murdered women and children in Iraq. What we might only
infer is that there's a sense of personal freedom in cross-dressing that,
perhaps expresses itself in other ways ofr the homicidally-inclined. Cimino,
surely, would deduct that those who enjoy killing deer have no real objection to
going to Vietnam.
Abe is different. He hears voices. better the lone psychopath than the
millions who have heard the resonance of our semitic godfather.
Bill Harris
Sent: Saturday, April 05, 2008 2:21
AM
Subject: Re: Bill Harris's post 'Re:
Last-minute rescue'
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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