Psycho

  Psycho by Alfred Hitchcock was most definitely a mind twisting movie that definitely follows the Hermeneutic Code, because of the movies ability to create a riddle in the beginning, and then go on to produce delays and obstacles throughout the story that keep the audience guessing. However, once seen, the movie will never be watched with the same type of suspense and guessing the next time, because of it’s irreversible syuzhet. 

During the exposition, one would think that the movie will be solely about two lovers, Sam and Marion, who are very much in love but won’t get married because Sam doesn’t want Marion to live in poverty. Marion doesn’t care if they live in poverty, as long as they are together and have a respectful relationship. One then realizes that the plot revolves more around Marion alone, and the question proposed in the enigma is if Marion will ever have that respectful relationship with Sam and how she will get it if she herself is not living lavishly working as a secretary for a bank. After she is given the orders to put $40,000 in a safety deposit box, one can see that the money put in front of her creates quite a dilemma. She wants to take it, and probably use it to run away and marry her lover, but is torn because it is obviously not the right thing to do. She then does decide to take the money, and leaves town. One gets the sense that Marion is starting to go crazy because of her paranoid behavior while driving. She constantly looks in the review mirror of her car for suspecting followers and imagines the different conversations that are happening between her coworkers, family, and others involved in the plot thus far. She then stops at Bates Hotel for the night, where she is introduced to a new character, the hotel keeper Norman. A delay is produced shortly after she checks into Bates Hotel. The audience is blocked from ever knowing if Marion will have a happy, respectful, married life with Sam, because she gets brutally murdered by a dark figure while taking a shower. During this scene, she gets slashed many times, and the scene is accompanied by loud harsh music that was probably produced by playing fifty different violins together in what is in our present day referred to as “Slasher music.” Blood is shown as flowing down the drain, and as the scene changes to the next one, the music subsides and the drain hole becomes a close up of dead Marion’s eye. This delay causes readers to have to associate with a new character, and wonder what will happen next if the main character is no longer present in the story. This is when a new enigma is created, because the audience starts to wonder who the crazed character was that murdered marion, and if the hotel keeper, Norman, is also mad because he helped clean up the mess in the bathroom that was supposedly done by his killing mother. The story proceeds to follow him and the characters around him for the remainder of the movie. There is a final disclosure at the very end of the movie, when the audience is told that Marion’s murderer was Norman as his mother. Norman had in fact gone mad, and believed that he was two people in one.
  Since the movie was such a mind twisting movie, people who are really into it can perceive it in many different ways, making it a writerly text type movie. One keeps thinking about wether Marion is going to go crazy or not, especially with the aid of the panicked/creepy music that went along with her moments of paranoia. However, she gets killed in the first third or so of the movie, and being the star of the movie, the audience gets thrown for a loop. They now have to associate with a new character, which becomes the hotel keeper, Norman. Norman talks about being in a mad house and being best friends with his mother, and shows a very intense type of expression on his face when doing so. It makes the audience wonder if there is something really wrong with him. The audience then remains guessing as to what is going on; especially after they find out that his mother, who is heard through many of the scenes yelling at her son, has been dead for ten years. Viewers are forced to think of different solutions to what is going on at the Bates Hotel, but then are given resolution at the very end, which is why it is not considered a readerly text, because details are not just given as “ready-made” meaning throughout the movie.