Psycho

Throughout the film, Psycho, directed by Alfred Hitchcock, it is clear how sexual fantasies and the male gaze play a big role in films, especially horror films. In the article, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema”, by Laura Mulvey, “the fascination of film is reinforced by pre-existing patterns of fascination already at work within the individual subject and the social formations that have moulded him.” This basically means that the male gaze is pre-existing and that society as well as experiences have moulded Norman Bates.

The male gaze is defined as an assumption in visual or creative arts that an audience interprets from a typical heterosexual male objectifying or sexualizing women for pleasure. This is apparent to the audience throughout most of the film. One scene, in particular, that demonstrates this behavior is when Marion Crane is undressing to get into the shower and Norman Bates spies on her through a peephole in the motel’s office. In the article, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema”, Mulvey says, “the cinema would seem to be remote from the undercover world of the surreptitious observation of an unknowing and unwilling victim.” This scene depicts that Norman Bates gets sexual gratification from watching women who visit his motel all of which are both unwilling and unknowing.

After the death of his mother, Norman Bates developed some sort of a split personality disorder. He has always had an abnormal and disturbing fascination with his mother, which worsened after her death. In the book, “The Dread of Difference”, Linda Williams says, “Clearly the monster’s power is one of the sexual difference from the normal male.” Norman displays two different personalities, one being his mother and the other being his actual self. Norman’s actual personality is shown a majority of the time until he starts to get sexual gratification from watching women while they are unaware of his prying eyes. This sexual gratification that Norman exhibits causes his mother’s personality to come out and take control. His mother’s personality sees these women as a threat to their relationship and acts out violently towards them. The audience first becomes aware of this violence when Norman stabs Marion while she’s showering. Norman acts out violently because of his mother’s jealousy towards these women, “She first symbolizes the castration threat by her real absence of a penis” (Mulvey, 1975).

It has been shown that the male gaze is used to increase views on films, especially horror films, because it sexualizes and objectifies women. This attracts the young heterosexual male crowd to come and watch these films; which is exactly what early horror films were trying to do. As time has evolved, objectifying and sexualizing women has become a trend in different films.