{"id":15436,"date":"2020-06-25T22:30:00","date_gmt":"2020-06-25T19:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/anthony-perkins-will-always-frighten-us-in-psycho\/"},"modified":"2020-06-25T22:30:00","modified_gmt":"2020-06-25T19:30:00","slug":"anthony-perkins-will-always-frighten-us-in-psycho","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/anthony-perkins-will-always-frighten-us-in-psycho\/","title":{"rendered":"#Anthony Perkins Will Always Frighten Us in \u2018Psycho\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#Anthony Perkins Will Always Frighten Us in \u2018Psycho\u2019<\/strong>”<\/p>\n

Acting is an art form, and behind every iconic character is an artist expressing themselves. Welcome to The Great Performances<\/strong>, a bi-weekly column exploring the art behind some of cinema\u2019s best roles.<\/em><\/p>\n
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Before being offered the role of Norman Bates in Psycho<\/b>, <\/em>Anthony Perkins <\/strong>was considered a new James Dean type, good looking and sensitive, with chops straight out of The Actor\u2019s Studio in New York City. But prior to 1960, he had yet to be cast in a role that neared the complexity he\u2019d tackle in Norman, and the ones he did get relied more on his charm than any of his idiosyncrasies. It was his natural amiability that attracted director Alfred Hitchcock<\/strong> to Perkins for the role. Hitchcock wanted to weaponize the nice guy persona that the actor was known for so he could shock the world with his boyish psychopath. In this regard, Psycho<\/em> typecast Perkins long before Perkins would become typecast by Psycho<\/em>.<\/p>\n

This typecasting is an integral part of what makes Anthony Perkins both frightening, and riveting, as Norman Bates. We\u2019d never assume that a cherubic faced young man like him could be harboring such dark secrets, like matricide and multiple personalities. But in the late 1950s, Freudian psychoanalysis was just gaining popularity, and we were waking up to the untold depths of the human mind. We began to have a better understanding of how something like past trauma, or in Norman\u2019s case a complicated relationship with a parent, can turn someone into a monster.<\/p>\n

Hitchcock brought an incongruity to his killer by casting an actor you wouldn\u2019t expect to play a villain, but this was in stark contrast to what Robert Bloch wrote in the original novel. In it, Norman is a larger, more imposing figure with thick glasses and \u201cblubbery fat, short hairless arms, [and] a big belly\u201d, a far cry from Perkins\u2019 boy next door image. Despite this, his performance is still deeply informed by the inner monologues that Bloch wrote for the character. They speak to his masculine duality; struggling with the transition from boyhood to manhood. As Bloch writes,<\/p>\n

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\u201cIt was like being two people, really \u2013 the child and the adult. Whenever he thought about Mother, he became a child again, with a child\u2019s vocabulary, frames of reference and emotional reactions. But when he was by himself\u2026he was a mature individual. Mature enough to understand that he might even be the victim of a mild form of schizophrenia, most likely some form of borderline neurosis.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Throughout the book, Norman is constantly reassuring himself that he is a man, with manly responsibilities and duties, like a kid insisting to his parents that he\u2019s a grown-up. He\u2019s an adult trapp<\/a>ed in the mind of a child. Anthony Perkins\u2019 Norman describes this feeling of entrapment to Marion (Janet Leigh<\/strong>) in his parlor, \u201cWe\u2019re all in our private traps. Clamped in them. And none of us can ever get out. We scratch and claw, only at the air, only at each other, and for all of it we never budge an inch\u2026I was born in mine, and I don\u2019t mind it anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n

Using the novel as a framework for his characterization, Perkins was able to embody these themes Bloch described. He realized them in tiny, almost imperceptible ways, like Norman\u2019s ever-present bag of candy corn.<\/p>\n

The legacy of why Norman eats candy corn is disputed. Some believe that it is a nod to Emmett Lee Dickinson, inventor of candy corn, while Hitchcock scholars say it was an improvisatory choice from Perkins, resembling how a bird pecks at seeds, an extension of the character\u2019s interest in taxidermy. It can also be interpreted as a personification of Norman\u2019s stunted childhood, his way of holding on to the past by nervously eating something he loved as a kid. Under extreme stress, he regresses to the child Norman is described as. You see it when he ditches Marion\u2019s car in the swamp.<\/p>\n