Elbows and Assholes: The Anal Work Ethic in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho

Abstract

The commentary on the infamous shower murder scene in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960) runs steadily in the direction of a theoretic crapshoot. In the film, Marion Crane (Janet Leigh), a real estate clerk, absconds with $40,000 in order to marry Sam Loomis (John Gavin), with whom she is carrying on an affair. She flees and, during a freak storm, checks into a desolate motel, where she meets Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins), who seems at first gentle, friendly, and almost childlike. Norman, though, is not “normal”: after once murdering Mrs. Bates and internalizing the mother’s voice, he reappears in drag to stab Marion to death while she takes a shower. He disposes of the corpse in a swamp close to the motel, motivating Sam and Marion’s sister Lila (Vera Miles) to investigate the disappearance. Robin Wood, concentrating on a close-up of Marion’s eye after the murder sequence match-cut to the shower drain, argues that this scene allegorizes “the potentialities for horror that lie in the depths of us all … which have their source in sex.”¹ Raymond Durgnat agrees with Wood’s assessment, while also suggesting that this scene exaggerates and counterpoints the quickie with Sam that opens the film’s narrative, in that it more fully emphasizes Marion’s “sensuality.”²