Psycho analysis- Norman Bates and the birds

This scene from Psycho is the first major dialogue between Norman and Marion, after she arrives and settles in at Bates Motel and takes place in Norman’s office behind the reception. Norman is composed on the right hand third of the frame in a low expressionist angle to connote his power and represent that he’s dominating over Marion, like how ‘Mother’ dominates Norman.

Present in the mise-en-scene behind Norman there are stuffed owls. These birds of prey represent Norman’s inner vicious nature and give the ideology that he’s an aggressive predator. Like Norman they're framed from a low expressionist angle, giving more menacing and fearful connotations. The owl is a predator, seemingly swooping in for the kill. This gives us the ideology that Norman is also tracking Marion “Crane,” prey for an owl and also prey for Norman.

The lighting in this shot is low key and motivated by the lamp to the bottom left of the frame and creates long shadows that appear long the frame. The most notable shadow belongs to the owl on the back wall and it reinforces the connotations given by its framing in the shot. The lighting also illuminates one half on Norman’s face giving him connotations of being half good and half bad. This also reinforces the ideology of Norman’s mental state being schizophrenic with one half being good and the other bad.

The scene also features parallel music that reflects the mood of the conversation. The conversation itself was about the idea of “personal traps” and links to how Marion ran away from her life to be with her lover Sam, a divorced man, which puts them outside of the cultural dominant ideology (CDI) as he’s divorced and she’s in love with him. As they’re outside the CDI it gives the conversation creepy and unsettling connotations for the context of the time.

Using Todorov’s Narrative Theory on this scene it takes place during the disruption period with Norman posing a threat to Marion as she came to Bates Motel and has to deal with Norman’s “Mother” alter ego.  Applying Propp’s character theory we can see that Norman takes on the “psycho killer” archetype and Marion takes on the Female Victim archetype with Norman having conventions like being quite shy and likeable and schizophrenic whilst Marion has conventions like being blonde, committing a crime (stealing money) and having sex with Sam at the start of the film.