MADness—the Blog

Don DeLillo:

Everybody remembers the killer’s name, Norman Bates, but nobody remembers the victim’s name.  Anthony Perkins is Norman Bates, Janet Leigh is Janet Leigh.  The victim is required to share the name of the actress who plays her.  It is Janet Leigh who enters the remote motel owned by Norman Bates.

That’s from DeLillo’s new novel, a slim volume called Point Omega.  The opening and closing sections, “Anonymity” and “Anonymity 2,” take place on consecutive days in a museum gallery exhibiting Douglas Gordon’s 24 Hour Psycho, a screening of the Alfred Hitchcock film that slows the events of its 109-minute running time so the action extends one full day.  It’s an interesting experiment—both the book and the Gordon installation.  DeLillo fans will want to check out Point Omega, but Psycho fans may want to also.  It’s just 117 pages—it flies by in any case.

You can read it while listening to Bernard Herrmann’s frightening score featured on the front page today.  But DeLillo got me thinking:  is it true that “nobody remembers the victim’s name”?  I do.  It’s Marion Crane, and the point of course is that she’s the bird.  That’s an important point in understanding the film, and in understanding Hitchcock, for that matter.  Sir Alfred had a fascination with birds and with actresses of a certain type, especially at that time in his career.

Perhaps “nobody” is overstating it then, but DeLillo does have a point.  People are more likely to describe the victim in the shower as Janet Leigh.  She’s a real person.  It’s more scary that way.  Marion Crane’s death is unfortunate, Janet Leigh’s is tragic.  People often confuse actors for their roles, and when a character experiences sheer terror, we’re more apt to identify with the actor than just the role.  Norman Bates, on the other hand, is more scary than the real-life Anthony Perkins.  Bates is the stuff of myth.  We love to demonize—to make the monster non-human—and it’s easier to do that with Bates than with Perkins.