Media Coursework: Psycho

 How Effectively Does Hitchcock Manipulate the Audience in ‘Psycho’?

The 1960’s movie ‘Psycho’, produced by Alfred Hitchcock, was undoubtedly a groundbreaking and revolutionary film. Psycho was a landmark movie and is often referred to as the ‘‘mother of the modern horror movie’’ as it is the first horror movie that received so much success. The film itself only cost $800,000 to make, yet has earned more than $40,000,000 worldwide, mainly due to the fact that it pushed and broke the boundaries of the horror genre, creating a whole new level of fear, atmosphere and tension. Throughout the years, many directors have been making movies that seem to "scare the hell out of people". Horror films are movies with a purpose to strive to elicit fear, horror and terror responses from viewers. Alfred Hitchcock successfully makes ‘Psycho’ fit into the Horror Genre as it successfully does these 3 things. This is largely because of the iconography and variety of clever techniques used by Hitchcock to create and maintain suspense throughout this outstanding film. These devices include camera shots, music, graphics and dramatic irony. The movie uses the audience's imagination and forces them to think for themselves. Nowadays the film is still considered to be a ‘Classic’ because of all of these features. However the movie faced major controversy, as it was different. Horror films before this were more unrealistic and gruesome. On the other hand, ‘Psycho’ was more realistic as the events could happen in reality. ‘Psycho’ was famous for becoming the first ‘Psychological’ horror film rather than sticking to the common ‘Supernatural’ plot. Alfred Hitchcock claimed that "One must never set up a murder. They must happen unexpectedly, as in life." Another example of a reoccurring and realistic theme in the movie is about the possible side effects of people with mental illness, as the audience became more aware of this because of the character of Norman Bates, the ‘Psycho’. The stereotype that is given about these type of people is that they can do things which a ‘normal’ human being would find as  unimaginable, as these ‘Psychos’ also have more than one personality, with one of them being very ruthless or dangerous when you least expect it. The public love Horror movies, but a very interesting question is, Why do they love the genre? Is it the Fear? Is it the Horror? Or is it simply the Plot?  There are two good explanations as to why. The first is that the person is not actually afraid, but excited by the movie. The second explanation is that they are willing to endure the terror in order to enjoy a great sense of relief at the end.

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Themes of the supernatural colliding with our world were very common in the plots of such films. Otherwise the theme can be completely ‘supernatural’ without any trace whatsoever of reality. These movies included Ghosts, Wizards, Magic etc. People liked these kinds of Horror Movies as they were very interesting to watch, even though they had very unrealistic plots which couldn’t happen for real, however they were still frightening plots which the Directors still cleverly came up with. However Alfred Hitchcock’s ‘Psycho’ was made more realistic as the events could happen in reality. ‘Psycho’ then became the most successful Horror ...

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