Norman Bates
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Anthony Perkins as Norman Bates |
Norman Bates is a
fictional character created by writer
Robert Bloch as the central character in his novel
Psycho. The character was based on real-life
serial killer Ed Gein. Bates was portrayed by
Anthony Perkins in
Alfred Hitchcock's seminal
film adaptation of Bloch's novel. Perkins' performance is so
iconic it seems to have become the basis for much of the
myth of the modern serial killer. Bates was later played by
Vince Vaughn in
Gus Van Sant's
1998 remake of the Hitchcock classic.
Bates suffered severe emotional (and, it is suggested, sexual)
abuse as a child at the hands of his mother, Norma Bates, who preached to him that women and sex were
evil. The two of them lived alone together in a very unhealthy state of emotional dependence after the death of Bates' father. When Bates was a teenager, however, his mother took a lover, making him insanely jealous. He
murdered them both with
strychnine and preserved his mother's
corpse. Bates developed
multiple personality disorder, assuming his mother's personality, repressing her death as a way to escape the guilt of murdering her.
Bloch summed up his personalities in his stylistic form of
puns: As "Norman" Bates, the little boy, he was dominated by his mother, and had to do what she told him. As "Norma" Bates, he dressed in her clothes, mimicked her voice, and killed anyone who threatened to come between her and her "Norman," especially attractive young women. As "Normal" Bates, he was a (barely) functioning adult who could run the hotel and keep peace between the other two personalities.
He was finally arrested after he murdered a young woman named Mary Crane (called Marion Crane in the film) and a private investigator sent to look for her. He was declared
insane and sent to an institution, where the "mother" personality completely took hold; he completely
became his mother.
The characterization of Bates in the novel and the movie differ in some key areas. In the novel, Bates is in his mid-to-late 40s, short, overweight, homely, and more overtly unstable. In the movie, he is in his early-to-mid-20s, tall, slender, and handsome. Reportedly, when working on the film, Hitchcock decided that he wanted audiences to be able to sympathize with Bates and genuinely like the character, so he made him more of a "boy next door." In the novel, Norman becomes Mother after getting drunk and passing out; in the movie, he consumes no alcohol before switching personalities. Perhaps the most significant difference between the novel and the movie is that, in the novel, Mary Crane is "Mother"'s first victim; in the movie, Bates kills twice as his alternate personality before murdering Crane.
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Norman Bates as "Mother" in the infamous shower scene |
In the sequels to the original film, Bates (once again portrayed by Perkins) was released from the institution 22 years later, but the "Mother" personality eventually resurfaced and he started murdering people again. After another arrest and institutionalization, he married one of the hospital's nurses. When his wife became
pregnant, however, he tried to kill her and himself by locking them both up in his mother's old house and setting it on fire; he wanted to prevent another of his "cursed" line from coming into the world. (The film in which this occurs,
Psycho IV: The Beginning, implies that Bates' mother was
schizophrenic and passed the illness onto him.) He relented at the last minute, however, when his wife professed her love for him, and they escaped. After they had their child, Bates finally overcame his mother's psychological hold on him.
In the
pilot episode of the failed TV series
Bates Motel, Bates, who was never released from the institution, befriended Alex Kelly, a fellow inmate who murdered his stepfather, and
willed ownership of the titular inn to him before dying of old age. As the pilot never developed into a series and bears almost no relation to previous novels or films, it is considered non-
canon.
Bates also died in the book
Psycho II, Bloch's
1982 sequel to his novel.
While he entered the public consciousness as a
villain (albeit one with some sympathetic qualities), he developed throughout the film's sequels into a
tragic character and the series'
protagonist.
*
The Psycho Movies.com*
Horror Asylum: Norman Bates
