Halloween night, being sick with Hitchcock

I have come down with my second batch of amagdalitis....tonsilitis here in Chile. As it is Halloween, americanized Chile enjoys in the spirit as well. So I spent my sick evening in bed, all by myself, with Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho. I love this movie. I have always, for some reason or another, enjoyed the morbid, disturbing, off-putting stories: real or fake. I saved all the newspapers from the Columbine tragedy when I was twelve. I found myself drawn to watching America's Most Wanted when I was between six and eight, a reenactment of a man offering children candy and taking them away in a van is forever burned in my mind, due to its scaring the shit out of me as a littlun. A friend and I recreated scenes from Scream, the original , I was probably nine. Jawbreaker was also one of my favorite around the age of ten, the sexual innuendo I did not understand until revisiting the film ten years later, but regardless, you get the picture of my tastes and preferences. That is not to say that the morbid was my only fascination...I played sports up my ass, loved animals, and read too many Roald Dhal books. That is just a contrived disclaimer signfying: I had a normal childhood, I did not grow up to be a sick and perverted individual. For some reason, I found, and still find, these types of stories, fiction or real, to be intriguing. I think it says something about our deepest unconscious. I would love to sit down with Fraud and discuss this topic at length-perhaps he would go to the bathroom to powder his nose a few times-but hey, whatever keeps him enthused.

When I was flipping between shows last night, feeling sorry for myself being sick, I thankfully found Psycho. The story of Norman Bates, a shut-in with an awkward disposition from the beginning, we realize there is more behind the surface. When I saw it again last night, the first thought I had when laying eyes Bates was "he looks exactly like a serial killer." White male, between twenty-eight and thirty-four, above average attractiveness, and a seemingly above average IQ. He is so creepily awkward, his monologue about stuffing birds just puts you over the edge, thinking "please, blonde lady, get in your car and drive away, this dude is a P S Y C H O." But that is exactly the point, and Hitchcock is a master of suspense, so the blonde lady stays, to be killed in the iconic shower scene we all know and love to see appropriated over and over again.

But why does the American, world, public find itself going back again and again to scary movies? Why are there constantly airings of television shows about serial killers? Why do people watch this shit? Why is the tombstone of Ed Gein in a museum in Wisconsin (this may say more about the alcoholic state of Wisconsin home to many of the notorious serial killers of the day)? To die at the hands of a serial killer is the worst way I can imagine to go. Why watch something that represents this? Maybe it is that the proximity to death, even on a screen, truly makes you feel alive. This is not to compare a soldiers brush with death in Iraq, but for us normies in the safety of our living room, a scary movie is as close as we want to get. Scary movies provide us this adrenaline without going into the combat zone. And Psycho gives us this desire in an artful manner. The dramatic black and white, the lighting, and the acting all give a sick and deadly story life. Two swollen tonsils up!