Voyeurism & the Male Gaze in Psycho (1960)

One element in Alfred Hitchcock's horror classic Psycho (1960) that is present throughout the film is the all-powerful 'Gaze'. This concept has been important to a number of other films throughout cinematic history, like Metropolis (1927), and most often involves a male character influencing the behavior (or construction) of a female character onscreen. And in Psycho the most frequent voyeur is, of course, the film's villain, Norman Bates; however the idea of being watched or followed is apparent in a number of scenes involving several different characters.

Before main character Marion Crane even reaches the Bates Motel she is being watched; she is questioned and then followed all the way to Los Angeles by a far-too-diligent cop after spending the night in her car on the side of an isolated desert road. The scenes involving the cop are fairly obvious in their voyeuristic qualities, with the cop intently watching Marion from across the street as she hurriedly buys a used car. Hitchcock presents these scenes as dangerous and tension-filled, though they hardly compare to what Marion will be subjected to later on in the film. Once she reaches her final destination of the Bates Motel she will be under constant male surveillance from the moment she gets her room key until her fateful shower. Marion rarely gets a moment alone; Norman is almost always around, either in the room or watching from his office. She is even being watched in the parlor scene, not just by Norman but by his precious stuffed birds as well (notice how they always loom about in the background of the shot). After Marion leaves the parlor for her room, Norman watches her through a peep hole in the wall, the camera zooming in on his eye. This time, though, what Norman gazes upon is far more overtly sexual than anything previously; he watches Marion undress and prepare for a shower, and when the camera assumes the viewpoint of Norman the audience itself becomes an objectifying voyeur. Of course everyone knows what happens next; Norman (dressed as his dead mother) creeps into Marion's bathroom while she showers and, in a scene that once again objectifies the female protagonist by presenting her as naked and highly vulnerable, repeatedly stabs her to death. Again the camera takes the position of the murderer as he drives the knife into defenseless Marion, blurring the line between audience and character. This scene, all rapid cuts and screams, goes so far as to visualize the violent scopophilic rape that Laura Mulvey discussed in her article "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema". It is an onscreen manifestation of the male's desire to "rape" the female, and Marion's murder (in which the audience is forced to, at times, assume the role of the murderer himself) is tantamount to that. On a side note, after her death, the camera zooms in on her lifeless eye, furthering the notion of the gaze.

This sense of voyeurism and being watched or followed carries on through the rest of the film after Marion's murder, though that is truly the height or climax of it. After this Norman's gaze no longer works on the same psychological level, but his watchfulness operates more as a cinematic terror mechanism. Still, it is his male gaze which breeds desire in him for Marion by constructing her as a sexual temptress, which is ultimately a contributing factor in her death.