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Norman Bates / Psycho

example · film: Psycho · retold in 3 talks

Žižek references Norman Bates' claim that he wouldn't hurt a fly to illustrate how 'good guys' (like Gandhi or Lenin) are framed as non-violent, despite being 'formal terrorists' who interrupt the system.

As told 2

“you wouldn't hurt even a fly, no, you know.”
“What if we read this pathological figure of Norman Bates as a character split between two architectural house, the old Gothic mother's house on the hill and the flat motel beneath closer to the highway?”

What it carries

one story, many jobs: the ideas this anecdote is deployed to argue, one tally mark per use (an idea page shows the same relation from the other end, as its shelf of stories)

Its cast and sources

populated by
alongside works

Every retelling 2

Žižek references Norman Bates' claim that he wouldn't hurt a fly to illustrate how 'good guys' (like Gandhi or Lenin) are framed as non-violent, despite being 'formal terrorists' who interrupt the system., illustrating formal terrorism
Hitchcock's Psycho can be read as a film about architecture: Norman Bates is split between the Gothic mother's house on the hill and the modern flat motel below. Žižek jokes that a Frank Gehry building incorporating both would have saved Norman., illustrating architectural split / Gothic vs. modern,political unconscious of buildings