žižek archive
⌘K
archive / stories / Psycho / architecture tension: mother's house vs. Bates Motel

Psycho / architecture tension: mother's house vs. Bates Motel

example · film: Psycho · retold in 3 talks
on the map →

Psycho's central tension is architectural: the traditional vertical mother's house (modeled on Hopper's House by the Railroad) versus the horizontal modern motel. Norman Bates is literally a figure caught between two architectural types. Žižek asks: what would a postmodern synthesis, a flat motel decorated with traditional kitsch ornaments, do to Norman's psyche?

2009: 1 talk 2014: 1 talk 2017: 1 talk
≤2000talks it is told in, per year2026

As told 3

“the whole tension of norman b is he's literally a guy caught between the two. traditional architecture mother's house and modern motel.”
1:20:19 Duel + Duet with Graham Harman2017-03-02 · 2:04:01
“Norman Bates is split precisely between the two houses. The modern horizontal motel and the vertical Gothic mother's house. He is literally split between the two remember forever running between the two.”
16:34 The Failure of Performance-Arts Venues to construct a Communal Space2009-06-16 · 1:15:32
“*Psycho* is a great movie about architecture. Norman Bates' madness is that he is torn between two architectures: modern, straight, linear motel and the Gothic house up there.”
46:17 Discussion on the Film “The Black Cat”2014-04-08 · 1:20:42

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)

contents · one story, 3 jobsuses
political unconscious ×2 discordance between inside and outside ×1 parallax ×1

Its cast and sources

populated by
Edward Hopper2Frank Gehry2Pat Hitchcock1Boris Shumyatsky1Tod Browning1Oleksandr Dovzhenko1Val Lewton1John Garfield1
alongside works
Performing Architecture: Opera Houses, Theaters and Concert Halls for the 21st Century1Oriental Arts Center, Shanghai1Museum of Tolerance, Jerusalem1Crystal Island, Moscow1Bilbao Guggenheim1National Grand Theatre of China (Beijing)1The Third Man1The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946)1

Every retelling 3

1:20:19 Duel + Duet with Graham Harman2017-03-02 · 2:04:01
Psycho's central tension is architectural: the traditional vertical mother's house (modeled on Hopper's House by the Railroad) versus the horizontal modern motel. Norman Bates is literally a figure caught between two architectural types. Žižek asks: what would a postmodern synthesis, a flat motel decorated with traditional kitsch ornaments, do to Norman's psyche?, illustrating formalism in cinema,architecture as symptom,modernism vs. postmodernism
16:34 The Failure of Performance-Arts Venues to construct a Communal Space2009-06-16 · 1:15:32
Norman Bates is split between the horizontal modernist motel (after Edward Hopper's motel paintings) and the vertical Gothic mother's house (also from Hopper). His endless running between the two stages the architectural antagonism of modernity; his final identification with the mother is his finding of 'home' in the uncanny., illustrating inside-outside incommensurability,architectural antagonism,unheimlich,parallax
46:17 Discussion on the Film “The Black Cat”2014-04-08 · 1:20:42
Norman Bates's madness is located in the architectural tension between the Gothic vertical house on the hill and the flat horizontal modernist motel; his cure would be to dissolve this into postmodern pastiche merging both styles., illustrating architecture as symptom,architecture and psyche,modernism vs. Gothic