Page 28 - Cinematic Thinking Philosophical Approaches to the New Cinema

18 Kelly Oliver

after, she is brutally murdered, seemingly for her sexual freedom and the
freedom of movement that allows her to check into a hotel room alone on
the way to find her lover and give him the money she has stolen. Marion's
mother represents respectability while Marion compromises respectability
to meet her lover for lunchtime trysts in cheap hotels, steals money to be
with her lover, and checks into another cheap roadside motel alone using
an alias. Normans mother also represents a type of maternal superego,
only now dominating her son (at least within his imaginary since it is only
through Norman that we know his mother). We also find out that Nor-
man killed his mother and her lover, according to the psychiatrist because
he was jealous of the lover. Norman has internalized maternal prohibi-
tions to the point that his persona is split between the dutiful son and
the threatening and vengeful mother. The mother herself was murdered
for her own outlaw desire, for taking a lover after the death of Normans
father. And maternal authority is represented in the film by the person of
the "transvestite" and feminine son.
In The Birds, after Mitch Brenner (Rod Taylor) tells Melanie Daniels
(Tippi Hedren) that she needs "a mother s care," she replies that her mother
ran off with a "hotel man" when she was young. Perhaps the "hotel man" is
an allusion to Norman Bates, who within the narrative of Psycho is a seem-
ingly potential lover for sexually available Marion. 18 Unlike Psycho, in The
Birds there is an actual mother character, Mitch's mother, Lydia Brenner
(Jessica Tandy). Melanie is warned by Mitch's former girlfriend, Annie
(Suzanne Pleshette), that his mother controls his relationships with women
and that she broke up her own relationship with Mitch. As Jacqueline Rose
points out, Mitch is a lawyer and represents the paternal law, which does not
hold sway at his mother's house, where her authority is at odds with the law. 19
Melanie is seen as transgressing both the paternal law (Mitch first meets her
in court because of her practical jokes that led to the destruction of prop-
erty) and the maternal authority (she is represented as competing with the
mother for Mitch's attention). While in San Francisco, the realm of paternal
law, all of the birds are in cages and therefore harmless; but in Bodega Bay,
the realm of maternal authority, the birds are wild and hostile and seem to
act as surrogate mothers who punish Melanie (and those around her) for her
sexual advances toward Mitch. After all, Melanie is the one pursuing Mitch
to the point of finding out where his mother lives and making a surprise
visit. The birds attack whenever Melanie is near; and as her desire for Mitch
becomes more obvious, so does the intensity of the attacks.