Harold Schechter is Professor Emeritus at Queens College. He teaches American literature and myth criticism. He is the author of multiple essays and books such as Deviant: The Shocking True Story of Ed Gein, the Original “Psycho”, The Mad Sculptor: The Maniac, the Model, and the Crime that Shook the Nation, The Tell-Tale Corpse, and many others. The book I read was Deviant: The Shocking True Story of Ed Gein, the Original “Psycho”. The book is about a killer, and it follows his life.
Harold Schechter is Professor Emeritus at Queens College, where he taught classes in American literature and myth criticism. He is the author of multiple essays and books. The book I chose, Deviant: The Shocking True Story of Ed Gein, the Original “Psycho,” is about the true story and life of Ed Gein. A notorious killer who shocked all of America with the evil he committed while diving into his life before, during, and after these horrendous acts. It also goes into the impact of these crimes and how they influenced the horror genre, especially the creation of the movies: Psycho, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and Silence of the Lambs.
Jonathan Bloom, in his book American Wasteland, raises some hightailing issues and resolutions that are geared towards the American culture of food waste. The food waste in America today is ever so present in households across the nation that a “quarter of the food squandered would provide three meals a day for 43 million people” (Bloom 47). Taking those numbers into consideration, Americans need to make some radical decisions in changing the way they consume food and ways in discarding the leftovers. Bloom brings up reoccurring phrases in his book in order to get his messages across to readers. Three key phrases that stand out in Blooms’ writing to discuss and argue his message are food insecurity, redistribution, and guerrilla giving.
The novel and film psycho stem from a true story, author Robert Block lived not far from the rural community of Plainfield Wisconsin, the scene of a horrific event that would change Plainfield forever. Timid little farmer Plainfield Edward Theodore Gein had lived most of his life in a farm house with his mother Augusta and his brother Henry outside of Plainfield Wisconsin. Ed’s farther died when he was a child, bible bashing mother August Gein always warned her sons that all women were sinful, and to just stay on the farm. Ed considered her a saint, as an adult Ed’s brother Henry began to disagree with the views of his mother, he told the now grown Ed that he was too attached to their mother, a momma’s boy.
Comparison of the “Psycho” and “A Rose for Emily” The Psycho by Alfred Hitchcock and A Rose for Emily by William Faulkner are works with different plots and endings. The movie is focused on a maniac, who recreated an image of his mother to kill visitors. Norman Bates killed own mother because he thought she “betrayed” him, and used her personality in his further crimes. The man was caught and his actions were revealed long before his death.
To the unknown eye, Hitchcock has carefully and skillfully used Mise-en-scene to his advantage, causing the audience to feel fear and a sense of caution towards the character of Norman Bates. It isn’t until we reflect back on the scene and notice how intelligently Hitchcock uses the positioning of props and the characters, lighting, camera angle and staging, that we notice how he has added meaning to his characters but has also to the film, creating suspense and fear from one scene to the end of the film. Ultimately proving the point that Hitchcock “the master of suspense” uses Mise-en-scene to not only help make a brilliant film but also uses it as his disposal to add meaning in his
After reading A Rose for Emily by William Faulkner, many people initially wonder why Miss Emily would murder Homer Barron. When reviewing the events of the story, it becomes apparent that she displayed symptoms, manifestations of her mental state in her behavior, of being socially inept and thus capable of this heinous crime. These symptoms are unsurprising, as her father represses her, withholding her from the public. Emily accordingly displays symptoms of this repression by evading authorities and the townspeople. Faulkner is trying to get the reader to go back and review this problem-the cause of Homer’s murder- by identifying the signs that this crime occurred and Emily’s symptoms of mental instability.
In this short stories “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe and “A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner, the authors represent the sense of horror in their stories. They are very similar in expressing their terrifying point of view. However, there are also differences. “The Tell-Tale Heart” is told in the first person perspective which creates compulsory picture of a mad murdered, whereas the third person perspective of “A Rose for Emily” shows Miss Emily through the eyes of others, which changes the narrative radically. In Addition, Miss Emily committed the crime because the fear of being alone.
However, film critic, Robin Wood, argues that ‘since Psycho, the Hollywood cinema has implicitly recognised horror as both American and familial’ he then goes on to connect this with Psycho by claiming that it is an “innovative and influential film because it supposedly presents its horror not as the produce of forces outside American society, bit a product of the patriarchal family which is the fundamental institution of American society” he goes on to discuss how our civilisation either represses or oppresses (Skal, 1994). Woods claim then suggests that in Psycho, it is the repressions and tensions within the normal American family which produces the monster, not some alien force which was seen and suggested throughout the 1950 horror films. At the beginning of the 60’s, feminisation was regarded as castration not humanization. In “Psycho” (1960) it is claimed that the film presents conservative “moral lessons about gender roles of that the strong male is healthy and normal and the sensitive male is a disturbed figure who suffers from gener confusion” (Skal, 1994). In this section of this chapter I will look closely at how “Psycho” (1960) has layers of non-hetro-conforming and gender-non conforming themes through the use of Norman Bates whose gender identitiy is portrayed as being somewhere between male and female
“A Rose for Emily” is a dark, suspenseful Gothic tale in which a young girl is put on a pedestal by a town who sees her as haughty and scornful. Miss Emily Grierson’s father controls her and her love life, pushing away all people until he dies and Emily is left alone. As her life goes on the townspeople watch her and judge Emily, almost turning her life into a spectacle to be talked about. At her death, a gruesome sight is unfolded when her lover of over forty years ago is found decomposed in her upstairs room. William Faulkner effectively builds epic suspense in “A Rose for Emily” by the unchronological order of the story, the treatment of Emily’s father towards her, and her family’s history of mental illness.
Faulkner is one of the most celebrated writers in American literature usually and southern literature specifically. His first published Story “A rose for Emily”, is one of the most famous that an American has written. Faulkner captured Southern Gothic in this short story by giving the story a moody and forbidding atmosphere. “A Rose for Emily” depicts southern gothic literature through the characters, the setting, and the mysteries and secrets.
The Film Psycho, directed by Alfred Hitchcock, effectively presented the ideas of murder and schizophrenia through the use of characters, with the double-sided Norman Bates in particular, and visual techniques as well as sound techniques. The ideas of murder and schizophrenia were presented well in the movie "psycho" through the use of characters. The character of Norman Bates was the central character in the film and had a complex and differing personality. One moment he was shy, kind, lonely Norman Bates, a mother's boy, and the next he was a deadly jealous Mrs. Bates, his deceased mother.
Modern horror films are often flooded with a multitude of intricate designs and special effects. The over-use of these elaborate strategies can often consume a film. Although, among Jack Clayton’s The Innocents (1961), this not the case. This horror film utilizes no special effects to convey its tantalizingly psychological horror. The film functions as a Gothic horror film evoking uncertainty in which is embodied within the loss of and breakdown of the female innocence.
Necrophilia is described as a person having sexual feelings or performing activities that involve a corpse. Miss Emily Grierson, the protagonist in William Faulkner’s short retrospective Gothic “A Rose for Emily,” is a necrophiliac. In this Gothic work, Faulkner illustrates how isolation from society can drive someone to commit grotesque acts. Faulkner expands on the theme of loneliness in his Gothic, “A Rose for Emily,” through the interactions Emily has with the townsmen, the death of Emily’s father, and the death of Homer Barron.
Because of the attention it received in America, the portrayal of psychopaths in film was channeled into this nearly separate and exclusive film genre. The actions and details of the Ed Gein case, including cannibalism, necrophilia and grave robbing, became a pattern for the characteristics and activities of what was considered psychopathic behavior. Then two variations on the usual presentation of the psychopath emerged: the socially functional misfit often with a sexual obsession to kill, and the violent, dysfunctional mass murderer with idiosyncratic mannerisms and appearance. Norman Bates of Alfred Hitchcock’s
