I showed my "The Nature of Evil" classes the movie Psycho last week, hoping to finally win those frisky bastards over with my coolness and intelligence ("hey guys! I bet you didn't know that movies can be analyzed like books! this is going to be so fun! did you know that's chocolate syrup going down the drain in that scene?" to which some of them promptly replied, "I don't watch anything in black and white."). I think the unit went quite well, actually. The kids had no idea that Norman and his mom were one and the same, and it was fun to watch them puzzle the whole thing out. A few kids ventured that the combination of implied violence with Norman's cross dressing was ten times more upsetting than any overt horror movie they've ever seen. And the archetype of "Mother/Monster" in this age of helicopter parenting...dare I say...hit home for some of them.
The thing about Psycho that's apparently all-the-rage in the psychoanalytic film community (one step above the Shipwreck-exploration community in terms of coolness) is to look at the house and Bates Motel as representations of Norman's mind: the basement, where he stashes his mom's corpse at one point, as the darkest, most secret/carnal place (the ID?); the ground floor, where he lives as normal and quiet man who eats candy a lot (superego); and the top floor/bedroom, where he internally battles/argues externally and internally at the same time with his mom's corpse (ego?). Something like that. You could rearrange all that and still be right. It gets so confusing.
Anyway, it made me think about my own basement, which, according to the metaphor, represents some savage and hidden part of myself. So, I'll tell you something. I have not been in my own basement for at least a year. I quickly ran down there when Dan was in Chicago to make sure there was no flooding during some rain (and to assure myself there was no chupacabra waiting down there to eat me. hey, you never know). But I hate my basement and part of my psychic/spiritual healing project for this summer is to confront this basement head on.
Thus, according to Freud, my refusal/fear to spend time "in my basement" means I've been avoiding the dark side of myself. I'm experiencing shame. I'm afraid of conflict. Have you been in my basement? It's really yucky. I'm so lucky Dan does the laundry. The basement is everything I'm insecure about regarding my house all consolidated into one space: all mess, all wrong.
When we bought the house, that basement was dry as a bone, and tidy. I fantasized about making one of those charming "laundry stations" that they show in Good Housekeeping with the blue appliances, tiled folding tables, adorable baskets, etc. (Dan deserves the best). The day we moved in, I kid you not, a friggin' MONSOON came in and filled that damn basement with puddles and a family of fat, selfish mice with old school politically incorrect Mexican sombreros saying "hey Gringo, you got some cheese???" (Dan said that once. That wasn't me) and mildew. I DID NOT SIGN UP FOR THIS. We left our apartment in West Orange to get away from mice, now I have them here? When our sump pump malfunctioned later on that year and Dan tore up the carpet revealing a dingy concrete floor, I promptly decided never to go down there again.
Is this whole thing a metaphor, Norman?
Like certain aspects of my psyche, there are some places I don't like to go. It seems like a cliche, though, the fear of the underworld/Basement Monster, that's really just a fear of me.
Side note: if I were to kill people, I would do it dressed as Norman dressed as his Mother, just to stump/challenge the detectives. I would like to be played by Salma Hayek in the movie.
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