Consumer Culture In Hitchcock's Film Psycho

In Hitchcock’s film Psycho (1960) the entry of the plumb businessman Cassidy (Frank Albertson) can be compared to Hitchcock the businessman and this can be taken as a joke on the culture ie the consumer culture which Hitchcock lets the viewers to enjoy at his expense (Erb 59). Cassidy has purchased the Harris Street property as a wedding gift for his daughter and he paid $40,000 to the realtor Mr. George Lowery (Vaughn Taylor). He flirted with Marion (Janet Leigh) in at the real estate office and later executes a private investigator Milton Arbogast (Martin Balsam) to trace her when she steals the money. First part of Psycho revolves around terms of production and reproduction: Sex on lunch hour; office labour; a house as a wedding gift; a fast-talking car salesman

who complains about fast talk; newly built highway. Marion steals money to live a luxuriant life and be a part of the consumer world (Erb 59). When money enters Norman’s (Anthony Perkins) realm for whom such things are irrelevant and nonexistent, it passes into oblivion. Norman is operating a motel no one can find and it is unusually hiding away from the postwar highway construction. Marion attracted by the “vacancy” sign and enters Norman’s realm where he performs tasks routinely for the guests who are not presents and repeats welcome speech for the few who arrive there by chance. This itself seems bizarre. The dream of a girl shattered by the lure of the consumer culture is effectively portrayed by Hitchcock through Marion Crane. Marion Crane is a woman who harbours a respectable vision of married life but she cannot marry her boy friend Sam Loomis because of his financial liabilities. She had no other alternative but to share bed with him during the lunch hour on the lurid shadows of a Phoenix hotel room. In the consumer culture prevalent in America, money was necessary to buy the desired things and to live a happy, luxurious life. Sam cannot marry Marion as he was sweating hard to pay off other’s debt and to send his wife alimony. He cannot even think of bringing Marion to his storeroom behind a hardware store in Fairvale. Marion had no other option but to steal the money from the real estate broker Mr.Lowrey.

On the way she is struck by guilt conscience as she has unlawfully acquired the money. She is not a thief. To flee successfully from the place she must sell her car and buy another, for that she had to spend $ 700. But after the transaction she makes up her mind to return back to Phoenix with the remaining money intact after taking rest through a stormy night at the Bates’ Motel. But her plan doesn’t come off. She wanted to go back to her traditional American values of honesty, self-reliance, privacy, and keeping up fences to esteem one’s neighbours. According to Pomerance:“The lapse occurred back in the city, a place full of strangers with strange values, where too much cash floats around unattached and too many dreams collide” (145). There is a slight difference between taking something that is not one’s own and possessing something by persuading an innocent to hand it over to you. Roger O. Thornhill belongs to the latter category. Roger an advertising executive is not a thief but also not in a habit of cheering others to be satisfied and content with what they have. Marion is a victim of the consumer age, imperilled/endangered because a prize came too close to her to

neglect it. (Pomerance 145-146).