Ep10 Positive Cinematic Spotlight - Psycho - a podcast by Academy for Success

*Positive Cinematic Spotlight is not encouraging or advocating the viewing of the movies it discusses. The message about the movie does not require watching the movie to understand.*

Welcome back, Wolf Pack, to another Positive Cinematic Spotlight! We continue in the month of October looking at horror movies, going from last week's look at the fairly recent Get Out to the 60 year old classic, Psycho. But before we begin looking at the film considered the first slasher flick, I do want to announce a slight change in the Positive Cinematic Spotlight. My producer, Ms. Helena Johnson, has suggested expanding my target audience to include students, so there will now be a student segment. Now, let’s begin.

Psycho came out in 1960 and was a movie unlike had been seen before. Nowadays, it may seem prosaic, but the adaptation of Robert Bloch’s novel of the same name stepped into several realms which had not been seen in cinema at the time. The movie is about the extremes which people can go to when they feel trapped. Marion Crane, played by Janet Leigh, commits a crime feeling trapped in her life and unable to have the life she desires, while the Bates’s, Norman and his mother, referred to only as “Mother”, are trapped with each other and the Bates Motel. It makes me wonder if that’s not seen in Hitchcock’s extreme vision of the film, again, at the time. Possibly Hitchcock felt trapped with the limits of cinema censorship and expectation and wanted to push the envelope and get out from those trappings, and he certainly did.

Hitchcock wanted to throw movie goers off of the true secret behind the murder and Mother, that he actively created a buzz around her with disinformation, including releasing several potential actresses who may have the roll, and staging press photos with the majority of the cast sitting in a director’s chair labelled “Mrs. Bates”. Hitchcock put a lot of effort into creating an illusion and expectation for Mother Bates that fueled the surprise reveal to the truth.

Similarly, most of us teachers are creating the illusion of a normal school room education while teaching in new and different ways which both we and our students are unfamiliar with. Much like Hitchcock, we are putting in a lot of work behind the scenes to make our audience respond positively and productively. Unlike Hitchcock, however, we do not have box office returns, movie reviews to let him know if his efforts were being rewarded. Some of us might here positive comments from parents, or positive reactions from our students, but many of us may be left wondering if the work is worth the effort. I can assure you, every effort you are making to reach and connect with your students, both academically and socio-emotionally, is having a positive effect. Not every step we make will be universally accepted by our students, but if you try a variety of things, differentiate your efforts, you will reach everyone.

So don’t feel trapped, like Marion Crane and the Bates’s. In the movie, Marion and Norman discuss the different traps life has for us, some are beyond our control, as Norman is born into his trap with Mother, and others we step into rashly and without thinking, as Marion does. But one of the often missed messages of Psycho is that we can make a mistake, we can step in a trap, and still have the opportunity to correct it, as Marion decides on her own to face the consequences of her decisions, and those who she had wronged want to offer her a chance to fix the problem she created without punitive consequences. We are teachers, school staff, district office personnel… we are smart, we are strong, and if something isn’t working, we shouldn’t let ourselves remain trapped doing the same thing over and over. Don’t runaway like Marion, try something different.

And remember that with our students. Sometimes students find themselves trapped, taking classes they aren’t interested in, caught in the consequences of past decisions, and like Norman, sometimes

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