Norman Bates

Psycho character
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Norman Bates
Aliases	"Norma" Bates, "Normal" Bates
Gender	Male
Race	European American
Relationships	Mrs. Bates (mother)
Enemies	Women
M.O.	Stabbing victims to death whilst donning his mother's clothing.
Weapon of Choice:	Kitchen knife
Portrayed by:	Anthony Perkins (Psycho - Psycho IV: The Beginning) Oz Perkins (Psycho II, reflection) Kurt Paul (Bates Motel) Henry Thomas (Psycho IV: The Beginning, flashbacks) Ryan Finnigan (Psycho IV: The Beginning, flashbacks) Vince Vaughn (Psycho: 1998 remake)

Norman Bates is a fictional character created by writer Robert Bloch as the central character in his novel Psycho. The character was based on real-life serial killer Ed Gein. Bates was portrayed by Anthony Perkins in Alfred Hitchcock's seminal film adaptation of Bloch's novel. Bates was later played by Vince Vaughn in Gus Van Sant's 1998 remake of Hitchcock's film.

Biography

Both the novel and film explain that Bates suffered severe emotional (and, it is suggested, sexual) abuse as a child at the hands of his mother, Norma, who preached to him that women and sex were evil. The two of them lived alone together in a very unhealthy state of emotional dependence after the death of Bates' father. When Bates was a teenager, however, his mother took a lover, making him insanely jealous. He murdered them both with strychnine and preserved his mother's corpse. Bates developed dissociative identity disorder, assuming his mother's personality, repressing her death as a way to escape the guilt of murdering her.

Bloch sums up Bates' multiple personalities in his stylistic form of puns: As "Norman" Bates, the little boy, he is dominated by his mother, and has to do what she told him. As "Norma" Bates, he dresses in her clothes, mimics her voice, and kills anyone who threatens to come between her and her "Norman," especially attractive young women. As "Normal" Bates, he is a (barely) functioning adult who can run the motel and keep peace between the other two personalities.

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Norman Bates as "Mother" in the infamous shower scene

He is finally arrested after he murders a young woman named Mary Crane (called Marion Crane in the film) and Milton Arbogast, a private investigator sent to look for her. Bates is declared insane and sent to an institution, where the "mother" personality completely takes hold; he completely becomes his mother.

Bates dies in Bloch's 1982 sequel to his novel.

Film sequels

In the sequel to the original film, Bates (once again portrayed by Perkins) is released from the institution 22 years later, seemingly cured of his multiple personality disorder. However, a series of mysterious murders occur, as well as strange appearances and messages from "Mother", and Norman slowly loses his grip on sanity. The mysterious appearances and messages turn out to be a plot by relatives of one of Norman's (or Mother's) victims to drive "Norman" Bates insane again; the murders turn out to be caused by Norman's real mother — Norma's sister, Emma Spool — who, of course, shares the family history of mental illness. In the end, Norman kills and embalms her while assuming the "Mother" personality once again.

In the third film, Norman continues to struggle, unsuccessfully, against "Mother's" dominion, but in the end attacks her corpse violently, attempting to break free of her control, and is again institutionalized. During the last minutes of the movie a reporter finds out the truth and explains that Emma Spool was his aunt not his mother. She had already been institutionalized for killing Norman's father. Apparently, she had fallen for Norman's father and, when Norma Bates had given birth to Norman, kidnapped Norman, believing he was her son.

In the final sequel, however, the revelations of Psycho III are effectively ignored. (Bates' father is explained as having stung to death by bees). In this film, he has been released from the institution, and is married to one of the hospital's nurses. When his wife becomes pregnant, however, he lures her to his mother's house and tries to kill her; he wants to prevent another of his "cursed" line from coming into the world. (The film implies that Bates' mother suffered from schizophrenia and passed the illness onto him.) He relents at the last minute, however, when his wife professes her love for him. He then burns the house down in an attempt to free himself of his past. During the attempt, he is constantly tormented by hallucinations of "Mother" and several of his (or her) victims and almost dies in the flames himself before willing himself to get out, apparently defeating his illness at long last.

In the pilot episode of the failed TV series Bates Motel, Bates, who in this incarnation is never released from the institution after his first incarceration, befriends Alex Kelly, a fellow inmate who murdered his stepfather, and wills ownership of the titular motel to him before dying of old age. As the pilot never developed into a series and bears almost no relation to previous novels or films, it is considered non-canon.

Characterization

The characterization of Bates in the novel and the movie differ in some key areas. In the novel, Bates is in his mid-to-late 40s, short, overweight, homely, and more overtly unstable. In the movie, he is in his early-to-mid-20s, tall, slender, and handsome. Reportedly, when working on the film, Hitchcock decided that he wanted audiences to be able to sympathize with Bates and genuinely like the character, so he made him more of a "boy next door." In the novel, Norman becomes Mother after getting drunk and passing out; in the movie, he consumes no alcohol before switching personalities. Perhaps the most significant difference between the novel and the movie is that, in the novel, Mary Crane is "Mother"'s first victim; in the movie, Bates kills twice as his alternate personality before murdering Crane.

While Bates entered the public consciousness as a villain (albeit one with some sympathetic qualities), he developed throughout the film's sequels into not only the series' protagonist, but also as a tragic victim of mental illness.