A Summary Of Hitchcock's Use Of Audience Manipulation In Psycho
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"Audience Manipulation" is defined as the intentional use of techniques based on the principles of crowd psychology to engage, control, or influence the desires of a crowd in order to direct its behavior toward a specific action. A perfect example of this is in Alfred Hitchcock's movie Psycho. He uses many forms of psychological manipulation through a persons sense of hearing and sense of sight. Hitchcock even uses what you don't see to control the audiences emotions. Hitchcock's use of eerie music, minor notes and chords engages audiences and puts them on the edge of their seats. An example of this is everytime Norman Bate's would murder someone, the music would get extremely loud. This is an example of "Mickeymousing", this is when the music matches the action on the screen. Hitchcock uses this often in Psycho. Another example of Hitchcock's use of "Audience Manipulation" is the use of dialog to insight foreshadowing. During the conversation between Marion Crane and Norman Bates, there is a lot of foreshadowing. Bates specifically talks about his passion for stuffing birds. The way in which he speaks about his passion leads you to…show more content… He lead's you to believe that the person committing all the murders is Norman Bates mother. The use of camera angles in the movie manipulates the audience to believe this. Specifically, when Norman Bates goes to move his mother from the bedroom to the fruit cellar, the camera moves from looking at the bedroom door to looking down at the second floor landing. You then see Bates carrying his mother from out of the bedroom and down the stairs, never seeing her face or what she looks like. Another example of this is when the murders take place. During the murder of Marion Crane, the shower curtain blocks the face of the murderer. The only thing that you can make out is the wig and dress that Norman Bates is wearing continually making you believe that it's Bates