It’s political correctness gone Psycho
IT IS the scene from the classic film Psycho that once seen can never be forgotten.
Deranged motel proprietor Norman Bates, dressed in his mother’s clothes, launches a knife attack on a defenceless guest in the shower.
But now the scene from the 1960 Alfred Hitchcock thriller starring Anthony Perkins and Janet Leigh has been redone for a US-made television series, but with a crucial difference. Bates is no longer wearing women’s clothes – for fear of damaging the image of the transgender community. This is despite the fact he wears his mother’s dresses at other moments in the series.
It is the episode in the fifth and final season of Bates Motel, starring Freddie Highmore as Norman Bates and singing star Rihanna as his victim, Marion Crane.
In Ireland, the scene will be aired on the subscription channel Universal later this year – but it has already been broadcast in the US, prompting outrage among fans of the original film.
Bates Motel writer Kerry Ehrin explained the makers’ sensitivity over the issue of cross-dressing: ‘In none of our minds is that what the story is about. It’s about a kid who very specifically thinks he is his mother, as opposed to anything else.
‘It really became about protecting that and not letting it slip or slide into anything transphobic.’
The shower scene in the 1960 film caused shock when it was released but has come to be seen as a virtuoso moment in cinema history.
Frank Furedi, Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the University of Kent, England, said: ‘It has gone beyond political correctness. It is the subordination of art to political dogma.’