Off the Main Highway, Hiding From the World
A few times a year for business, I drive a couple of hundred miles, mainly in open countryside and through a few small towns en route.
A year or so ago, I was following the highway to a town that had about four signals, a downtown business district, gas stations and a supermarket. A small traffic jam and delay was part of the expected travel through that town en route to my destination , but I had no choice.
And as I drove to the town THIS time...it disappeared. I never saw it, drove right past it -- thought that I had taken a wrong turn and was heading south instead of north. It took some thinking and map checking to realize: a bypass that had been "under construction" for years -- had finally been finished. I would now be driving totally AROUND that town and its four traffic signals. Looking in the far distance, I could make out the roofs of a few buildings of the downtown -- and that was it.
I thought of Psycho, of course.
I've driven that route three times since the bypass and its as if the town doesn't exist anymore. I have no reason to go there and it would take me out of my way to do so.
I guess you could say that town was Fairvale.
I guess one could understand how devastating it was to the Bates Motel when a daily surge of traffic trickled down to nothing, with hardly anybody coming by. How a motel that perhaps had no vacancies some nights suddenly had "twelve cabins, twelve vacancies."
The Bates Motel being "off the main highway" gives Psycho much of its charge. The isolation makes the place a true deathtrap for Marion Crane -- there are no other customers in the other rooms, no where to run for help(not that she could get it in the shower)...no one to hear you scream(hey, that's a GREAT tag line for movie, yes?)
But the isolation also creates a sense of sadness and lonlieness in Psycho, too. Once they moved the highway, Norman and Mother were all alone. Or more to the point, Norman was all alone and "had to" create Mother for company.
Being "off the main highway," the Bates Motel at once hastened Norman's descent into madness and created a spider's web into which Marion Crane stepped.
But there is also the great, effortless symbolism of the isolation: "You must have driven off the main highway," Norman says to Marion, "No one comes here unless they've done that."
Yes, Psycho is LITERALLY about taking the wrong turn, the wrong pathway -- nobody comes to the Bates Motel unless they've done THAT(like, stealing some money and beginning a meager life of crime.)
We never really see the terrain beyond the Bates Motel in Psycho, but it is created in our mind, never more powerfully than when Arbogast tells Norman, "I've been to so many motels the past few days, my eyes are bleary with neon...but this is the first place that looks like its hiding from the world." Arbogast creates a picture of a crowded urban world -- and then compares it to the Bates property -- hiding from the world. Which, of course, Norman is doing. And evidently quite content to do so.
The Bates Motel being "on the old highway" summons up a vision , too. The OLD highway. The past -- long gone, newly replaced. Local characters like Sam and Chambers rather derisively toss off the phrase "Its that place out on the old highway." Actually, despite my comments above about that real-life town now bypassed, I've always figured that Fairvale was still next to the new highway, Sam doesn't complain about it like Norman does.
Anyway, add to the list of reasons why Psycho is so great how it takes the realistic ("They moved the main highway") and turns it into the symbolic("taking the wrong road"), the atmospheric(horror), the emotional(lonlieness) , and the terrifying (people get killed there, among other reasons, because no one can hear them scream.)