I love me a good shower [scene]

One of my favorite units of the entire school year is the one that focuses on Hitchcock's classic film Psycho. It's what we've been doing since our return from the holiday break and I've honestly been having a lot of fun with my sophomores. Hardly any of them have ever seen it before, so the experience is a combination of comical and absolutely amazing.

The thing that I love about this movie is that I can use it to reinforce so much of what I've already taught. We start the year with Daphne du Maurier's "The Birds," which is cool since Hitchcock also directed that film. The setting is crucial, you know? In the story, the setting is a sparsely populated British peninsula and takes place shortly after World War 2. The setting, in my opinion, is what makes the story as scary as it is. Also in my opinion: Hitchcock completely ruined "The Birds" by changing the characters to encompass a love story and changing the setting to Bodega Bay, California. But... whatever. It makes for a great teaching tool because the comparisons are excellent.

After that, we move into Ray Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes (Disney ruined that storyline 🙄) and then Macbeth. Obviously, Bradbury's title comes from Shakespeare, which I always get a little thrill from when the kids put it together, but the two also share a lot of motifs. I really enjoy teaching motifs, too. Something Wicked has so much light/dark and good/evil, while Macbeth is more about blood/sleep. So the kids know what a motif is... but it doesn't really click until we watch Psycho.

Yesterday, we experienced the "classic shower scene," but before we got to that scene, we started the previous day's class by making a list of things one almost always sees in horror films. "Someone hiding behind a shower curtain" made the list -- and that was before the kids even started watching the film!

Anyway, after we watched Marion get stabbed to death in the shower by Mrs. Bates, and then saw Norman find her body and gasp in horror, knocking a picture of a songbird to the floor as he threw himself against the wall in shock, I stopped the film and did a refresher on motif. Did the kids remember what it was? Not right away. In period one, Mr. Personality was all like, "Oh, Miss! I know. He liked that lady and his mom didn't and so she come down from the house and killed her so she don't get an invitation to dinner no more."

I said, "Mr. Personality, that's a motive. I'm talking about a motif."

They vaguely remembered light/dark, good/evil from Something Wicked. Many of them remembered blood and sleep from Macbeth. Then they began to list things that were motifs in Psycho: black/white, money, hands (close-up shots of these)... and then someone said, "Birds."

Birds!

This is why I teach, people. Because the thrill I experience when my students get excited about picking apart a text (or in this case, a movie) is contagious. All of the sudden, they were finding birds everywhere: in the parlor, where Norman had taxidermied them; on the walls, where they hung all through the motel; in Marion's last name, which is Crane; in the city of Phoenix, which is where the story begins... And then someone inevitably said, "What is it with Hitchcock and birds?!"

Sometimes, I really and truly do love my job. And I absolutely love teaching my unit on Psycho. The kids don't know it yet, but we'll be evaluating settings tomorrow, and character conflicts next week, and then analyzing the intentional angles used by Hitchcock when he directed the film... which is super cool because they're already picking up on things! We had an entire conversation today about why everyone exits vehicles on the passenger side instead of on the driver's side. It's just such a cool unit, and I enjoy it more and more every year. 😍