Comparing Hitchcock's Psycho And Juvenile Delinquency Cinema

In films most often adult characters are imbued with child characteristics that effectively confuse the line between adult and child. In Psycho, we find Norman Bates, who is not able to come of his age as an adult, though pretending to be one. [Norman struggles a lot to emerge out of his childhood trauma just like Marnie. Elizabeth Ramsy states that the child figure thus occupies an ambiguous liminal space “that threatens as it unites ideas of domesticity” (Olson 6). ] Wetmore in his article, “Psycho without a cause: Norman Bates and Juvenile Delinquency Cinema” compellingly argues that Psycho has many tropes common/characteristic of a juvenile delinquency or JD film. Hitchcock’s films abound with “dangerous children” (Wetmore 219) masquerading