UCLA Center for the Study of Women

In this talk, I present a reading of Psycho that relates Bernard Herrmann’s iconic score to the elusive Mother in an attempt to illustrate how film music can communicate gendered meaning. As music is often thought of as nonrepresentational it can be difficult to articulate the connection between an emotional response (fear) and specific musical figures. However, Psycho is a film that investigates gender through the lens of a pathological mother-son dyad, and music and sound, especially voice, are crucial to how this relationship is understood. Ultimately, I argue that not only does Mother direct the trajectory of the film score, she occupies the same space as it does.