John Whitehead's Commentary

"Oh God! Mother, mother! Blood, blood!" -- Norman Bates

In 1957, most Americans perceived themselves as God-fearing, clean-living men and women living in families like those portrayed in television shows such as Leave It to Beaver and Father Knows Best. But there was a dark underbelly to the American family. This was exposed by the monstrous acts of a man named Ed Gein and later by the film Psycho.

Ed Gein was an oafish 51-year-old odd job man who lived in the tiny farm community of Plainfield, Wisc. A perpetually grinning, unmarried recluse, Gein lived on a 160-acre farm once owned by his parents and brother. In 1940, his father passed away and four years later, his older brother died in a fire. The following year, Gein's hellfire-and-brimstone-spouting mother died, leaving him alone.

When some local people began disappearing, suspicions were raised about Gein. In late November of 1957, local police authorities visited Gein's decaying farmhouse, but he wasn't home. The lawmen picked their way through the random debris on the floor. Upstairs, they found five empty rooms covered with dust. By contrast, the bedroom of Gein's late mother, which had been nailed shut, was pristine.

But Ed Gein did not live alone. As Stephen Rebello writes in Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho:

Sharing his abode were two shin bones. Two pairs of human lips on a string. A cupful of human noses that sat on the kitchen table. A human skin purse and bracelets. Four flesh-upholstered chairs. A tidy row of ten grimacing human skulls. A tom-tom rigged from a quart can with skin stretched across the top and bottom. A soup bowl fashioned from an inverted human half-skull. The eviscerated skins of four women's faces, rouged, made-up, and thumbtacked to the wall at eye level. Five "replacement" faces secured in plastic bags. Ten female heads, hacked off at the eyebrow. A rolled-up pair of leggings and skin "vest," including the mammaries, severed from another unfortunate.

This was just the tip of the iceberg, as the local newspapers reported Gein's transvestism, grave robbing and the possible incestuous relationship with his mother. These topics went well beyond the limits of urban reporting in the 1950s. And for communities like Plainfield, such topics were unspeakable.

Gein was judged criminally insane and sentenced to life in a mental hospital. When he died in 1984, he was virtually amnesiac of his crimes.

Within two years of Gein's arrest, writer Robert Bloch had published his 1959 novel Psycho, based on Gein's gruesome exploits. And in 1960, Alfred Hitchcock adapted the story to the screen.

Shot on a low budget, Psycho changed Hollywood films forever. One of Hitchcock's best movies, Psycho portrays the warped family relationship of Norman Bates and his mother. As we eventually discover, however, Norman has become his mother. All great art forms debunk cultural myths and forecast change. And Psycho is a classic example.

The families portrayed on TV, such as the Cleavers in Leave It to Beaver, did not exist at that time--although the 1950s was an overtly pro-family period. Indeed, the reality of family life was far more painful and complex than the situation-comedy reruns. Contrary to what some might believe, Leave It to Beaver was not a documentary.

In fact, a full 25% of Americans--40 to 50 million people--were poor in the mid-'50s. And in the absence of food stamps and housing programs at that time, their poverty was searing. Even at the end of the 1950s, a third of American children were poor.

Marital unhappiness was a reality. Between one-quarter and one-third of the marriages entered into in the 1950s ended in divorce. And national polls found that 20% of all couples considered their marriages unhappy.

The so-called traditional stay-at-home mom of the 1950s was not nearly as happy as was portrayed on television. Many women began to resent their roles and became frustrated. Some turned to alcohol and drugs to dull the pain. Indeed, tranquilizers were developed in the 1950s in response to a need that physicians explicitly saw as female. Virtually nonexistent in 1955, tranquilizer consumption reached 462,000 pounds in 1958 and soared to 1.15 million pounds merely a year later.

We could go on and on. But the point is that there was a dark side to the American family of the 1950s that played itself out in various ways, including the violence of Ed Gein and Psycho.

But Psycho goes further. It foretold a sad story in the works. The sixties generation was in its infancy, but the impact on the family would be devastating. For example, the divorce rate tripled between 1960 (the year of Psycho) and 1982. Between 1960 and 1986, the proportion of teenage mothers who were unmarried rose from 15% to 61%. At the same time, the total number of children growing up with only one parent doubled to a full quarter of all children under the age of 18. This does not include the rise of child abuse and wife battering in the same period.

Today, the family continues to face staggering problems. These range from such traditional destroyers as adultery and divorce--America has had a 50% divorce rate for 30 years--to the emergence of the television and entertainment distractions, which pull families apart, and increasing economic pressures that drive parents out of the home and into the workforce. Parents are fearful of letting their children play outside because a stalker might snatch them away. And, as is all too often the case, the educational system tends to pit children against their parents.

Norman Bates said that he "hated what his mother had become...not her." Perhaps some feel the same way about their family.

Is there any hope for a semblance of what the traditional family was once thought to be? Not if we look to the fictions of the past for guidance.

ABOUT JOHN W. WHITEHEAD

Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His most recent books are the best-selling Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the award-winning A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, and a debut dystopian fiction novel, The Erik Blair Diaries. Whitehead can be contacted at staff@rutherford.org. Nisha Whitehead is the Executive Director of The Rutherford Institute. Information about The Rutherford Institute is available at www.rutherford.org.

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