Movie Review – The Birds (about how humans deal with the unknown : fear)

I watched the movie The Birds, directed by Alfred Hitchcock, focusing on the contrast between how humans view birds and how humans deal with the aggressive unknown.

 

The Birds, directed by the master of suspense, Alfred Hitchcock, is a movie about an unexplained attack by birds on humans. It was almost the first movie to portray birds themselves as objects of terror, and it has since resonated with audiences, with Hitchcock’s Birds being homaged in various works. The contrast between the way humans look at birds and the way humans deal with the aggressive unknown is one of the most striking aspects of the movie. Let’s analyze these elements first, and then criticize the film.

 

 

First of all, the way humans view birds in the movie is one of the biggest criteria that divides the movie into thirds. The movie opens with a shop selling animals in the background. Maloney, the female lead, has ordered a parrot for her relative, but is teased by Mitch, the male lead, who recognizes her from the courtroom. The conversation between Maloney and Mitch, who recognizes him from the courtroom, sets the stage for the events that follow. When Mitch asks, “Isn’t it scary to keep these innocent little birds in here,” Maloney replies, “I can’t let them fly around the store,” which is quite significant given the horror of humans being trapped indoors by birds later in the movie. In addition, when Mitch asks why the birds are kept separate, Maloney replies, “To protect the seeds,” but considering that the birds were in flocks of their own species when they attacked the humans, we can see that the anthropocentric thinking of the early characters is illogical and conventional. Birds are ‘innocent’ and ‘pitiful’ commodities and objects of pleasure.

 

 

These stereotypical judgments also appear in the middle of the movie. When several characters testify that they were attacked by birds, the majority of people who did not witness the incident either think they are exaggerating, that there is a clear reason for the birds’ behavior and that it is not common, or that it will not be a problem in the future. They don’t perceive the birds as a threat. However, those who have been directly attacked feel uneasy when they see the birds and begin to notice their presence, which was previously unnoticed. In the second half, everyone shares a common experience of bird attacks, and many characters react hysterically. There is a line in the middle of the movie where the characters snicker that a war between birds and humans is unthinkable, and if it were to happen, how would we stop so many of them, but in reality, people just run away without putting up a fight.

 

 

The Birds is a film in which the view of birds is constantly changing, and the trigger is the inexplicable behavior of the birds. The “inexplicable” is particularly important because that’s where the horror begins. Later in the film, when the characters are trapped in the Brenner house, Lydia and Cathy cry out to Mitch asking why the birds are acting the way they are. What if they had known what was causing the birds’ behavior? I don’t think they would have panicked in the same situation. At the very least, they would have a clearer idea of what to do to make their situation better. However, if you feel your life is in immediate danger and you don’t even have a basis for thinking about your next move, it’s an existential shock for humans as animals that interact with the world through movement, unlike plants.

 

 

This is a little different from the usual fear of the unknown. Death is often used as an example of fear of the unknown, as it is thought that this kind of fear has more to do with an uncontrollable imagination than a lack of standards for behavior. Of course, the unpredictability and unpreparedness of death plays a part in the fear, but we haven’t yet figured out the strange behavior of birds, which seems to have a regular cycle, and we can quickly come up with primitive ways to prepare. However, the introduction of birds as an unfamiliar danger to the everyday, background objects we thought we knew so well is a bit exaggerated, making it feel like the familiar world is suddenly transformed into a very aggressive wonder that’s coming at us from all sides. This is why the man in the bar shouting about the end of the world doesn’t feel out of place, even though everything else hasn’t changed. This betrayal of familiarity is particularly effective in the early part of the film, and in the contrast between ‘objectified pet birds’ and ‘environmental and aggressive birds’, often represented by the image of a pair of parakeets.
The enumeration of human figures responding to these changes seems to be the epitome of a disaster movie. The aforementioned doomsayer, the skeptic who won’t believe it until he sees it, the active naysayer who extols the innocence of the birds, the weakling who illogically drives others to find the source of the problem, the picture-perfect male head of household who steps up to the plate and rescues his family, and the old-fashioned female figure who loses her ability to cope when things get out of hand. The characters dramatically fulfill their roles without overlap. These characters, who seem to have role labels attached to their names, leave the audience wondering where they fit in. However, in a real-life disaster, it’s doubtful that such a wide range of responses would occur in equal proportions. The various social movements that have emerged during the pandemic have shown how social we are and how we seek collective action in times of crisis. Of course, given the symbolism and allegory of the movie, I think the current development is much more interesting than such a response.