Admittedly a few birds did act strange, but that’s no reason to…
“The Birds,” directed by Alfred Hitchcock, is a film where all the birds in Bodega Bay go apeshit when this woman, Melanie Daniels, arrives. She met a guy named Mitch in a pet store and became infatuated with him. She drives out to Bodega Bay to deliver two love birds to Mitch’s younger sister. Melanie is a very driven woman. She’ll do what she wants, when she wants. It is her overt sexuality that Hitchcock uses to warn people about a woman’s place in the world. The birds also serve to illustrate this point. The caged loved birds are the only birds that do not attack in the film. They represent how human relationships should be. They cause no trouble because they are “normal.” But the wild birds, the ones that attack, are representative of “both the aggressivity of woman and her punishment.”[i] When Melanie goes to Bodega Bay she is chasing after a man. This is not a woman’s role in society. She is supposed to be the one that is chased after. This stepping out of the constructed social roles of a woman is mirrored by the birds attacking. At first it is just one gull that attacks Melanie, but the longer she stays in Bodega Bay trying to win the object of her affection (Mitch), the more and more birds come in each attack. It’s almost as if (if you believe in God) God is sending a pretty clear message to these people that that is not the way things are done in his world, and he is sending birds in to prove his point. Since these birds represent the backlash to this strong woman who is willing to go after what she wants, we see this femininity as “both monster and victim.”[ii] Her actions are deemed monstrous, and yet she is attacked by the birds.
The final scene of the birds is the Mitch’s family and Melanie creeping cautiously to their car to leave town. We see that there house is covered with birds. ABSOLUTELY COVERED! They make it to the car and start to drive away and this is the last we see of them, “the car…holds the oedipalized family who must exit torn and tattered and leave the family home to its new occupants.”[iii] This can be seen as the new ways of women chasing what they want triumphing over the tried and true family values. But it can also be seen as a non-acceptance of those ways. The birds win and force the family to retreat, but this doesn’t say much for women’s demeanor. All the women get chased out of house and home. This could be seen as a call to action, saying that women should go out and find what they want and hold on to it. This is a very strong message to women and men. The men are no longer the only ones who have to chase after the ones they want to be with.
[i] Halberstam, Judith. “Reading Counterclockwise.” Skin Shows. Durham: Duke University press. 130-131.
[ii] Ibid.
[iii] Ibid.
