Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds is an in-depth exploration of human anxiety and fear through the lens of female vulnerability and the fear of the unknown. The film shows how this anxiety affects our behavior and thinking, revealing our instinctive response to fear.
Alfred Hitchcock is revered for his mise-en-scène, and his work has been recognized for his psychological thrillers and his mastery of mise-en-scène and film psychology. Especially in the horror genre, Hitchcockian tropes and devices have become common knowledge and textbooks. Hitchcock’s 1963 film The Birds, which deals with the horror of Melanie being attacked by a flock of birds in the town where she visits Mitch, is still an important influence on how disaster and horror films are organized. While there are many implications of the movie, I would like to focus on the aspects of “womanhood” in “The Birds” that I personally felt while watching the movie and the human response to the “fear of the unknown.
Hitchcock’s The Birds is more than just a horror movie. It can be understood in the context of the social climate of the time, especially the anxiety of the Cold War, and asks fundamental questions about human existence. Beyond the surface horror of a flock of birds attacking, it serves as a psychological metaphor that reflects the fears and anxieties of people at the time. When evaluating Hitchcock’s work from a modern perspective, it can be said that he portrayed the image of women in a socially male-centered order through cinema. The image of ‘women’ in the movie is mainly centered on Melanie and Lydia, who have something in common: a lack of love. Melanie’s mother left home when she was 11 years old, and Lydia’s husband’s death left her lonely. Both of their compasses point to Mitch to fill this void, and Lydia is wary of Melanie because she fears she will be marginalized if he marries her. Mitch is prevented from living a normal life by Lydia, which can be interpreted as “a male protagonist with a maternal superego that blocks access to normal sexual relations,” as defined by Žižek.
This maternal figure also affects the character and behavior of the male protagonist, who is fatherless, and he himself is forced to form a hallucinatory image of his mother under its influence. In addition to showing a mentally vulnerable woman, it can also be seen as a story about how women can make men vulnerable and have a negative effect on them. Also, if we look at “women” from Melanie’s point of view, Melanie, who brought the parakeet bird, is initially the subject of the narrative, but she becomes the object of the bird when she is attacked by the seagulls. Initially presented as a free-spirited and independent being, her inner vulnerability is revealed as the work unfolds over time. The film begins with Melanie looking at the birds in the cage, and then repeatedly shows Melanie being trapped. She is trapped in a phone box, in her house, in a room on the second floor, and finally in her car. But it’s a man, Mitch, who rescues her from the phone box, and it’s Mitch who rescues her when she goes upstairs to see what’s going on. Even in the final scene, when they leave Bodega Bay in the car, he is portrayed as a passive presence.
From a feminist critique point of view, the film emphasizes the negative portrayal of female characters by portraying them as weak and vulnerable, while the male characters have a strong will to overcome the disaster. In this way, it can be argued that his monolithic image of women is a limitation of the times and the individual, as it homogenizes and universalizes the image of women.
On the other hand, in terms of responding to the “fear of the unknown,” Lovecraft said, “The most powerful and ancient emotion felt by man is fear, and the most powerful and ancient fear is the fear of the unknown. In response, Freud saw fear as arising not simply from the fact that something is unknown, but from the fact that our familiar and normal experiences (i.e., what we know) become strange, or that the strange becomes familiar. Fear grows when a familiar town, grocery store, school, or landscape is no longer a part of our daily routine, and its logic or principles are shifted into unknown territory. ‘Birds’ is one such movie, as the birds that have been close to us in our daily lives suddenly turn aggressive. In addition, the characters and the audience are left mystified as to why the birds became hostile until the end of the movie, and it can be said that the movie utilizes the fear of the unknown appropriately.
The question then arises, “How do humans respond to the fear of the unknown, and should they?” According to Hans Rosling, humans have an instinct to find clear and simple reasons for the unpredictable world. This instinct, which he calls the “blame instinct,” exaggerates the importance of individuals or groups because finding a “bad guy” or “villain” distracts us from endlessly pondering the complexity of the world. In response, Rosling emphasizes the need to focus on causes and structures rather than blame and to try to see the world as it really is, but it’s doubtful that this behavior would be possible if the events of the movie were to happen in real life. While we recognize that this is a rational attitude, it’s not always possible for everyone to remain rational. Furthermore, the fear of the unknown, as mentioned above, is a situation where it is almost impossible to determine the cause and effect, let alone the correlation. This is why movies that deal with cosmic horror and the fear of the unknown, such as Stephen King’s The Mist, are often characterized by witch hunts and accusations. In The Birds, the townspeople are quick to suspect Melanie and her parakeet of being the source of the problem. Lines such as “They say it all started after you moved here,” “It’s all because of you,” and “You’re the devil, the devil!” nakedly show how humans in the grip of extreme fear will blame someone and shift the blame.
At its core, a horror or fear-based movie is enjoyable because of the disconnect between the viewer’s gaze across the screen at something fictional that is suffering, and the fact that you are watching from the comfort of your own seat. However, such a scene in a movie can trigger a deeper examination of our reactions to unknown horrors, while also sparking internal reflection on the ethics of actions such as reprimanding a “villain,” the impact of those actions, and how we would behave in a similar situation. In other words, it forces the viewer to reconsider the human response to unknown horrors, and to consider whether it is right to create a villain and reprimand him, what the implications and effects are, and how we would behave if we were in that situation.
To summarize, Hitchcock’s The Birds portrays female characters as vulnerable, while the male protagonists emphasize their strong will to overcome disaster. This trope can act as a limit to the homogenization of female images. In addition, the film provokes reflection on human fear of the unknown, a process that is often entertained through imagination. In addition, The Birds reflects the social and psychological unrest of the time and explores the complexity and anxiety of human beings in depth, making it a masterpiece of Hitchcock’s cinematic philosophy.
