This blog post explores the fear, denial, confusion, and survival instincts humans exhibit when faced with the unpredictable threat depicted in the film The Birds, delving deeply into how an unknown disaster shakes human society.
Directed by suspense master Alfred Hitchcock, The Birds is a film centered on the inexplicable human attacks by birds. It was one of the first films to depict birds themselves as objects of terror, and after its release, “Hitchcock’s birds” became a subject of homage in various works, creating a significant impact. Prominent elements in the film include the contrast in human perspectives on birds and humanity’s stance toward confronting aggressive unknown forces. We will first analyze these elements before critiquing the work.
First, the human gaze upon birds in the film can be considered the primary criterion dividing the film into three distinct parts. Early in the film, a pet shop selling animals appears as a backdrop. The female lead, Maloney, had ordered a parrot to prank a relative, but is teased by the male lead, Mitch, who recognizes her from his time in a court holding cell. The conversation between Maloney, pretending to be a shop clerk, and Mitch, who knows her, foreshadows events to come. When Mitch asks, “Aren’t you afraid of locking up these innocent little birds here?” Maloney replies, “Can’t have the store flying around.” Considering the later horror where humans are trapped indoors by the birds, this exchange is profoundly meaningful. Furthermore, when Mitch asks why the birds are separated, Maloney answers, “To protect the seed.” However, considering that the birds themselves flew in flocks, synchronized by their own species, when attacking humans, it suggests the characters’ initial human-centric thinking is illogical and conventional. At this point, the birds are portrayed as ‘innocent’ and ‘pitiful’ commodities, objects of amusement.
Such judgments based on common assumptions persist into the film’s middle section. While some characters testify to being attacked by birds, the majority who didn’t witness it either think their accounts are exaggerated, believe there must be a clear, isolated reason for the birds’ behavior that isn’t typical, or assume there won’t be any further problems. They do not perceive the birds as a threat. However, those directly attacked feel unease at the sight of the birds and begin to notice their previously negligible presence. By the latter part, everyone shares the common experience of the bird attacks, and many characters exhibit hysterical reactions. In the middle section, there’s a line where someone scoffs at the idea of a war between birds and humans, asking how we could possibly stop so many of them if it came to that. In reality, people fled without putting up any real resistance.
Thus, the perspective on the ‘birds’ in the work continuously shifts, and the catalyst for this change is the inexplicable abnormal behavior of the birds. The “unknown cause” setting is particularly crucial, because that’s precisely where the terror begins. Later in the story, when the characters are trapped in the Brenner family home, Lydia and Cassie wail at Mitch, demanding why the birds are acting this way. What if they had known the cause of the birds’ behavior? Even in the same situation, they likely wouldn’t have panicked. At least they would have had a clear basis for deciding what actions to take to improve their situation. But when faced with an immediate threat to life, and without even a foundation to consider the next move, humans—as animals who interact with the world through ‘movement,’ unlike plants—experience an existential shock.
This differs slightly from the commonly discussed fear of the unknown. Death is often cited as an example of fear of the unknown, because in that kind of fear, the influence of uncontrollable imagination is thought to be greater than the lack of a basis for action. Of course, the unpredictability and unpreparedness for death also contribute to the fear, but the birds’ abnormal behavior, while not yet fully understood, appears to follow a certain cycle, and primitive ways to prepare for it can be quickly devised. However, the fact that birds—creatures we thought we knew too well, mere background elements of daily life—suddenly descend as unfamiliar dangers, exaggerates the feeling that the world we were familiar with has abruptly transformed into a highly aggressive mystery, seemingly lurking to attack us from all sides. This is why the man shouting about the end of the world in the bar felt so unremarkable, even though everything else remained unchanged. Particularly in the film’s early stages, the contrast between the ‘objectified pet birds’—often depicted as a pair of lovebirds—and the ‘environmental, aggressive birds’ effectively highlights this betrayal of familiarity.
The array of human responses to this change seems to exemplify the archetype of disaster cinema. The apocalyptic prophet mentioned earlier, the skeptical person who won’t believe it until they see it with their own eyes, the passionate opponent praising the birds’ innocence, the weak-minded person who illogically pushes others around trying to find the cause of the problem, the seemingly idealized male head of the household who steps up to face danger and save his family, and even the old-school female archetype who loses her ability to cope as the situation worsens. The characters perform their roles dramatically without overlap. These figures, who seem to have role labels attached to their names, prompt the audience to ponder which category they themselves might fall into. However, it’s questionable whether such a diverse range of responses would actually emerge in equal proportions during a real disaster. One might expect a more collective and systematic response than anticipated. The diverse social movements during the COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated how inherently social humans are and how they seek collective action in crises. Of course, considering the film’s symbolism and allegory, the current narrative development seems far more intriguing than such a response direction.
