This blog post delves deeply into what nature’s revenge signifies through the birds’ attack in The Birds, and how the signs of anxiety and disconnection that humans have ignored manifest as warnings.
The film is structured around two central axes: the love story between Melanie and Mitch, and the disaster narrative centered on the birds. When they first meet, Mitch plays a cruel prank on Melanie. Seeking revenge for this humiliation, Melanie visits his house and leaves a lovebird behind. On her way back, Melanie is attacked by seagulls. While treating her wounds and talking, Mitch and Melanie fall in love. Meanwhile, bizarre incidents of birds attacking people persistently occur at Bodega Bay. As the news spreads, some believe the reports, but Mrs. Bundy, who loves ornithology, refutes them based on science, while a Christian man concludes everything points to the biblical apocalypse. Mitch fortifies his house to prepare for the birds’ attacks, but Melanie, left alone inside, is severely attacked by the birds and exhibits traumatic behavior. The film ends with the family all piling into Mitch’s car to attempt an escape.
Perhaps the ‘birds’ themselves take up more screen time than Mitch in this film. Another characteristic of the birds’ appearances is that they are distinctly marked not only visually but also aurally. In the film’s opening, countless birds fly aimlessly; the already dizzying visual effect of so many birds is compounded by a cacophonous sound, evoking the word ‘chaos’. In the scenes of the birds’ attacks, the sheer number of birds, the desperate attempts of people to evade them, and the loud, prolonged sound all combine to make the viewer feel hysterical.
The scenes of birds attacking people maximize fear and anxiety, heightening the tension for the audience. The birds’ attacks symbolize nature’s rebellion while also exposing human helplessness. This direction transcends simple horror, reflecting the anxieties and fears of modern society. Particularly, the setting of birds attacking people allows audiences to experience extraordinary terror within familiar daily life, further intensifying the film’s suspense.
Yet the very notion of birds attacking humans to the point of killing is utterly alien. As Mrs. Bundy states, it’s logically impossible for birds to possess the intelligence to attack humans. Regarding the cause, when an explosion occurs in the film, the mother of two children, having endured a major attack, directs blame at Melanie, saying, “They say it all started when you arrived!” However, a man claims he was attacked by seagulls the week before Melanie arrived, and the film leaves the true cause of these events ambiguous. The deafeningly loud noise that accompanies the birds’ appearances can be seen as an auditory mise-en-scène, amplifying the confusion surrounding the issue of ‘birds attacking people’.
If it’s realistically impossible for birds to attack people, what do the attacking birds symbolize in the film? I believe something more important exists than finding a one-to-one meaning for the ‘birds’. After the birds attack the children, when people at the restaurant passionately debate whether to believe the reports of birds attacking people, Mitch says: “The problem really exists, but everyone tries to ignore it.” To the man who says there’s “no reason to believe” Michi, she retorts, “What’s happening is the reason, isn’t it?” This line might just be the film’s crucial message.
This dialogue also reminded me of the Korean film ‘Burning’ (2018, directed by Lee Chang-dong). In that film, Jong-su believes there is a cat and a well based on what Haemi told him, and he insists on it. But everyone he tells responds that there is no such thing, leaving him confused. The similarity lies in how others dismiss the protagonist’s words as nonsense and refuse to believe him. Clearly, the birds attacked people, and there were people who experienced it. Yet, some who hadn’t experienced it refused to listen to their accounts. It was a catastrophe severe enough to kill people, and by the film’s end, severe enough to lock down the entire neighborhood.
I imagined that the reason the film’s subject matter—the entity attacking people—was set as ‘birds,’ something that absolutely could never happen in reality, was to show how people clearly experiencing a real problem are dismissed by others as talking nonsense and ignored. I wondered if there might be a message pointing out the reality, as Michi said, that ‘the problem exists, but people try to ignore it’ – dismissing real problems as absurd.
Furthermore, this film strongly criticizes human arrogance and ignorance. Humans adopt an attitude of controlling and dominating nature, yet nature strikes back by unleashing unpredictable disasters upon them. This can also be interpreted as the film’s message demanding deep reflection on the relationship between humans and nature. Furthermore, the characters’ mutual suspicion and distrust mirror the disconnection and lack of communication in modern society, highlighting another theme: the importance of human relationships.
In conclusion, the symbolism of the birds in the film transcends mere horror, carrying a multi-layered meaning that critiques human ignorance and arrogance, as well as social distrust and disconnection. This complex message adds depth to the film and opens up diverse possibilities for interpretation among audiences.
