Hitchcock's "The Birds" WHY Did They Attack?

What's your theory?

I have one... The incestual relationship between Mitch and Melanie.

Yes, I said it. Melanie's incredibly strong resemblance to Lydia is not a coincidence in my opinion.

More to come if the thread gets legs...

 

global warming

 

In the Truffaut book [IIRC], Hitchcock states that he deliberately did not provide a specific reason as to why the birds attack.

My own theories are that the birds represent either the randomness of unexpected and sudden evil or natural catastrophe in our lives; or a plague or punishment from God, especially in retribution for some sin or unfaithfulness.

 

The film is based on a book by Daphne du Maurier. I've never read it, though, so I'm not certain whther it provides a reason for their attacks.

 

My dilettantish take has always been that's all about sex.

Everything in Mitch's town was proper and reserved. His relationships w/ his mother, sister, and the teacher all had defined boundaries that everyone understood. Along came Melanie, who represented a free sexuality, and she unwittingly unleashed the raw, elemental forces of the jealousy and condemnation from Mitch's relationships, in the form of the birds.

It was only when Melanie became essentially catatonic, her spirit crushed, after she was attacked, that the birds became docile at the end.

Doug

 

The Birds

The "why did they attack" question has always been a great mystery. I like how Hitchcock left this question open instead of making up a reason. So many horror movies go wrong when they contrive reasons such as meteorites, mad scientist experiments gone wrong or nuclear contamination.

As usual, Hitchcock gets it right.

Scott

 

I think you nailed it Doug.

 

Mitch resolves his oedipal complex by finding an un-related woman to take the place of his mother. Does Freud say that is wrong?

If Mitch and Melanie are meant to be punished, the story would resolve with the wrong-doers being punished. Instead, the attacks spread to neighboring towns while Mitch, his mother and Melanie survive and head off into the sunset together. That does not jive with a morality tale.

If anything is to be made on this point, "Mitch" represents Hitch, trying replace his lost Grace Kelly with a lookalike Tippi Hedren.

 

The birds attack because if they didn't, they wouldn't have much of a movie. Same reason the shark attacks in "Jaws"...

 

McGuffin

 

And the attacks inexplicibly end as suddenly as they began.

 

I didn't know the birds were McGuffins.

If the movie was made today they would just have the birds rest for the sequel.

 

There are some good reasons here already. I don't think there is one explanation. But I think that once Hitchcock said something like humans abuse animals and nature all the time. What if at some point nature struck back?

The movie is an over the top examination of something that does once in a while happen in real life. Birds can get confused or diseased and attack once in a while. I think I read that Hitch found a few newspaper clippings about this happening.

 

Yeah, I wouldn't call the birds - or the shark in "Jaws" - MacGuffins. (Gotta go with the "MacGuffin" instead of "McGuffin" - otherwise it's too easy to move to "McMuffin"!) I think MacGuffins are generally incidental except as motivators to the plot, while the birds and the shark had a lot to do in those movies...

 

The birds are not MacGuffins. A MacGuffin is an object that everyone in a story is chasing after, but whose actual content or purpose isn't really important to the story.

I'd like to know why a bird attacked me three times the other day while I was walking my dog. It was just like a scene from the movie! I looked around to see if there were any more perched on wires, glaring at me.

 

Agree with Squealy and Oats--the birds are not MacGuffins, they are something else. They are almost anti-MacGuffins.

In Spoto's biography he goes rather over the top in giving the birds a sexual reading. He may be onto something, but I think he takes it way too far.

Being attacked by a bird is a horrid and frightening thing. Hitch had been making money off of creating tension and scaring people for 40 years at that point. To some degree his personality was shaped by that success, I would imagine.

 

"In TV interviews, Hitchcock defined a MacGuffin as the object around which the plot revolves, but, as to what that object specifically is, he declared, 'the audience don't care.'"

If we take that definition as correct, the birds certainly aren't MacGuffins because the audience DOES care. Lots of people are afraid of birds, so their presence adds to the scare factor in the film...

 

The Daphne du Maurier short story on which the movie was based provides no explanation whatsoever as to the reason for the bird attacks.

 

And the characters are not going around looking for birds -- they are being besieged by them!

The Maltese Falcon is a bird-shaped MacGuffin.

 

Ha ha ha - ugh...

 

"The Birds" is not a conventional 'quest' or 'journey' oriented Hitchock film. The object of the characters' actions is merely to survive, to fight off or outlast the bird attacks. The reason as to what brought on the birds attacks is never explained. It is something that propels the action but it [the birds' purpose in attacking] is not necessarily identifiable. So in that context, the reaon why the birds attack is a MacGuffin - not the birds themselves.