This paper aims to theologically reflect upon Alfred Hitchcock's 1963 film The Birds by exploring what the film says about 1) the relationship between nature and humanity; and 2) the possible meaning and role of crisis in the journey to authentic human relationships/community.

In examining these themes I will focus primarily on the character of Melanie Daniels (played by Tippi Hedren) and this character's development and interaction with others--most notably Lydia Brennan (Jessica Tandy). I will be employing primarily a feminist hermeneutic in this examination.

THEOLOGICAL REFLECTIONS ON THE BIRDS

In Daphne du Maurier's short story upon which the film The Birds is based, the only reason given for the birds' turning against humanity is simply that "millions of years of memory" stored in the birds' "little brains" have produced "this instinct to destroy mankind [sic]". Hitchcock reflected this rationale when in a radio advertisement for the film he declared: "If you have ever eaten a turkey drumstick, caged a canary or gone duck hunting, The Birds will give you something to think about." Presumably, this "something" is the possibility of nature exacting vengeance on humanity for, as Mrs. Bundy notes in the restaurant scene, its insistence on "making it difficult for life to exist on the planet."

Although the film gives no explicit explanation for the bird attacks on the coastal hamlet of Bodega Bay, humanity and nature are nonetheless presented as both separate and warring. At most, the film implies that the avian assaults are nature's revenge on complacent and willfully ignorant humanity. The most obvious (and comical) example of this occurs in the aforementioned restaurant scene--a scene that is pivotal in the action of The Birds. Accordingly, the scene's setting is the appropriately named Tides Restaurant, with the tide truly turning against humanity.

In this particular scene [Chapter 12 on The Birds DVD] numerous characters-Melanie, Mitch, Mrs. Bundy, Sebastian (the town's cannery owner), Deke (the restaurant owner), the town drunk, a salesman, and an increasingly hysterical mother-talk about and attempt to make sense of the strange and increasingly terrifying events unfolding around them. The overriding question is why are the birds attacking? In the midst of this heated discussion, the cook suddenly interrupts by announcing off screen that "three Southern fried chickens" are ready for serving.

Apart from Mrs. Bundy's look of annoyance (her scientific explanation for why birds are incapable of "launching a massed attack" had been interrupted), no attention is paid to the cook's statement. For the audience, the cook's voice speaks literally from beyond. This fact and the actual words spoken-comical as they are given the film's context-alert the audience to humanity's long history of killing birds and other animals. This realization, however, is completely lost on everyone present in the restaurant--even as they grapple with reasons for why humans are now suddenly the victims of bird attacks. Only the town drunk, quoting passages from the Bible, responds with any degree of certainty: "It's the end of the world!"

More accurately, it appears to be the end of the human world. The opening titles sequence says as much through its depiction of human culture, represented by words, being pecked away-destroyed-by nature, represented by the disintegrating titles and the claustrophobic presence of the screeching and flapping crows flying back and forth across the screen.

The "wordy" restaurant scene is cut short by the birds' most daring assault on Bodega Bay [Chapters 13-14 on The Birds DVD]. An aerial view of gulls hovering over and descending upon the burning town was described by Hitchcock as "God's point of view". Such a statement implies a God indifferent to the chaos and calamity engulfing humanity; a distant, removed God-one as separated from humanity and creation as Hitchcock depicts humanity from nature.

Ironically, what's truly terrifying about the bird attacks is that the birds appear to have taken on human characteristics. They're now capable of seemingly mindless acts of violence and destruction, capable of believing that violence will solve the problem of power imbalance. Hitchcock thus made the birds terrifying for his human audience by projecting human tendencies and capabilities onto them. Yet this observation can be misread as implying a total separation of humanity and nature. It has been this perceived disconnect which many have noted has for centuries contributed to humanity's abuse of nature, resulting in our world's current eco-crisis.

Such a predicament has its roots in a very dysfunction understanding of power, one which according to Paul King and David Woodyard in their book Liberating Nature, is "expressed through institutions and structures marked by domination, mastery and exploitation". King and Woodyard concede that an expression of power is often necessary for liberation. Yet they are adamant that it is not a unilateral notion of power-one controlled by individual human self-interest achieved through domination and violence. Such an expression of power, as Mrs. Bundy rightly observes, does indeed make it difficult for life to exist.

Instead of unilateral power, the authors of Liberating Nature advocate an alternative expression of power--one marked by reciprocity and solidarity, noting that the essence of reciprocity is mutual interdependence and responsibility. Thus it is not "power over" but "power with." Power liberated from domination has been termed "relational power" by many theologians-a power that aims not to diminish the other, but to empower all. It is an expression of power, the authors contend, that is observable in nature-an example being the striving by human beings for mutual and reciprocal empowerment in their interpersonal relationships. The symbiotic relationships between certain animals within the broader reality of nature, is another example. King and Woodyard note that such relationships "do not use and abuse but rather build and reinforce".

King and Woodyard also note that humanity's various images of God continue to play a crucial role in determining which expression of power is embraced. Hitchcock's aforementioned statement clearly reflects a God not in relationship with humanity, a God that is not only distant but above and ultimately beyond humanity and creation. Such an understanding fails to recognize, for example, liberation theology's belief that we are called to be agents, conduits, of the loving and transformative presence and action of the sacred in the world; fails to recognize that the sacred infuses us and all creation and yearns to be realized through our actions. Belief in a distant deity to whom we beseech and are dependent upon for divine intervention can readily absolve us from hearing and responding to the call (and thus the risks) to be in relationship with an ultimately mysterious God.

On many levels Hitchcock's The Birds is dominated by unilateral power struggles (the nmost obvious of which is at one point termed "the bird war"). Yet this term is not only capable of applying to the avian assaults but to the power struggle between the film's female characters--"birds," after all, being British slang for attractive women. In relation to the more obvious "war," the film projects the anthropomorphic construction of unilateral power onto other species-turning birds into a terrifying expression of the self-destructive tendency of humanity gripped by addiction to unilateral power and blind to its own role in the subsequent emergence of life-threatening crises.

Yet not only is nature in The Birds anthropomorphasized, it is also feminized. In early publicity material for The Birds, nature is termed Mother Nature. Mothers-and by extension, women-in the film are portrayed negatively. "Mother" nature is out-of-control, vengeful and unpredictable; Lydia is cold and overprotective; the mother in the Tides Restaurant is hysterical and accusatory.

Furthermore, although some awareness of the negative aspects of unilateral power can be discerned in The Birds, it is more often than not women who personify them. Thus, in the face of what-in the film's context of "power struggle-can only be termed "blowback," humanity's foolishness, hubris and speechlessness are expressed through such things as Melanie's (birdbrained) idea of evacuating the schoolhouse despite the presence of hundreds of crows outside; Mrs. Bundy's arrogant insistence of the birds' inadequate "brain pans" and thus their inability to orchestrate a massed attack; and Lydia's gaping, speechless mouth in the wake of discovering Dan Fawcett's bloodied body--the eyes of which have been pecked-out.

Women are clearly equated with birds in Hitchcock's film. The term "poor thing" is used three times to describe birds prior to the launching of their attacks. It's also what Lydia says of Melanie after she is left bloodied, unconscious and powerless from her encounter with the birds in the attic--quite a comedown from the way Melanie was first introduced to the audience.

At the beginning of the film Melanie Daniels is portrayed as a girl-about-town, a woman of leisure, someone used to getting her way, a sexual aggressor. She wears furs, high heels and gold jewelry, and is clearly a bold woman - brazenly entering the Brennan house unbiddend. "Her opulent fur symbolizes human dominion over nature as well as male economic power in society," notes Camille Paglia in her BFI Film Classics commentary on The Birds. "[Thus] pampered and parasitic, Melanie is an exquisite artifact of high society".

Men in Bodega Bay respond to Melanie with surprise and disapproval-one man shakes his head as he watches Melanie head off alone across the bay in the outdoor motor boat. Women in the town view her with suspicion, confusion and outright hostility-"I think you're evil! Evil!" screeches the hysterical mother in the Tides Restaurant.

The film can thus be definitely read as saying that women like Melanie who are out of their traditional roles, who are independent, manipulative and resourceful, cause havoc-represented by the birds (out of their cages) bringing havoc to the conservative little hamlet of Bodega Bay. "Back in your gilded cage, Melanie Daniels," says Mitch as he puts back a canary into its cage--one released by a scheming Melanie. Later, Melanie is very much "caged" in the telephone booth while outside bedlam erupts as the birds destructively descend upon the hapless Bodega Bay--destruction seemingly unleashed in unison with her arrival to the town.

There is a clear correlation between the development of Melanie's character and the bird attacks. The first major attack at Cathy's birthday party occurs immediately after Melanie's first display of vulnerability--sharing with Mitch her "motherless" state. It appears that with every step of Melanie's journey in authenticity, i.e., in meaningful connection-making with self and others-the bird attacks intensify. They can thus be seen to represent her own inner struggle as part of her resists letting go of her previous hedonistic, self-centered life as a "rootless libertine of international café society". It is a life she herself admits leaves much to be desired. Accordingly she is in search of "something" else she tells Mitch. Is this "something" that Melanie is looking for placement back in society's cage for women? Certainly some authors-most notably Margaret Horwitz in her article "The Birds: A Mother's Love" and Camille Paglia in her BFI Film Classics commentary on The Birds-believe so, and are thus highly critical of this perceived sexism.

Camille Paglia observes that the first major attack occurs directly after both Lydia and Annie "stare paralyzed" at the sight of Melanie and Mitch as an obvious "couple" at Cathy's party. Is the subsequent wrath of the avian marauders "an externalization of the buried animosities and murderous jealousies of the triangulated women?" Paglia ponders. The bird attacks certainly can be read as representing the unilateral power struggles between the female characters, yet I also think there's evidence in the film that speaks to the character's search for relational power. Paradoxically, the crisis of the bird attacks provides opportunities for such authentic connection-making and represents resistance it.

Robin Wood, author of Hitchcock's Films Revisited, notes in the 1994 documentary, All About The Birds, that "the [attacking] birds represent the eruption of chaos, of unpredictability . . . [the birds] can be taken as [representing] everything which we don't understand and can't control". With this in mind, might not Melanie's desire for "something" other than the shallow life she's been leading-her "jumping into fountains"-act as a mysterious, uncontrollable and unpredictable disruption to her everyday life. Theologically, one could say a deeper, truer self is calling her to authenticity. Such a calling, and its promise of fullness of life-of the resurrected life-can be very disturbing-even terrifying--for those entrenched in the false-security of "everyday life."

Such a life often incorporates artifices that, although offering some protection from the unpredictability of life, also separate us from one another. In The Birds, such symbols and artifices are symbolized by such things as teacups and handbags, and, as we shall see, are gradually either shattered or abandoned as the crisis calling us to new ways of relationship, intensifies.

For example, when the symbols of Lydia's power and control-her teacups and portrait of her husband-are shattered and askewed by the birds flying down the chimney and into the house, she begins to lose her emotional equilibrium. Yet at the same time an opportunity is given to Melanie to show compassion. She does so by offering to stay and help, aware, no doubt, that "the power balance has shifted".

The next morning Lydia is completely rattled by the discovery of her neighbor's body. In her panic and horror she drops her handbag-a symbol of order, control and independence in her "everyday life". Upon arriving back at her farm, Mitch and Melanie display genuine concern. Yet such display of feeling from Melanie is still too threatening for Lydia, and she pushes the couple away (and apart) as she stumbles inside. The subsequent scene shows her in bed--fearful and vulnerable.

Downstairs the escalating crisis of the bird attacks brings Mitch and Melanie closer together-they kiss for the first time as Mitch prepares to meet Al Malone, the sheriff, at the Fawcett farm. When Melanie makes tea (with Lydia's teacups) and brings it upstairs to Lydia, she is clearing usurping power in the Brenner household--but her intentions are not to dominate, and Lydia senses this. For a start, Melanie has chosen not to adorn herself with her expensive gold jewelry. She is dressed simply in her dress suit. of pastel green. "It's as if she were signaling oestrus, the promise of fertility," notes Paglia--though in reference to Melanie's advances on Mitch the day before. Yet an authentic and thus "fertile," growing relationship is not impossible between Melanie and Lydia, and the former seems to be testing the water for just such a possibility. The authenticity of Melanie's desire and actions are not lost on Lydia who soon opens up--sharing her desire for greater strength and her poignant experiences of loss and loneliness in the wake of her husband's death. Through all of this Melanie listens and attempts to comfort Lydia.

When Melanie turns to leave, Lydia reaches out to her ("Don't go!") and expresses a desire to get to know her. She is honest about her confused feelings towards Melanie: "I don't know how I feel about you." She also shares her fears about being left alone, and puts down her opening up to "this business with the birds." Both women, in their own way, have made a conscious decision to respond to the crisis which has disrupted their everyday lives, in ways that though frightening and risky, are promising of authentic relationship. Theologically, the film can be read as saying that the building of authentic relationships and communities requires being open and possibly vulnerable. It involves taking risks. For example, although Lydia may have sensed Melanie's good intentions, she could not have been absolutely sure. She accordingly took a risk in revealing to Melanie her true feelings, her authentic humanness.

The scene ends with Lydia thanking Melanie as the latter leaves to pick up Cathy from school. Camille Paglia states that a "wary truce" has been achieved, but I think it's much more. An authentic connection has been established between the two women. To be blunt, I find Paglia's reading of Lydia woefully inadequate. Lydia, for Paglia is a consistent and suffocating obsessive, a puritanical and "fierce Red Queen", a savage, devouring bird whose "witchy malice" is the likely cause of the bird attacks. In her commentary, Paglia fails to acknowledge or explore to any satisfactory degree the human dimension and development of Lydia-intent instead to focus solely on Melanie. She devotes merely half a paragraph to the lengthy and important scene between Melanie and the fearful and vulnerable Lydia-and even then one is left primarily with images of Lydia's "obsessive harping" about the "vulnerability of the big school house windows", then any real insight into the authentic relationship that is beginning to be forged by the two women.

The aforementioned restaurant scene provides a further example of characters openly attempting to interact and connect in the face of emerging crisis. In the wake of the attack on the school children, Melanie goes to the Tides Restaurant to phone "daddy" in San Francisco and inform him of events. It's significant that at no point does Melanie contemplate abandoning the situation she finds herself in--a fact that speaks to her development of character in the face of escalating crisis and her growing commitment to connect authentically with Mitch and his family.

Overhearing her conversation, numerous characters are soon engaged in grappling to make sense of the inexplicable events unfolding around them. Through such interaction stories are shared, fears expressed, hubris displayed and relationships strengthened. It is in this collective display of humanity--in all its ambiguity and complexity-which gives this scene its power.

It is this sense of authentic relationship and community that one could argue Melanie is seeking. Her character is certainly depicted as both searching and aware. It is Melanie who is most often the first to recognize the beginning signs of an attack (thus once again birdlike--this time the canary in the coalmine!). She is also often the first to recognize a means of escape--French doors, a parked car, a telephone booth--and is not afraid of whipping off her designer jacket so as to chase away a gull from a helpless child. Thus Melanie is portrayed as not only aware but resourceful.

As the film progresses in union with Melanie's journey in authenticity, the symbols and artifices of her "everyday life" are appropriately stripped away. Gone is the tightly wound hair which at the beginning of the film expressed her armored personality. Now with her disheveled hair and the trappings of her sophisticated life--fur coat and gold jewelry--abandoned, Melanie, in her pale green suit, looks more natural and human, less manicured and plastic. Gone too is the coyness and self-protecting deceptiveness of earlier scenes. She even becomes forgetful of her handbag--with the waitress at the Tides Restaurant having to run after her with it. All of which, paradoxically, is a sign of both her deconstruction and radical remaking. Theological, such things imply the necessity of letting go of certain attitudes and tendencies in the journey to authenticity.

Such journeying can incur the suspicion and wrath of others. After the major attack on the town the women turn on Melanie--the outsider, the "cause" of "the whole thing." "Who are you? What are you?" demands the hysterical mother, elevated in her fear to a dangerous place of judgmental hubris (Chapter 15 on The Birds DVD]. Her final conclusion has rang as a death kneel for individuals and communities throughout human history: "I think you're evil! Evil!" Melanie responds with a cathartic slap-bringing the woman back to the mutual level of frightened, uncertain humanity.

If the bird attacks can be read as reflecting the inner states of the female (and by extension, the human) characters as they struggle to seek authentic connection in the face of mounting resistance (both internal and external), then it makes sense that these same attacks always abate after cathartic moments like the one just described.

Prior to and during the next (and last) major attack depicted in the film [Chapter 17 on The Birds DVD], all remaining barriers between the main characters are stripped away. Just prior to the attack, Lydia catatonically lashes out at Mitch: "If only your father were here . . ." The hitherto unspoken barrier between mother and son-Lydia's unreasonably comparison of her late husband with her son-is thus exposed and subsequently banished: "I'm sorry, Mitch . . ." says Lydia.

Later, with the nightmarish sound of the birds lashing against the house outside, the characters trapped within are depicted searching and reaching out for each other, depicted attempting to comfort and protect one another amidst fear, blood and brokenness. They reveal themselves simply as humans in need of one another. Subsequently, the attack abates and the adults are filmed in a very monumental way with the stylized camera angle and half-lighting accentuating their victory as authentic human beings within a situation that could just have easily generated very inhuman responses.

As dawn approaches, Melanie-again aware and resourceful--hears the sound of flapping wings. With flash light in hand she investigates--entering a darkened upstairs room full of birds that have broken through the roof [Chapter 18 on The Birds DVD]. With her wildly swinging arms, Melanie seems to become one of the crazed birds herself. As she falls to the floor in surrender, the birds seem to subdue their attack, intensifying it again when Mitch appears to pull the prostrate body of Melanie out of the room. "Poor thing" coos Lydia, as Mitch carries Melanie downstairs.

Mitch decides that Melanie's injuries require medical attention, and that accordingly the family must attempt to reach San Francisco--sixty miles south. The haven they seek is appropriately named after St. Francis of Assisi--a man synonymous with peaceful dynamic of relation power between humanity and nature. Lydia, however, responds fearfully and--given the fact that she does indeed know what's beyond the walls of the house--symbolically: "I'm frightened . . . I don't know what's outside."

In Hitchcock's Films Revisited, Robin Wood notes that Hitchcock was undecided on an ending for The Birds even as the film went into production. Inevitably he chose not to end his film as hopelessly as du Maurier's original story--despite briefly toying with a truly catastrophic closing image (the Golden Gate Bridge covered in birds). Instead, though ambiguous by Hollywood standards, the film does leave the audience with discernable symbols of hope, of a new beginning.

Helping the now conscious Melanie to the car, Mitch and Lydia allay her fears of the massed (though subdued) birds outside [Chapter 19-20 on The Birds DVD]. In light of Lydia's previous comment, the film theologically stresses that in seeking liberation it is necessary to move into the unknown. This final scene of the characters gingerly making there way through the birds so as to gain freedom, explicitly shows that seeking liberation also requires a willingness to confront one's fears.

Understandably in Melanie's case the support and encouragement of others is necessary. But her own previous willingness to reach out and comfort others (namely Lydia) has ensued that she is now enveloped in a loving and empowering community. It is a new beginning for Melanie-now in the arms of a loving mother, and in turn, a new beginning for Lydia. The scene's emphasis on the rays of the rising sun-the beginning of a new day-supports such a reading.

Another sign of hope is Cathy's desire to bring the lovebirds. In the face of all that has transpired, this desire is a strong indication of the triumph of compassion and love. Indeed, love has grown, expanded, since the beginning of the film. The flirtatious, control-seeking desire so often termed love, has been transformed into an all-inclusive willingness to extend oneself for the benefit of all aspects of creation-even birds.

Would it have been more powerful to show the releasing of the lovebirds? Perhaps, but if we read the lovebirds as symbolic of the often unconscious (caged?) desire for authentic relationship-a desire that is capable of disturbing and shattering dysfunctional and inauthentic forms of connection-then it is appropriate that the principal characters who struggled the most to finally embody such authenticity should carry the symbol of it with them beyond their fears and into a new day.

Theological Reflections on The Birds, (c) Michael J. Bayly

BIBLIOGRAPHY

du Maurier, Daphne, "The Birds," in Kiss Me Again, Stranger, New York: Doubleday, 1952.

Horwitz, M., "The Birds: A Mother's Love," in Deutelbaum, M. and Poague, L. (eds), A Hitchcock Reader, Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1986.

King, P.G. and Woodyard, D.O., Liberating Nature: Theology and Economics in a New Order, Cleveland: Pilgrin Press, 1999.

Paglia, Camille, The Birds, London: British Film Institute, 1998.

Wood, Robin, Hitchcock's Films Revisited, New York: Columbia University Press, 1989.

VIDEO DOCUMENTARY

All About The Birds (1994), on the The Birds DVD, Universal, 2000