The Burds: Part II
The continuing (limited and selective) ramble in defence of Alfred Hitchcock's portrayal of women.
A wee while ago I had a look at Rear Window (1954). Inspired by an article I read that reduced Hitchcock's portrayal of women thusly: 'Hitchcock's women are outwardly immaculate, but full of treachery and weakness. But, hurrah, he doesn't kill them all. He just teaches them a thoroughly good lesson.' (Bidisha, 2010). In that post I intended to suggest that Hitchcock counterpoints male and female points of view and that ultimately the male point of view is the one that shifts (that was the idea, don't know if I pulled it off). Here I want to look at the women in The Birds (1963) and how these characters fit into a wider societal context. Bidisha distils the essence of The Birds to this:
I have to disagree with this statement - well. I don't have to, I don't have to - of course I don't bloody have to. I want to though. So I will, but only in so far as it suggests that it is Hitchcock who intends to say that women have no worth beyond the requirements of men, I would argue that at the start of perhaps the most famously countercultural decade, Hitchcock was presenting a view of an overbearing and tyrannical, patriarchal society; a society led by men but one that is maintained and fought for by women, in fine Althusarian style. The society wishes to protect it's conservative foundations and fears change. The lovebirds symbolise the exotic, the other, the free spirit of someone like Melanie, one who doesn't conform to the same restrictions as those imposed on everyone else by the gendered societal roles that are cast. "Pffffffft! Aye right!" Is probably what I'd be thinking too, but just hang on and I'll try to explain.
In The Birds the symbolism of captivity everywhere and this is arguably tied to women most strongly. The houses are very claustrophobic, the architecture holds you in and bears down on you; the hairstyles are restrictive (Jessica Tandy's hair is amazing but undeniably 'shrew'-ish, tightly wound and inflexible) and the clothing is confining, like the shitty nightdress from Brookmiers; if you are a woman and wish to live in this society, then this is what women wear to bed around here and you will too - beds are for sleeping - wash your mind out! The idea of captivity is pervasive in the plot and characterisation too. The male lead (but arguably not the hero), Mitch Brenner (Rod Taylor), traverses the Bay and the city effortlessly, but his mother (Lydia Brenner, Jessica Tandy), Cathy (Veronica Cartwright) and Annie (Suzanne Pleshette, a woman who moved to the Bay to be with Mitch) are trapped in the town, into this walks Melanie Daniels (Tippi Hendren) who could represent freedom, but even she finds it difficult to leave the Bay. The birds react to this person (or the lovebirds that she brings with her to the community) and it could be argued that she is being punished for her free spirited ways, but by the end they leave the harbour community behind (taking the lovebirds). Everyone has been stuck in their ways, tied the formalities of social order, even the most recent addition, Annie, now to an extent symbolises maternalism and order as the local schoolteacher. Tippi is a modern women, not uninterested in family, just not necessarily driven by that social norm.
The most obvious of these symbols of captivity are the lovebirds, seen continually in their cage. They, and so their plight, are arguably aligned with Melanie right from the start, not just because she buys them but when Mitch and her first meet she frees a budgie for a laugh. The women seem unable to capture and return to the cage, but big manly Mitch (you can smell the testosterone seeping from his cheekbones and you normally can't smell films) saves the day and drops a hat over it, returning it to it's elaborate cell he quips, "Back in your gilded cage Melanie Daniels", a parallel is instantly drawn between birds and Melanie, but also between Melanie's nature and freedom, and also men and the restriction of her individualism - clipping her wings - and between Mitch and smug pricks. The reason he knows her is because her free-living ways have landed her in trouble with the law (the cornerstone of society and the 'norm'). While we're on the subject of Mitch, and to return slightly to the argument of the Rear Window post, Badisha puts him at the top of the tree (see what I did there?), but the hero of this film is Melanie, while the events are seemingly beyond any of the characters control, the least effectual character is Mitch, he doesn't forward the narrative, fails to protect anyone and gets nowhere close to doing anything about these downright weird goings-on. He barks orders and the women do as they are told but that's about it. Melanie is the strongest character in this film - she is the lead - she is the hero. Mitch is fairly passive and Melanie is active (for Laura Mulvey if she is looking). When they are trapped in the house his mum looks to him for answers and every question she has is met with "I don't know" until she cracks and yells at him "You don't know! When will you know, when we're all dead!?" Desperation at the position they are now in and the inability of the man in her life to fix, although she does stop herself from saying if only your father were here - a real man that wouldn't look twice at a troublesome wench like Melanie.
The only other reference to birds being 'kept' are Lydia chickens - cooped birds that, if not to be considered domesticated, at the very least perform a domestic function, also they don't fly very well and look pretty dowdy, relatively speaking and so conform. Then there is the ornithologist, Mrs. Bundy (Ethel Griffies) who declares, after Melanie was attacked in the phone booth, "It's mankind that makes it difficult for life to exist on this planet." inferring that it's not nature but culture that breeds these problems.
The lovebirds seem too important, they are not merely a Hitchcock 'MacGuffin'. They are not just a 'prank'. I think the symbolism of Melanie giving the lovebirds to Cathy is the passing of the torch, handing on the spirit of the fight, a fight that can't perhaps be won this time around, not by Melanie, just as Annie failed, but through perseverance. She gives to Cathy here individuality, her strength of character, her confidence, everything that society has punished her for and tried to destroy. Society is the enemy - the flock, the pecking order, the two in the bush - wait, ignore that last one. It is society that is under the microscope here, not flaky, female upstarts with ideas above their station, that ought to know better. Individualism is beautiful and exotic, different and frightening, and so like anything else that is seen to threaten a way of life it is destroyed. The lovebirds are representative of Melanie's spirit, seen as exotic and is repressed (or caged) by society. The rest of the birds (society) see the lovebirds (Melanie) as a threat as something to be afraid of and so to be attacked. Just as society fears strong, independent woman and what that could mean for the established patriarchy. As I said, I agree that Melanie is thoroughly punished by the films conclusion, she is broken, but by then she has passed on her independent spirit to a new generation - to Cathy. Melanie's initial plan was to give the lovebirds to Mitch, but she changes her mind when she hears of Cathy and makes an obvious show to the camera of ripping up the card she had previously written to Mitch. Why? We already know she's decided to give the birds to Cathy. She is now giving them to a girl - another (future) woman, but is she also destroying the possibility of giving herself to Mitch? Symbolically destroying the possibility of a union between the two, and symbolically taking away the power from Mitch that he may have over her individualism and freedom, were they to be together within a society like this?
Another possible indicator of this idea is that the birds attack the children, boys and girls; once at the school and again at Cathy's birthday party. This is perhaps the birds (society) brutally stamping their authority and dominance on the young, steering them on the 'right' path and putting a halt to any fancy, new-fangled ideas that might be getting.
The Birds is set near San Francisco, the liberal capital of America, a well spring for counter culture and alternative lifestyles in the 1960s and beyond. This is where Melanie comes from and where they escape to. Perhaps my argument may have been different if the original intended ending had been shot; massive flocks of birds perched all along the Golden Gate Bridge. Perhaps not, as society is society, liberalism can be as relative as anything else. But it wasn't, so it's not, deal with it. What we have instead are the birds (the community) seeing off the interloper and the, now, sympathisers. Well Lydia has become a sympathetic, Mitch is clueless - he thinks he's the boss. Portraying inequality, socially subservience, rigid hierarchies and established roles is not the same thing as agreeing with or perpetuating them. On the contrary, I think Hitchcock's portrayal of the social order, and the female characters within it, are there to highlight these issues and be critical of them - they are murderous (at least metaphorically), destructive and manipulatively communal.
I cannot claim to speak for Hitchcock he may well have hated all women for all I know, but as Barthes said the author is dead and so regardless of the intent of filmmakers the material is always ripe for anyone to interpret and these interpretation are always ripe for revision. The fact that Melanie is punished, the fact that a society is shown to be pandering to men and opressive to women, the fact that functions and roles are performed not challenged by characters, does not mean that these are the views of the filmmakers. How these roles are depicted onscreen, as brutal, as repressive and as ultimately destructive is perhaps more likely be a comment by the filmmakers against that kind of society, as opposed to the championing of it. I've said my piece, but go on, revise me - I dare you. J
A wee while ago I had a look at Rear Window (1954). Inspired by an article I read that reduced Hitchcock's portrayal of women thusly: 'Hitchcock's women are outwardly immaculate, but full of treachery and weakness. But, hurrah, he doesn't kill them all. He just teaches them a thoroughly good lesson.' (Bidisha, 2010). In that post I intended to suggest that Hitchcock counterpoints male and female points of view and that ultimately the male point of view is the one that shifts (that was the idea, don't know if I pulled it off). Here I want to look at the women in The Birds (1963) and how these characters fit into a wider societal context. Bidisha distils the essence of The Birds to this:
The message is that women (a) are all about men and (b) can't get along because they're so busy pecking and squabbling over men. Mitch's mum hates Melanie. Mitch's mum hated Mitch's ex too, but Mitch's ex loves Mitch so much she can't bear to live far from him. Mitch's ex hates Melanie and dies. Mitch's mum is so hung up on men that since Man No 1 (her husband) left her, she's gripped by fear that Man No 2 (her son) will leave too. Melanie's own mean mommy abandoned her family. All these neurotic females get the avian thrashing they deserve, in a squawking, Jungian free-for-all of throbbing birds and fabulous hairdressing.'
I have to disagree with this statement - well. I don't have to, I don't have to - of course I don't bloody have to. I want to though. So I will, but only in so far as it suggests that it is Hitchcock who intends to say that women have no worth beyond the requirements of men, I would argue that at the start of perhaps the most famously countercultural decade, Hitchcock was presenting a view of an overbearing and tyrannical, patriarchal society; a society led by men but one that is maintained and fought for by women, in fine Althusarian style. The society wishes to protect it's conservative foundations and fears change. The lovebirds symbolise the exotic, the other, the free spirit of someone like Melanie, one who doesn't conform to the same restrictions as those imposed on everyone else by the gendered societal roles that are cast. "Pffffffft! Aye right!" Is probably what I'd be thinking too, but just hang on and I'll try to explain.
In The Birds the symbolism of captivity everywhere and this is arguably tied to women most strongly. The houses are very claustrophobic, the architecture holds you in and bears down on you; the hairstyles are restrictive (Jessica Tandy's hair is amazing but undeniably 'shrew'-ish, tightly wound and inflexible) and the clothing is confining, like the shitty nightdress from Brookmiers; if you are a woman and wish to live in this society, then this is what women wear to bed around here and you will too - beds are for sleeping - wash your mind out! The idea of captivity is pervasive in the plot and characterisation too. The male lead (but arguably not the hero), Mitch Brenner (Rod Taylor), traverses the Bay and the city effortlessly, but his mother (Lydia Brenner, Jessica Tandy), Cathy (Veronica Cartwright) and Annie (Suzanne Pleshette, a woman who moved to the Bay to be with Mitch) are trapped in the town, into this walks Melanie Daniels (Tippi Hendren) who could represent freedom, but even she finds it difficult to leave the Bay. The birds react to this person (or the lovebirds that she brings with her to the community) and it could be argued that she is being punished for her free spirited ways, but by the end they leave the harbour community behind (taking the lovebirds). Everyone has been stuck in their ways, tied the formalities of social order, even the most recent addition, Annie, now to an extent symbolises maternalism and order as the local schoolteacher. Tippi is a modern women, not uninterested in family, just not necessarily driven by that social norm.
The most obvious of these symbols of captivity are the lovebirds, seen continually in their cage. They, and so their plight, are arguably aligned with Melanie right from the start, not just because she buys them but when Mitch and her first meet she frees a budgie for a laugh. The women seem unable to capture and return to the cage, but big manly Mitch (you can smell the testosterone seeping from his cheekbones and you normally can't smell films) saves the day and drops a hat over it, returning it to it's elaborate cell he quips, "Back in your gilded cage Melanie Daniels", a parallel is instantly drawn between birds and Melanie, but also between Melanie's nature and freedom, and also men and the restriction of her individualism - clipping her wings - and between Mitch and smug pricks. The reason he knows her is because her free-living ways have landed her in trouble with the law (the cornerstone of society and the 'norm'). While we're on the subject of Mitch, and to return slightly to the argument of the Rear Window post, Badisha puts him at the top of the tree (see what I did there?), but the hero of this film is Melanie, while the events are seemingly beyond any of the characters control, the least effectual character is Mitch, he doesn't forward the narrative, fails to protect anyone and gets nowhere close to doing anything about these downright weird goings-on. He barks orders and the women do as they are told but that's about it. Melanie is the strongest character in this film - she is the lead - she is the hero. Mitch is fairly passive and Melanie is active (for Laura Mulvey if she is looking). When they are trapped in the house his mum looks to him for answers and every question she has is met with "I don't know" until she cracks and yells at him "You don't know! When will you know, when we're all dead!?" Desperation at the position they are now in and the inability of the man in her life to fix, although she does stop herself from saying if only your father were here - a real man that wouldn't look twice at a troublesome wench like Melanie.
The only other reference to birds being 'kept' are Lydia chickens - cooped birds that, if not to be considered domesticated, at the very least perform a domestic function, also they don't fly very well and look pretty dowdy, relatively speaking and so conform. Then there is the ornithologist, Mrs. Bundy (Ethel Griffies) who declares, after Melanie was attacked in the phone booth, "It's mankind that makes it difficult for life to exist on this planet." inferring that it's not nature but culture that breeds these problems.
My point is not that I feel Bidisha is wrong to suggest that the character of Melanie Daniels is punished and beaten down for her lifestyle, attitude and independence, she is! Absolutely, look at this still for crying out loud! But, as I said earlier, the assumption that this is Hitchcock's view is where I have a problem. In illustrating this opinion though Bishda glibly refers to, perhaps the most important (and mysterious) element of the film, the lovebirds;
The Birds is a resounding warning about what happens when a flirty female tries to make a joke. Melanie Daniels, played by Tippi Hedren, is a prank-player and liar (of course) who tried to gift some lovebirds to the younger sister of Mitch, the chap she fancies.
The lovebirds seem too important, they are not merely a Hitchcock 'MacGuffin'. They are not just a 'prank'. I think the symbolism of Melanie giving the lovebirds to Cathy is the passing of the torch, handing on the spirit of the fight, a fight that can't perhaps be won this time around, not by Melanie, just as Annie failed, but through perseverance. She gives to Cathy here individuality, her strength of character, her confidence, everything that society has punished her for and tried to destroy. Society is the enemy - the flock, the pecking order, the two in the bush - wait, ignore that last one. It is society that is under the microscope here, not flaky, female upstarts with ideas above their station, that ought to know better. Individualism is beautiful and exotic, different and frightening, and so like anything else that is seen to threaten a way of life it is destroyed. The lovebirds are representative of Melanie's spirit, seen as exotic and is repressed (or caged) by society. The rest of the birds (society) see the lovebirds (Melanie) as a threat as something to be afraid of and so to be attacked. Just as society fears strong, independent woman and what that could mean for the established patriarchy. As I said, I agree that Melanie is thoroughly punished by the films conclusion, she is broken, but by then she has passed on her independent spirit to a new generation - to Cathy. Melanie's initial plan was to give the lovebirds to Mitch, but she changes her mind when she hears of Cathy and makes an obvious show to the camera of ripping up the card she had previously written to Mitch. Why? We already know she's decided to give the birds to Cathy. She is now giving them to a girl - another (future) woman, but is she also destroying the possibility of giving herself to Mitch? Symbolically destroying the possibility of a union between the two, and symbolically taking away the power from Mitch that he may have over her individualism and freedom, were they to be together within a society like this?
Another possible indicator of this idea is that the birds attack the children, boys and girls; once at the school and again at Cathy's birthday party. This is perhaps the birds (society) brutally stamping their authority and dominance on the young, steering them on the 'right' path and putting a halt to any fancy, new-fangled ideas that might be getting.
The Birds is set near San Francisco, the liberal capital of America, a well spring for counter culture and alternative lifestyles in the 1960s and beyond. This is where Melanie comes from and where they escape to. Perhaps my argument may have been different if the original intended ending had been shot; massive flocks of birds perched all along the Golden Gate Bridge. Perhaps not, as society is society, liberalism can be as relative as anything else. But it wasn't, so it's not, deal with it. What we have instead are the birds (the community) seeing off the interloper and the, now, sympathisers. Well Lydia has become a sympathetic, Mitch is clueless - he thinks he's the boss. Portraying inequality, socially subservience, rigid hierarchies and established roles is not the same thing as agreeing with or perpetuating them. On the contrary, I think Hitchcock's portrayal of the social order, and the female characters within it, are there to highlight these issues and be critical of them - they are murderous (at least metaphorically), destructive and manipulatively communal.
I cannot claim to speak for Hitchcock he may well have hated all women for all I know, but as Barthes said the author is dead and so regardless of the intent of filmmakers the material is always ripe for anyone to interpret and these interpretation are always ripe for revision. The fact that Melanie is punished, the fact that a society is shown to be pandering to men and opressive to women, the fact that functions and roles are performed not challenged by characters, does not mean that these are the views of the filmmakers. How these roles are depicted onscreen, as brutal, as repressive and as ultimately destructive is perhaps more likely be a comment by the filmmakers against that kind of society, as opposed to the championing of it. I've said my piece, but go on, revise me - I dare you. J
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