Humanity In Alfred Hitcock's The Birds

In Alfred Hitcock’s The Birds, birds of all species all around the globe start to riot and spread havoc as they consistently begin to attack humans in flocks of waves. The theme of the film represents an act of revenge of nature towards humans due to our lack of morality to respect it and treat it as gentle and humble as it treats us. In the film it simply states that “millions of years of memory” stored in the birds' “little brains” have produced “this instinct to destroy mankind.” 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." This theory is directly correlated towards the idea of Fredrick Nietzsche’s on morality as an anti-nature. Nietzsche declared that “God is dead,” in his rationale that “science had altered the balance between humans and nature … and that the commitment to religious belief of earlier times would give way” (Kaufmann 713). He speaks of passion, symbolized by the birds in the film, as a negative force that popular religious factors have embedded us morally to “stifle people’s natural behaviors” in an “often destructive impulse[s]” to make us “agree that we must kill the passions” (Kaufmann 715). This is evident in Nietzsche’s essay of “Morality as an Anti-Nature” when he states: “Formerly, in view of the element of stupidity in passion, war was declared on passion itself, its destruction was plotted; all the old moral monsters are agreed to this: il fault tuer les passions” (qtd. Kauffman 717).
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 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 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, 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. The scene is cut short by the birds’ most daring assault on Bodega Bay. 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 as also related to Nietzsche’s view on the absence of God’s presence in the interconnectedness between man and nature (Horwitz 82).
Ironically, what is truly terrifying about the bird attacks is that the birds appear to have taken on human characteristics. They are now capable of seemingly mindless acts of violence and destruction, capable of believing that violence will solve the problem of power imbalance; a common theme depicted by Nietzsche in his essay when he states: “Anti-natural morality – that is, almost every morality which has so far been taught, revered, and preached – turns, conversely, against the instincts of life: it is condemnation of these instincts, now secret, now outspoken and impudent” (qtd. Kaufmann 716). 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” (122). 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.
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 abovementioned 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 (King and Woodyard 127). Frederick Nietzsche also has similar views on a distant god; he believes religion is what brought us down to our immoral acts of nature and made us lose sight of any spirituality within ourselves to, in turn, leads us to the spiritualization of hostility as seen when he states: “To be fair, it should be admitted, however, that on the ground out of which Christianity grew, the concept of the ‘spiritualization of passion’ could never have been formed. After all the first church, as is well known, fought against the ‘intelligent’ in favor of the ‘poor in spirit.’ How could one expect from it an intelligent war against passion? The church fights passion with excision in every sense: its practice, its ‘cure,’ is castratism” (qtd. Kaufmann
718).