Blonde Power!

Rating: Null/10 (17 May 2006)

What makes "The Birds" so damn compelling? Of course it skillfully manipulates our fears: its graphic depiction of innocent people getting pecked to death is disturbing, but be honest . . . do humans have a deep-rooted fear of seagulls? I don't think so. Maybe it's because the bird attacks are such an effective dramatization of Melanie Daniels' emotional fragility. But there are any number of symbols -- shattered perfume bottles, broken music boxes, ad infinitum -- that could have testified to Melanie's exquisiteness and delicacy. Why choose screeching winged creatures? Or maybe it's the apocalyptic undertone to the film -- perhaps the brainy old lady in the coffee shop is the equivalent of a mad prophet of doom for our secular age. But why frame the end of the world with a troubled, probably hopeless romance? I think the ultimate message of "The Birds," Hitch's most personal film, is about the destructive power inherent in . . . blonde women.
Think about it. A sexy blonde lady comes to a small California town and all hell breaks loose. Wispy, wimpy, towheaded Tippi Hedren represents a threat to Mother that sober, sensible, brunette Suzanne Pleshette could never approach. There is a central clash of symbols in "The Birds:" the two lovebirds in a cage, i.e. eroticism contained by domesticity, vs. a flock of violent birds destroying the town, i.e. eroticism unleashed. So even though Melanie Daniels is coming to town to deliver the lovebirds, bringing with her the fragile hope of monogamous bliss, she unwillingly provokes a dangerous and violent response because of who she is. (If you don't get it, just wait until the scene after the birds attack the gas station and the homely housewife screams at poor Tippi: "you brought them here! YOU! YOU! YOU!") Blonde women must exist as some sort of archetype in our collective, Jungian unconscious, because time and again they prove to be a menace to the existing order: Marilyn enthralls the Kennedy brothers and could have brought down their administration if she'd opened her pretty mouth; beautiful Diana almost destroys the monarchy and endangers Britain's ossified class system by exposing the shallowness of upper-class English life; Martha must suffer for all of our sins because her blonde superiority makes her the symbol for corporate malfeasance. "The Birds" is merely a fictional retelling of the elemental myth of the Blonde femme fatale. I don't know if the word "bird" became slang for "girl" before or after this movie, but I hardly think it's a coincidence. "Birds," indeed.