YMMV / The Birds

The Aristophanes Play

• Fanfic Fuel: The Emu War of AD 1932. What would it be from Peisthetaerus' perspective?
• Hilarious in Hindsight: References to Rhea. Rhea is the name both of Zeus' mother and a South American relative of the ostrich.
  • Trees the size of the "Cleonymus tree" do exist. No word on whether Native Americans of the late first millennium BC hung shields on a moribund specimen, though.
  • Aristophanes had no way of knowing this, but he was absolutely right about dinosaurs having dominated the earth in the past.
• Values Dissonance:
  • What does Peisthetaerus dream of? A world where parents of attractive children want them taken advantage of sexually.
  • When Iris shows up, there is a long rape joke sequence at her expense, played entirely for laughs.

The Hitchcock Film

• Adaptation Displacement: Did you know there was a short story? By Daphne du Maurier, no less. Not that it has a lot to do with it.
• Alternative Character Interpretation: Annie Hayworth, the school teacher, stayed in the town her ex-boyfriend lived in on the weekends, despite originally being a city girl, saying she didn't want to lose the friendship between them... could it have been something else? Could Annie in fact have been Cathy's real mother, with Lydia actually being Cathy's grandmother given her age and appearance, but being the time period that it was, such an out-of-wedlock birth could not be accepted, so they all just lied about it to save face? It would certainly explain some of Annie's interactions with Cathy at the party and later on Annie sacrificing herself to save Cathy from the birds.
• Applicability:
  • It's been suggested that the birds attacking draw lots of parallels with the fear of nuclear attack; the victims are forced to hide, reinforce their houses and have no way to stop the attacks. The Cuban Missile Crisis had happened just one year before the film's release.
  • Melanie could represent second-wave feminism; in contrast to the domestic and conservative roles the women of Bodega Bay fill, Melanie is a liberated, sexually-free socialite who shakes up the whole town with her arrival. Notably Annie was once a city girl but gave it up to move to Bodega Bay. The attacks coincide with her entering Bodega Bay - and they force the women out of domestic roles to help stop them.
• Canon Fodder: Just what did cause the birds to attack? It's never specified either way, but that hasn't stopped people from guessing. Explanations range from a sudden heatwave angering them, to the lovebirds somehow causing it. The trailer implies that birds have just decided to declare war on mankind as payback for millennia of being hunted and abused.
• Genius Bonus: Lydia and Melanie are almost in a Love Triangle over Mitch, and Annie lampshades this by referencing Oedipus Rex. Lydia later finds a friend with his eyes pecked out, which references that Oedipus blinded himself when he realised he'd married his own mother.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • Melanie being attacked by the birds is this if you discover that the crew lied to Tippi Hedren that they would use mechanical birds in the scene - and she didn't know she'd have live birds thrown at her until the day of filming. She would have to be given a week's bed rest due to the stress of shooting that scene.
  • Melanie's tracking down of Mitch is Played for Laughs and it's just a part of the playful banter between the two. When you learn about how Tippi Hedren was essentially stalked and harassed by Alfred Hitchcock, it becomes uncomfortable.
• Les Yay: Some people see homoeroticism in the first two scenes with Annie and Melanie. The information that Annie used to be involved with Mitch doesn't come until Melanie spends the night in Annie's house, so until that point, it's easy to perceive Annie's attitude towards Melanie as flirtatious. Even after that, they remain pretty friendly for two women who are supposedly pining after the same guy. Annie's death is also taken as "damning evidence".
  • In more of an example of a Crack Pairing, the chemistry between Lydia and Melanie as the latter comforts the former after she finds Dan’s body can be interpreted this way. The puppy-dog eyes Melanie makes up at Lydia in the last scene do help.
• Moe: Cathy is just precious. Especially when she first meets Melanie and hugs her in thanks for the love birds.
• Narm:
  • "I think you're EVIL! EVIL!" Geez, lady, we understand you're very frightened here, but come on now. Fortunately she got a Bright slap either to get her back to sanity, or as her way of saying "SHUT THE HELL UP!!" to her.
  • When the trail of fire approaches the gas station, the film quickly cuts between the flames and Melanie's scared face as she watches it move. For some reason she only turns her head while the camera's not facing her, giving off Offscreen Teleportation vibes.
  • There's also Annie's ridiculously over the top reaction to Melanie in her first scene. It's been compared to a scene from a Soap Opera with how un-subtle it is.
  • The sounds of attacking birds, while scary, can turn a bit narmy when you realize that Hitchcock mixed in sounds of shrieking cats and rattlesnakes to enhance the terror of the sounds.
• One-Scene Wonder: Mrs Bundy, the pompous ornithologist, who gets into a spirited debate with Melanie right before the birds attack the town.
• Paranoia Fuel: You'll never look at birds the same way again...
• Poor Man's Substitute: Try as they may, Rod Taylor and Tippi Hedren weren't Cary Grant and Grace Kelly.
• Retroactive Recognition: Child actress Veronica Cartwright, who played Cathy, would become especially familiar to fans of science-fiction/horror films starting in the late 1970s thanks to Alien.
• Sequelitis: The 1994 Direct to Video sequel The Birds II: Land's End got very negative reviews.
• Signature Scene: Melanie sitting on a bench while waiting for the kids to leave school as the birds gradually build up behind her and lie in wait is generally the most famous scene of the film due to how it expertly builds tension, with the scene of them attacking the phone booth a close second.
• Slow-Paced Beginning: It takes 45 minutes for the first bird attack to happen.
• Special Effects Failure: The bird effects were extremely technically innovative when the film first released, but look rather ropey nowadays.
• Values Dissonance:
  • It can come off as strange to modern audiences that the locals of Bodega Bay are so quick to provide the names and addresses of local residents to a stranger, given the increased awareness of stalkers. It's implied that the grocer at least is simply struck by Melanie's beauty.
  • Nobody bats an eyelash that the traveler at the diner wants to down his cocktail before immediately hitting the road.
• Values Resonance: It's been noted that the film is fairly feminist in that the majority of protagonists are female - Melanie, Cathy, Lydia and Annie - and Mitch is almost Melanie's Satellite Love Interest. The typical mother that doesn't approve of who her son is dating is shown in a more complicated light. The women are also pretty active in the plot - Lydia helping board up the house, Melanie saving the children from the birds and Annie's sacrifice to save Cathy.

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