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Hitchcock's Use Of Escapism In The Birds By Alfred Hitchcock

1934 Words8 Pages

As a society we are constantly turning to television and film as a form of escapism from daily life, be it mundane, stressful or relaxed. However, many directors and creators choose to use their platform as a social and humanitarian commentary which, more so than simply making their work teachable and moral, they expose an uncomfortable side of human nature which is often avoided as a discussion point in wider society. One such director is Alfred Hitchcock who remains one of the most well-resected film directors even today. During his career Alfred Hitchcock proved himself as a competent master of tantalising his audiences and became renowned for using such themes of voyeurism and madness in his work. Whilst primarily used to feed the ‘horror’ …show more content…

In this feature film Hitchcock chooses to focus on the rather common human fear of birds. This phobia, named Ormithophobia, is often attributed to previous negative experiences with them such as a past random attack or being trapped in a room with a frightened bird eager to escape. Indeed, Hitchcock’s The Birds itself has been linked to highlighting ormithophobia and painting birds in a vicious light. However, whilst the theories are greatly numbered, we must ask why Hitchcock chose to use this theme as the subject for his classic work and what social commentary he was attempting to imply, if any at …show more content…

I believe that Hitchcock is attempting to highlight the thin line between normalcy and madness, and how

Whilst the initial themes of both films, cold-blooded murder and uncontrollable mass bird attacks, may seem out of the ordinary and possibly freak incidents Hitchcock manages to include a realism to both works, emphasising uneasy and disturbing subjects and highlight their relatability. As humans we are easily coaxed into believing that it is only truly disturbed individuals who would commit such an act of inhumanity as murder and yet Psycho drives the idea that we are all capable of crossing the border.

Both of these films manage to somewhat agree with some of Freud’s theories, particulary his ideas regarding the Oedipus comples

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The story “The Birds” by Daphine Du Maurier, is about a father named Nat Hocken and his family experiencing an attack from the birds in England. The movie directed Alfred Hitchcock, is about Melanie Daniels seeing a potential partner in Mitchell Brenner in a small town that takes a turn of birds attacking the town. During both the movie and story, there are several scenes that are very similar to each other. Near the end of the movie, Mitch decides to board the house from the birds.

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In “The Birds”, written by Daphne DuMaurier, the author creates suspense to reveal a theme in the story by only giving the reader snippets of information at a time and not explaining all that is happening. At the beginning of the story when the birds first start to attack, they try to explain what is happening, saying that “there are birds in there . . . it’s as though a madness seized them, with the east wind.” . . . it’s the weather”

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How long do you think you would survive a bird apocalypse? A month? A week? A day? The main characters in both versions of The Birds face this problem.

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The ratio of birds to humans is approximately 300 to 7, so if humans were attacked by a mass of birds, there’s a very slim possibility of survival, if any possibility. This is the base of the plot of Daphne du Maurier’s short story, The Birds (1952), and Alfred Hitchcock’s movie adaptation of the same name, which came out in 1963. While there are similarities between them, such as the conflict and the theme, there are also differences, such as the characters and the setting. This essay will be covering the similarities and the differences between the short story and the film. There are a few similarities between the short story and the movie, like the conflict and the theme.

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Alfred Hitchcock was a friend of Daphne du Maurier’s father, Sir Gerald du Maurier. The fact that Hitchcock knew father Sir Gerald much better than his daughter Daphne is striking because Hitchcock adapted three of Daphne du Maurier’s works for the screen. Of the 50-odd feature films Hitchcock made, most of which are adaptations of novels, short stories or plays, there is no other writer which Hitchcock adapts more than once, and yet there are three du Maurier adaptations (Sinyard). Hitchcock’s film The Birds is based on the short story with the same name by Daphne du Maurier; there are many striking similarities between the two works yet the meaning behind Hitchcock’s film and du Maurier’s short story could not be more different.

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The American obsession with spectatorship is a phenomenon created by the inaccessibility of timely and relevant knowledge. This oddly leads to an increase in the demand and likeability of terror. In her piece “Great to Watch”, Maggie Nelson explores the origins of this fascination with horror and gives an

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There are many similarities and differences between the poems “Concrete Mixers” and “The City is So Big”. Both poems compare machines to animals, but not in the same way. In “Concrete Mixers,” Patricia Hubbell compares concrete mixers to elephants. She uses this metaphor to display how machines and city animals use their powerful strength to do jobs humans cannot do. For example in the last line of the poem, Hubbell writes “Their trunks raising a city”.

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Hithcock’s liflong theme of birds as agents and markers of chaos appears in the film The Birds (1963). The birds considered as loving and unharming attack humanbeings. The birds include crows, sparrows, seagulls etc. Hitchcok revels the shallow human relationship and it is emphasised each time by the bird attack. Birds operate as markers of chaos unleashed by shallow human relation, it is important to consider precisely when each attack occurs.

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To the unknown eye, Hitchcock has carefully and skillfully used Mise-en-scene to his advantage, causing the audience to feel fear and a sense of caution towards the character of Norman Bates. It isn’t until we reflect back on the scene and notice how intelligently Hitchcock uses the positioning of props and the characters, lighting, camera angle and staging, that we notice how he has added meaning to his characters but has also to the film, creating suspense and fear from one scene to the end of the film. Ultimately proving the point that Hitchcock “the master of suspense” uses Mise-en-scene to not only help make a brilliant film but also uses it as his disposal to add meaning in his

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Do you know anyone who has Orinthophobia, the fear of birds? Or do you yourself fear the birds? “The Birds”, written by Daphne De Maurier, is a short story that uses various literary terms to make an exceptional piece of writing. The story uses the literary devises such as foreshadowing, imagery, and characterization to create an exhilarating tale. Maurier uses these three components to tell a thrilling story that keeps the reader on edge.

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She argues that the act of moviegoing satisfies these voyeuristic desires in people. She writes, “The mass of mainstream film portray a hermetically sealed world which unwinds magically, indifferent to the presence of the audience, producing for them a sense of separation and playing on their voyeuristic fantasy,” (pg. 186). In this essay, I will further discuss her viewpoints on cinema and voyeurism, and how it connects to the film Rear Window by Alfred Hitchcock. Rear Window is a film that follows the

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“A bird in the house . . . had swung itself up to the secret sanctuaries” and looked upon the garden silently. Margaret Laurence introduces this bird as an intruder, disrupting the “secret sanctuaries.” of the family. A bird in the house is a message of death to come, and here it sits upon the roof of their house, out of reach for the spruce’s giant wings.

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In the film there was a scene where the birds attacked a small part of the town while many citizens where at a restaurant and nearly killed half of the towns people which supports the belief of the town being too small to survive the birds. With the arrival of the birds it causes such a good living environment to become a dangerous horror scene and with the city being so small there is nowhere to hide and take cover. Also, it makes it easy for thousands of birds to invade and take over their city. With there being nowhere to avoid the birds and isolate yourself from them it causes the situation to be impossible to overcome. With no one being able to find safety readers become worried and scared which is why this is reflective.

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1148 Words | 5 Pages

The films, Vertigo and The Birds reflect elements from Hitchcock’s private and inner thought life. Hitchcock desires to have a beautiful blonde counterpart. He believes that the love he sought is unattainable, therefore he plays out his fantasies through fictional characters (Jhirad 31).

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However, film critic, Robin Wood, argues that ‘since Psycho, the Hollywood cinema has implicitly recognised horror as both American and familial’ he then goes on to connect this with Psycho by claiming that it is an “innovative and influential film because it supposedly presents its horror not as the produce of forces outside American society, bit a product of the patriarchal family which is the fundamental institution of American society” he goes on to discuss how our civilisation either represses or oppresses (Skal, 1994). Woods claim then suggests that in Psycho, it is the repressions and tensions within the normal American family which produces the monster, not some alien force which was seen and suggested throughout the 1950 horror films. At the beginning of the 60’s, feminisation was regarded as castration not humanization. In “Psycho” (1960) it is claimed that the film presents conservative “moral lessons about gender roles of that the strong male is healthy and normal and the sensitive male is a disturbed figure who suffers from gener confusion” (Skal, 1994). In this section of this chapter I will look closely at how “Psycho” (1960) has layers of non-hetro-conforming and gender-non conforming themes through the use of Norman Bates whose gender identitiy is portrayed as being somewhere between male and female

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