You can order Derek Hawthorne’s book Being & The Birds or: Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Heidegger (But Were Afraid to Ask Hitchcock) here.
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Derek Hawthorne‘s new book, Being and “The Birds,” was the subject of the latest broadcast of Counter-Currents Radio. Philosopher and film critic Hawthorne draws on the thought of Martin Heidegger to illuminate Alfred Hitchcock’s 1963 classic film The Birds, about a series of savage and inexplicable bird attacks on Bodega Bay, a sleepy California fishing village. Hawthorne argues that The Birds depicts a Heideggerian “event” (Ereignis): a sudden and fundamental transformation of the meaning of everything. Modern men believe we are masters of our own destiny. Heidegger calls this “humanism” and rejects it completely. The Birds is an anti-humanist film. In the space of one weekend, all pretensions to the understanding and mastery of nature are shattered, and man is reduced to helplessness in the face of unfathomable mystery.
The author himself was joined by Greg Johnson, Austrian film scholar Martin Lichtmesz, and Counter-Currents’ in-house magus, James J. O’Meara to discuss both the book and the film, and the recording is now available for download and online listening. Topics discussed include:
00:02:57 The Birds and Black Lives Matter
00:06:28 The Heideggerian concept of Ereignis
00:08:14 Is The Birds a horror movie?
00:17:40 Character development throughout the story
00:27:30 Is The Birds anti-feminist?
00:36:57 Alfred Hitchcock Presents/The Three Investigators
00:40:00 Martin Lichtmesz’s analysis of the book
00:45:08 Abstraction vs. reality
00:48:08 Comparisons between the original script and the final product
00:50:04 Is it an anti-humanist film?
00:53:24 Is Ms. Bundy the town lesbian?
00:54:29 The sociopolitical significance of smoking
00:57:46 The film’s main Heideggerian concepts
01:09:50 James’ humanistic challenge to Ereignis
01:17:16 German translations of Heideggerian terms
01:26:26 The attic scene
01:31:19 The Heideggerian concept of “thrownness”
01:32:11 “Serenity” or “releasement”
01:37:01 On the film’s unusual ending
01:42:41 Edvard Munch’s The Scream
01:47:54 Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining
01:49:47 Visual effects in the film
To listen in a player, click here or below. To download, right-click the link and click “save as.”
5 comments
By the way, I agree too that CGI sucks. I prefer the old stop motion animation by Ray Harryhausen and all.
This caused me to watch the Birds, which I am glad of. As horror, I don’t think it works. I don’t see any problem in this movie a shotgun would not solve. They wouldn’t pull this around here!
I read Birds symbolically. A dated word for a female was a “bird.” Specifically, the birds seem to represent the emotions of the females. In the first scene in the bird shop, the escaped bird represents the incipient infatuation between the lawyer and the Hedren character. Later, the lovebird purchase and delivery symbolizes a more formal proposal of courtship between the two. Note that the initial Seagull attack immediately occurs after this.
Shortly thereafter, it is revealed that the lawyer has other love entanglements, specifically, the beautiful brunette teacher, who was an old flame of his, and was separated from him by his possessive mother Lydia. She tells the backstory of the dynamics of the family. Subsequent bird attacks occur. Finally, in the second most severe attack the teacher is killed. this represents her exclusion from the love triangle—a woman will not tolerate a romantic rival.
in the final scene, when they board up the house, this represents the psychomachia between the mother and the hedron character. This is the most terrible because the mother’s hold over the lawyer her son is very great. Melanie in fact starts to come out the loser—she takes real wounds in the attic. In a scene slightly before this, Lydia breaks down despairing “I can’t be alone, I can’t!”
finally, the scene is resolved when they all get into the car together. The birds are strangely quiescent still all around.this represents the solution of a conflict, they can all live together. A compromise is found. The car drives off(into the future), and the birds are pacified. And Mitch is surrounded by “birds” in the car! This is a common trope in movies, like at the end of the movie Roma recently, the family all go into the surf and huddle together, this, representing Mexico as a unified country, with all its flaws and ethnic composition accepted, going forward through the currents of time. If you watch Knives Out from the subsequent year, they play off of this, and the ending of that movie indicates our oligarchs’ plans for America(and white people)!
I disagree that the characters really grow that much. Mitch is always an assertive capable man. He catches the bird in the bird shop nonchalantly. He’s every woman’s dream. He is good looking, stylish, and has status.he was never weak or not in control of the situation, necessarily. He represents an apex emblem of masculinity. I thought it was a nice touch that the Hedron character is already rich, to emphasize her interest in Mitch is not mercenary at all.
it would also appear that some people interpret Birds as an ecological parable, and my thoughts were the same in the first half of the movie. This is the birds revenge for our imprisonment of them or something. If you watch M night, Shyamalan‘s movie The Happening, this is obviously based on the birds. The plants release a chemical in retaliation for human depredation against plants which causes people to kill themselves. Like the Birds, it ends as mysteriously as it began. Clearly, he interpreted the Birds as ecological, although I think this is limited as well. Or perhaps he merely chose to develop that particular thread of it.
Dark Plato – I greatly appreciated your analysis of the movie, “The Birds”. I’m going to have to go back and re-watch it now, as I was only nine years old when I originally watched it and had, unsurprisingly, little appreciation for any of the symbolism. I can see the ecological viewpoint, as well; birds rising up and seeking their revenge on mankind…Which is why I got such a laugh out of your little zinger!
“I don’t see any problem in this movie a shotgun would not solve. They wouldn’t pull this around here!”
So in the interim I read Camille paglia’s excellent monograph on the Birds, and I have more to say. Hitchcock himself publicly endorsed the ecology fable interpretation. Paglia got me thinking about the scene with Melanie in the attic, and that this is significant. Hitchcock himself said that Melanie’s every facial expression is significant in this scene. Okay so start with my symbolic interpretation that this final attack represents the struggle between Lydia and Melanie over Mitch. Melanie, based on a vague intimation of wings flapping, goes to explore the darkened back chambers alone. The scene is almost phantasmal when she discovers the birds it’s not very realistic. They stop and stare at each other, and Melanie seems almost helpless to escape or resist. This, perhaps represents that Melanie has discovered a secret, back chamber or hidden corridor in the relationship between Mitch and his mother. There is something shocking, a dark secret, symbolized by the invasion of the birds through the roof. Earlier, when Melanie and Anie discuss Mitch’s relationship with his mother, the question of an oedipal nature comes up. And it’s rapidly dismissed. But maybe that’s what this represents, maybe that was there and Melanie has discovered it. Maybe their relationship WAS incestuous. Also, there’s a lot of good background information in the book and these overbearing mother characters represent Hitchcock’s own mother, and it recurs in his movies, like Psycho. Maybe this is the “revelation of heart” on the part of the artist. Similar in quality to the wizard and his lamp in seventh voyage of Sinbad(watch that and tell me).
I begin to see why so much is made of Hitchcock.
I never understood ‘the birds’ as a threat, unless you’re a paraplegic or super drunk, just get a wet towel and whip them or something
Incredible talk! I’ll be listening to this one more than a couple times. Counter Currents never ceasing to amaze. I always expect something mystical happening when Omeara shows up: 2 weeks ago, for the first time in probably 30 years, I started re-reading Meditations on the Tarot and sure enough your guest goes there. Even without the synchronicity it’s wonderful!! Thanks. (payday is in a week)
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