By Nora Donnelly | Editor-in-Chief
I think we're misinterpreting Hitchcock's 1963 film, The Birds. For those unfamiliar with the movie, the basic plot line centers around a rich young newspaper heiress named Melanie who meets a man named Mitch Brennan in a San Francisco bird shop. She follows him to his home in Bodega Bay, meets his controlling mother, and then birds start attacking the town.
The film does not explain why the birds attack. Most critics argue that the attacks represent some sort of Freudian psychological conflict over desire. Mitch appears to have taken on the role of both father and husband after his father passes away. Therefore, the three main characters - Mitch, Melanie, and Mrs. Brennan - form a weird Oedipal love triangle with Melanie and Mrs. Brennan both competing for Mitch. Following this logic, the bird attacks represent the incestual tension between the mother and son, as well as the tension Melanie creates by intruding on that relationship.
I have a different theory. While there is definitely an unnatural relationship going on between the three main characters, I don’t believe that it is the incestual tension between Mrs. Brennan and Mitch that causes the birds to attack. Rather, I would argue that it is the incestual tension between Mitch and Melanie that cause the birds to attack. I do not believe that Mitch and Melanie are simply two unconnected strangers that happen to meet; I believe they are siblings.
I have come to this conclusion based on four specific pieces of evidence. The first is that Melanie has a long lost mother. Melanie mentions that she hasn't seen her mother since she was a child, and she doesn't know where she is now, which seems to have no relevance to the rest of the plot.
The second piece of evidence is Mrs. Brennan's awareness of Melanie prior to meeting her, as well as her apparent hatred of her. She tells Mitch that she has read about Melanie in the newspapers, and she makes it pretty clear that she does not want Melanie to stick around.
The third piece of evidence is the uncanny resemblance between Melanie and Mrs. Brennan. They look more closely related than Mrs. Brennan and Mitch do, and they have similar senses of style as well.
The fourth piece of evidence is that the bird attacks don't begin until Melanie starts pursuing Mitch. If the reason for the bird attacks is the relationship between Mitch and his mother, it seems odd that the attacks didn't start until Melanie arrived. The notion that the attacks are a result of an outsider intruding on their relationship also doesn't make sense, as we know that Mitch was once in a relationship with their neighbor Annie, and it never resulted in bird attacks.
These clues point to a scenario in which Mrs. Brennan is Melanie's long lost mother. She is trying to push Melanie away because she does not want her two children to enter into an incestuous relationship. Nature starts revolting not because of the unnatural mother and son relationship, but because of the unnatural brother and sister relationship.
I recognize that there are questionable aspects of this argument. For one thing, Melanie says her mother ditched them when she was eleven. While Mrs. Brennan certainly seems to recognize Melanie, Melanie does not recognize her and it is definitely unusual for someone not to recognize their own mother. The only response I have to this counterargument is that people can look very different after ten or twenty years and childhood memories can easily be forgotten or suppressed.
Despite that minor problem, I feel that this argument is plausible because there aren't usually many irrelevant details in Hitchcock films. If Mrs. Brennan and Melanie look alike, there is a reason for it. Likewise, if Melanie starts talking about her absent mother it is important. Moreover, the catalyst for the bird attacks cannot be something that has occurred before in the lives of the characters if the bird attacks have never occurred before. There has to be something specific to the plot of the movie that changes the situation. Therefore, the unnatural relationship that causes nature to revolt cannot be the relationship between Mitch and his mother; it has to be the relationship between Mitch and Melanie.