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Recall, however, that in The Birds, the animal world draws a powerful woman into a recognition of asocial forces. The first moment when the demark appears, a bird dive bombs into the controlled bun of the protagonist, played by Tippi Hedren, and one would think it is as if to punish her for her extreme confidence and sexual hubris.

But The Birds is Hitchcock as Robbe-Grillet. Detective and allegorical meaning give way to pure description, as all deep interpretations of action are blocked: the birds are not the hand of retribution (for general human disregard for nature or the sexuality of the characters involved--an incest narrative is even hinted at). Rather, the title acts as a metaphysic that imbues the details of a film that is, in effect, merely about the quotidian. The quotidian and the asocial here form a marriage of convenience. The asocial is that which cannot enter into interpretation, as with the pure optical and sound situations of Deleuze. And the quotidian is that which can not enter into narrative without the dramatic force of prodigy. So the birds become the alibi for Hitchcock's pure description of the everyday of a small seaside village (the same can be said for his use of a corpse in The Trouble with Harry).