Purchasing Fear: Analyzing Cold War Ideologies in Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds

Abstract

During the Cold War Americans were inundated with talk of atomic weapons, attacks, communist spies, and alleged “contamination.” It is a commonplace that films offered an escape from this repetitive flood of fear and indoctrination. However, upon examination, Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds (1963) appears to have intensified Cold War fears and anxieties, rather than pacifying them. This thesis focuses on depictions of Cold War imagery represented in The Birds. The film’s imagery will be dissected and examined through semiotic analysis, in an attempt to expose the film’s Cold War imagery that threatened Americans and American ideals. While Hitchcock sought favorable reviews and a generous paycheck, his motion picture, like other directors’ films of the period, aided and abetted Cold War anxiety and fear outside of the cinema, thereby endorsing Cold War trepidation as a norm amongst Americans in the 1960s. This thesis will review the Cold War period leading up to the film’s debut, it will examine the film’s scholarly literature and reviews, and it will analyze the Cold War imagery found in The Birds and its potential meaning. The aim of this thesis is to explore the pervasive theme of Cold War fear and anxiety in The Birds and to suggest that Cold War imagery possibly intensified audiences’ previously established Cold War fears.