Between Knowingness and Innocence: Child Ciphers in Alfred Hitchcock’s Marnie (1964) and The Birds (1963)

Abstract

Scholarship of Alfred Hitchcock’s films often centers on female figures as sources of transgression in their resistance to patriarchal structures, or otherwise, on perverse oedipal relationships involving mothers and their sons. The motif of the wronged man is another widely acknowledged facet of Hitchcockian characterization. Conversely, there is limited recognition of the child as a source of disturbance, one exception being Debbie Olson’s recent study of The Birds (1963). Here, Olson contends that “Hitchcock’s child in film … does not adhere to the mask of innocence and ignorance that most films espouse,” but rather notes that, “children … are more aware, more ‘knowing’ than the adult characters.”¹ She goes on to state that in several of Hitchcock’s films, “the image of the child functions as a significant criticism of adult illusions about the state of guilt or innocence.”² One such image in The Birds, that of Cathy Brenner (Veronica Cartwright), undoubtedly displays such knowingness, yet paradoxically, many other scenes in this film that feature children seem to suggest otherwise. For example, part way through, a young boy cries “are the birds going to eat us, mummy?” as Bodega Bay, a small town in San Francisco, comes under siege by a flock of gulls. In the boy’s disclosure of a fundamental childhood terror (which may be read psychoanalytically as castration anxiety), he also articulates the innermost fears of adult characters and viewers alike.