A few minutes later, the same SUV pulled up next to me, and the journalist asked me what I thought about "all the birds." I wasn't sure what she meant, so she elaborated: "People have been saying that there are large numbers of birds in Lubbock these days." I assured her that this didn't bother me, as "We live on a planet where there are birds." She seemed disappointed that I don't respond to flocks of birds with explosions of rage, and they moved on. I noticed her some time later, knocking on doors, looking for enthusiastic ornithophobes.
It occurred to me that this could easily be the opening scene for a re-make of Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds. I started to wonder how a contemporary version of that movie would play out, as it seems clear that my safety would depend very much on the film's politics. If it were an environmentalist fable, I would hope that my refusal to regard nature as a nuisance might be rewarded with survival. The birds, noting my unwashed car and vegetarian kitchen, would pass over my house and instead attack the global-warming-deniers with the unnecessarily large vehicles down the street. However, if the film had a more conservative world-view, and the overpopulation of birds was caused by a government conspiracy, then granola feminist intellectual types like myself would be the first to go.
I'll be watching the local news to see if I can get any insights.
2 comments:
where is your book deal that then turns into a movie deal?
Amy Adams could play you too
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