The thing to remember about the attacks is that they all come from Lydia's feelings of being threatened, chided or provoked.
The problem is Lydia's not present at each incident, so how can she exert herself on a scenario to which she has no conscious knowledge?
In the same way that Psycho shows us Norman Bates being subsumed into Mother, Hitchcock may be showing us the same phenomena in which Lydia's awareness of these moments - however unconsciously - is coming through the eyes of those she's already psychically dominated.
Let's see if it bears out:
Attack #1: Melanie’s head wound from a gull on the bay at 25:27.
It wasn’t Melanie sneaking into Lydia's house uninvited that incurred Lydia’s chastisement. Rather, the flirty exchange of expressions between Mitch & Melanie immediately precedes a seagull diving down & cutting Melanie’s forehead.
As we'll see, Lydia has been subsuming Mitch's psyche for over four years now; Annie & others as well. To be clear, the birds are only a metaphorical device to illustrate the abstract concept of Lydia's dominance of others.
In Psycho, birds not only represent Mother, ALL birds represent Mother & Hitchcock's birds ONLY refer to woman as Mother. To Hitchcock each different type of bird shows a different aspect of Mother.
The Seagull, then, corresponds to Lydia’s conscious awareness of, and resentment towards, her environment: the Bay, the town, it’s people, visitors, even her son Mitch. That said, the gull itself is Lydia’s true unconscious reaction to what her conscious mind observes through the eyes of Mitch.
This psychic bond seems to be Hitchcock’s way of illustrating the control Lydia exerts over people she dominates. Melanie’s scratch was a small price for a small incursions, but Lydia - as we’ll discover - does not want a woman taking her son away, not while she has no husband.
Attack #2: Sebastian Shole’s boat mentioned at 1:18:58 in the restaurant.
This attack is not directly observed - and that is telling. It's only relayed through Mr Sebastian Shole.
Though we hear of this attack relatively late in the film, the attack itself occurred earlier in the timeline somewhere proximate - but subsequent - to Melanie getting her head cut on the bay.
Consider Sholes' conversation with the bird expert:
Mrs. Bundy: Which gulls, Mr. Sholes? There are several varieties.
Mr. Sholes: The ones who've been playing devil with my fishing boats.
Mrs. Bundy: Have you had trouble with gulls?
Mr. Sholes: One of my boats did, last week.
There are several instances where Hitchcock plays with dialogue to provide naysayers with a more natural explanation for the bird attacks. Mrs. Bundy does precisely that by suggesting the birds only wanted the fish on the boat.
The gulls were after your fish, Mr. Sholes. Really, let's be logical about this.
Now consider the other attacks in the film & compare it with Sholes' description:
A whole flock of gulls nearly capsized one of my boats. Practically tore the skipper's arm off.
This does not match seagulls dive-bombing for fish. Rather, it describes a vindictive attack against the boat & especially the skipper.
Is this man Sholes' "skipper"?
The "skipper's arm" helping Miss Daniels?
The "skipper's arm" assisting in the delivery of Lydia's unwanted lovebirds?
The "skipper's arm" starting the boat for Miss Daniels to sneak into Lydia's house?
Shouldn't one wonder: with all those fish about, why would seagulls try to capsize a boat and go for one man's arm? Not even his eyes like they did with Dan Fawcett, but his arm? All capsizing the boat would do for the seagulls is scatter & sink the fish they supposedly want.
Is it odd? is it reading too much into these images? or do the other attacks leave clues for us to look back on...
Should one want to dismiss these as coincidences and assume Mrs Bundy was right, wouldn't Sholes be seeing these kinds of attacks on an ongoing basis every time one of his boats had a good catch? However, no such acknowledgement is ever given.
The term "last week" also has a clever double meaning. The day on which Sholes makes his comment is a Sunday, so technically the Saturday right before counts as the previous week.
Why bother playing with words thus? Simple. If Sholes had said "yesterday" it would definitely put the audience on the side of the other women in blaming Melanie which they already - incorrectly - were doing. The mother of two in the restaurant sums it up perfectly:
They said when you got here, the whole thing started! [Crying] Who are you? What are you? Where did you come from? I think you're the cause of all this.
Whereas the ambiguity of Sholes' term keeps the audience from making the same error. It forces the viewer to speculate or dismiss.
So, what is the relevance of this attack? The skipper, in Lydia's paranoid assessment, would be indirectly responsible for helping Melanie in her plans to steal Mitch and therefore be fit to be irrationally blamed & punished accordingly.
The skipper's attack - importantly - will serve as a point of support for a later attack yet to be covered...
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