The Surreptitious Bird

Cafe Society
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It’s not uncommon – at least since the 1960s – for one character in a movie to express his or her displeasure with another by “flipping the bird” – i.e. “giving them The Finger”. It’s shown overtly often enough. But I’ve noticed that there are cases where someone pointedly uses the middle finger instead of the index finger one would expect them to use, and I suspect that in many, if not all, of these cases it’s a very deliberate act to overtly r covertly express anger, displeasure, or annoyance. The audience may consciously notice this, or, more likely, they may be aware that the gesture was somehow more hostile than they’d expect, but not be aware of why.

The first case where I suspected this to be the case was in Fred Zinneman’s adaptation of Frederick Forsyth’s Day of the Jackal. The scene is near the beginning, where Colonel Marc Rodin (Eric Porter) learns of the execution of Bastien Thierry by a radio broadcast, and angrily turns the radio off by pushing the button. But he pushed the button with the middle finger of his right hand, which is unusual. Rodin is clearly quietly angry, and I suspect Porter came up with this way to emphasize his state of mind.

Another case that I’m not sure of is in the James Bond movie Diamonds are Forever. Bond has been uncharacteristically ambushed and klonked on the head with a funeral vase and, while unconscious, put into a coffin bound for a crematorium. Bruce Glover, as Mr. Wint (half of the demonstrably and blatantly gay executioner team of Kidd and Wint), is the one to press the button sending the coffin on its trip (after first floridly moving his fingers about to – I guess - demonstrate that he’s really gay). And I think he uses his middle finger, although I’m not sure.

The last case might simply be happenstance, or a case of me reading too much into a gesture in an early sound film. But in the 1934 movie Babes in Toyland (AKA March of the Wooden Soldiers), starring Laurel and Hardy, Oliver Hardy’s character loses part of his moustache. Stan Laurel’s character innocently tries to retrieve it by wetting his finger and using that to pick up the hairs from the ground. Only he uses his middle finger for this, rather than his index finger. Maybe it wasn’t quite as innocent as it appears.

Any other cases? I’m not looking for overt Flipping of the Bird, or cases of Harvey Lembeck as Eric von Zipper in the 1960s “Beach Movies” (where’s he’s said to “give himself the finger”), but of understated cases where it’s ambiguous as to whether it was intentional or not, and it might thus add to the atmosphere of a scene.

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In She-Devil (1989), Meryl Streep plays an arrogant author who puts on a fake veneer of sophistication for the sake of her reputation. IIRC, in one scene she’s being interviewed and refers to a rival while smoothing out an eyebrow with her middle finger.

I looked through a few clips on YouTube, but couldn’t find it.

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Now that you mention it, in Aliens, Apone uses the bird to pull down the skin under his eye when dissing Paxton’s character.

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And says “Look into my eye” at the same time, calling attention to the action. Surreptitious it ain’t, but worth noting as another somewhat disguised sighting.

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While I’m sure his intentions were (as always) nothing but good, Mister Rogers must have known what this moment from his performance of “Where Is Thumbkin?” would look like:

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Apone has to use his middle finger because his index and thumb are holding his cigar right next to his face; careful, Apone.

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Yeah, but he was clearly making a point with that finger.

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Never mind, misread your point. (No matter which finger.)

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One of my kids, when he was very young, used to use his middle finger to point to things instead of his index finger. He was (presumably) too young at the time to know what ‘flipping the bird’ was; it was (presumably) an entirely innocent gesture. We had to gently teach him to use his index finger to point with. My wife said her mother did the same thing when she pointed (presumably innocently on her part as well), which was interesting-- maybe middle finger preference when pointing / pushing buttons and such is hereditary?

Anyway, maybe at least some of those instances seen in movies were just innocent middle finger usage.

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I don’t doubt it. Stan Laurel’s probably was.

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I’ve seen a few British celebrities point with their middle fingers (James May and Pete Townshend come to mind). I’ve always wondered if it was a not-so-subtle way of flipping off the person behind the camera.

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Don Stevenson on the original cover of Moby Grape (1967). It got airbrushed out of later printings. Nowadays, it wouldn’t even get a second glance.

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And Billy Ripken on his 1989 Fleer baseball card (where he’s also holding a bat with FUCK FACE written on it).

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I understand that the analogous gesture in Britain uses the index and middle fingers (think peace sign, but with the back of the hand facing the recipient).

There’s one moment in the first Men in Black where K responds to J’s question about when he gets a neuralyzer by saying “when you grow up”. J says “OK”, while scratching his head with his middle finger.

In The War of the Roses, Barbara uses her middle finger to ping a glass while glaring directly at her husband.

Phil’s even less subtle than the previous two in one run through Groundhog Day, doing a countdown on his fingers. Most USians would have the index finger used for One, but Phil uses his middle finger instead.

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Harold Lloyd flipping himself off in “Speedy”.

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Modst cited examples I found online are clearly not all that sureptitious, with this possible exception:

During a wedding sequence in one of Alfred Hitchcock’s silent films, The Ring (1927), a misunderstanding results in the ringbearer giving the finger to another member of the wedding party, to comedic effect

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Both the one finger or two finger version are used in Britain.

The one finger version has largely taken over in recent years though, I can’t remember the last two finger salute I saw in the wild. Sad to think how our traditions can be lost.