The pigeons in my pocket

I was wrong when I thought that the only pictures that I kept in my wallet were of my wife. Two days ago I discovered two whole 3D holograms of a flying dove on the back side of my VISA cards. I've been using Visa credit card for more than one year and I hadn't noticed this little holographic image. The following days I enjoyed asking my friends if they had unexpected birds in their pockets. It was very funny to see their surprise reactions when they saw the dove flying accross their credit cards.

What I see in this collection is a flock of doves flying in the same direction.

After that, I wondered if this was the only pigeon/dove-related symbol to be found on common products, or if more could be found. After some searching, I discovered that many other companies also employ pigeon/dove representations for their logos. This is the summary of my research.

A Beauty with a dove, example of harmless peaceful dove

Firstly, it is interesting to observe that using a pigeon/dove as a symbol is a difficult tradeoff. On one hand, pigeons are hated by many people, but on the other, for many other people they have a great social -and emotional- role. In both cases they exhibit an interesting property: pigeons and doves populate everywhere on Earth, except for ultra cold or hot environments (the driest areas of the Sahara Desert, Antarctica and the Arctic), thus everybody, from almost every part of the world, recognizes them. This means that using a pigeon/dove provides an easy-to-recognize, pancultural symbol.  When you combine this idea, with the innocent appearance of an angelic bird, you get a very powerful marketing tool that can be efficiently exploited to diffuse your company's image. Note that the dove is commmonly used as a symbolic representation of peace and calmness. Pigeons are employed for communitation as homing pigeons. In this case, they are used to conceptually represent speed and reliability in a courier service.


One bizarre example of dove logo is the 2012 plane design of British Airways. The idea was to paint the complete plane like a huge dove and use it for celebrating the London 2012 Olympics. According to the logo designer, a dove was chosen because it represents the symbol of peace and social unity, and because they were also used in previous Olympic Games ceremonies. Here is a picture of the pigeonized airplane:

It is very interesting to see the details of the cockpit and the engine. I can't say that it looks like a dove. I would say that it seems more like a feathered suppository.

 

Another good example is the personal care brand Dove. This company is responsible for introducing one or multiple doves in many houses.  It is a good example of how, a peaceful and calm icon can induce the custumers to buy a given product brand.

In the figure below be can see other dove-related logos. We can see (from left to right) double-dove, a couple of  loving doves that are probably going to have an accident because they are too interested in each other and don't pay attention to their flight path; in the centre we have a bird that doesn't look like an actual dove; and to the right a more abstracted dove representation, which is influenced by the peace symbol.

Columbus, a bicycle company, presents a dove with a confusing name. It is not a Columbidae (the pigeon and dove bird family), but the Latin version of the company founder's surname. I remark on this logo because it is one of my favorites.

Moving onto regular pigeons, here I summarise several logos including (from left to right and top to bottom): ePigeon,  an instant communication company, Pigeon, a baby care product firm which actually doesn't use a pigeon logo but its name, Pigeon VoIP, a telephony service of an Indian Telecom company and Pigeon, a Korean a manufacturer of household products.

All these symbols represent pigeons in a very schematic way, showing the silhouette or a simple representation of a flying bird. If we actually want to see pigeons in all their splendour we have to see more specialised sources from people that not only want to employ these animals but they actually love them.

So now, as a final consideration, let me ask you: how many pigeons do you have?

Shame: a lonely pigeon at the car park

Title: Shame

Year:  2011

Director:   Steve McQueen

Running time: 99 min.

Country: United Kingdom

Brandon (Michael Fassbender) is a successful business man with a serious sex-addiction and a complicated relationship with his sister (Carey Mulligan). This was a disturbing film for me but I was surprised to find a feathered creature in it.

After a crazy sex-fuelled night out he becomes worried about his sister's state of mind and decides to call her. This worry increases when he sees that she doesn't pick up his calls. Then he decides he has to find her.

On his way he crosses a car park where a lonely pigeon is resting. Immediately, the pigeon is scared and flies away.

The director shows us this scene from different perspectives. We can see the pigeon close to the lower-right corner of the image.

Details of the pigeon starring 

• Source: Shame. Starring moment: 1:28:22
• Pigeon activity: It is a common New York pigeon that is roaming around a car park and is scared by a sex-addict that is running toward it. Fortunately, he is not running after it. 
  
• Symbolism: None. 
• Relevance: None. It only appears for few seconds and doesn't impact on the film's plot.
• Training level: Low. The pigeon's behaviour is very awkward. It was clearly planted for this scene and it doesn't behave naturally.

The Tower: the evil pigeon-punishing computer

Title: The Tower

Year:  1993

Director:   Richard Kletter

Running time: 120 min.

Country: United States

There are good computers and bad computers. I'm not talking about the computer's cost-performance ratio, energy consumption or level of fanciness.... I'm talking about good computers that help people (like the one in Wall-E) and computers that kill people (like HAL). This film is about a high-tech tower (nowadays it looks a little dated) which is controlled by a computer...  which happens to be a clear example of a bad one.

The computer has the duty of protecting the building at all costs. And it takes it very seriously. We can see an example of it at the beginning of the movie. An innocent pigeon flies to the top of the tower's ventilation system and looks around with curiosity.

Immediately, the system detects the intruder as a potential threat and marks it for delete. What does delete mean? Yes, think in the worst and you'd be right. 

With a powerful gust of air, the pigeon is 'deleted' from the tower. It is not clear if the bird was hurt or not, but the sight of a huge cloud of feathers makes us suspect a most dramatic finale for the pigeon.

Finally, the threat was removed and the system returns to its normal operation mode.... bad computer, I don't understand how you can sleep in peace.

Details of the pigeon starring 

• Source: The Tower. Starring moment: 0:3:30
• Pigeon activity: It is a common urban pigeon that explores the tower's top, maybe in search of some food or looking for a future nesting place. Unfortunately, it is going to face an evil computer that will delete it.
• Symbolism: The pigeon is used as an example of the computer's inflexibility towards unauthorized visits and how it deals this kind of situations: with force and violence. Later, the protagonist (a human) will also suffer even worse treatment.
• Relevance: Low. There is a brief appearance, but it summarizes very well how dreadful the computer is.
• Training level: At the beginning of the scene, the pigeon is clearly thrown on the ventilation system. The pigeon handlers don't seem to be well-trained. However, the bird behaves very well and naturally in its movements.

Pigeon Impossible: the secret agent, the pigeon and the doughnut

Title: Pigeon: Impossible

Year:  2009

Director:   Lucas Martell

Running time: 6 min.

Country: United States

I really enjoyed watching this short action film, which includes one of the most intense human-pigeon duels even conceived. The story begins with a secret agent and a curious pigeon that is more interested in the doughnut that the agent is eating than the mysterious briefcase that he is carrying. In the following pictures we can see this initial scene: under the surface of this professional-looking secret agent with his serious expression there is actually an awkward, amateurish agent that is unable to keep under control a pigeon that is irresistibly attracted by his doughnut.

Accidentally, the pigeon takes the control of the briefcase, which is actually a high-tech nuclear weapon, armed with the latest technology. As we can observe in the picture below, the pigeon is not as innoccent as it looks and it will fight till the end for its doughnut. The rest of the story features the duel between both protagonists for the control of the briefcase and the doughnut itself. It is better to watch it on the official web site. Link here.

Details of the pigeon starring 

• Source: Pigeon: Impossible. Starring moment: all the recording.
• Pigeon activity: It is a common pigeon wandering around the streets. However, in the recording we can see that the pigeon progresses from a quite simple animal to a very skilled die-hard enemy almost impossible to defeat. 
• Symbolism: This is an example of how the combination of innocent-harmless creatures and deadly weapons can create lethal situations. 
• Relevance: Absolute.
• Training level: Not applicable. 

The Neighbor Zombie: the pigeon and the Korean zombies

Title: The Neighbor Zombie

Year:  2010

Director:  Hong Young-guen, Jang Youn-jung, Oh Young-doo, Ryoo hoon

Running time: 86 min.

Country: South Korea

This movie consists of four stories. The second one begins with a lonely pigeon roaming on a street. At this time the apocalypse has arrived and the zombie infestation has spread across the city. The remaining survivors stay at home while search-and-destroy teams patrol the city in order to put down any zombie they find. Meanwhile, the pigeon wanders around a deserted street in search of some food. It doesn't care about zombies, they are quite easy to elude. It also doesn't care about the Special Forces, they are very stressed killing zombies and they don't pay attention to it. For this pigeon, it is just another joyful day.

Do you feel some repulsion looking at this zombie woman? The pigeon probably doesn't. 

 

Details of the pigeon starring 

• Source: The Neighbor Zombie. Starring moment: 0:25:12
• Pigeon activity: It is a common pigeon roaming around the streets. 
• Symbolism: The pigeon is used to show that despite the great horrors of a zombie apocalypsie, life goes on for the rest of the animals. For instance, for this pigeon.
• Relevance: None. It doesn't contribute to the film plot. 
• Training level: Very good. It is difficult to distinguish between a wild urban pigeon and a well trained extra. Taking into account the film budget (not too big) it is even more difficult to make this decision. I think that it is the second option because Koreans are good with the details.
   

The Talented Mr. Ripley: a saturation of pigeons

Title: The Talented Mr. Ripley

Year:  1999

Director: Anthony Minghella
Running time: 139 min.

Country: United States

Humans tend to work with stereotypes. For instance, many people supposed that all the Spaniards love bullfighting and dance flamenco and that an American policeman without donuts is not a genuine policeman. For Anthony Minghella, the director of this movie, it is also assumed that Italy in general and Venice in particular are crowed with pigeons (I don't deny that it's true). Based on this assumption, the director conceived, organized and executed a plan for filming hordes of pigeons. This is a summary of the main appearances:

The first shot is only the prelude of the pigeon apotheosis. A couple walks down a street in Rome and a flock of pigeons appears performing a perfect diagonal flight. Good. It is quite artistic but not comparable to the feathered recordings that we are going to find in Venice.

Some minutes later, now in Venice, we see a square completely saturated with pigeons. The flock is engulfing several characters that seem to be too concerned. I think that it is very artistic. I really like the light in this scene and how the pigeon shadows are projected on the floor.

The next scene comes just few seconds later: Mr. Ripley (Matt Damon) crosses this square with a friend of his. It is interesting to see how scared he is. I'm wondering if he was acting or he was actually afraid of the huge flock of pigeons that flies around him. It is also amusing to see the pigeon captured in the first and third photograms.

Finally, in the last scene, we can see a perfect example of stereotype abuse: in the same scene we can see a street cafe, a guy playing the saxophone, a flock of pigeons and a 'painter'. A complete overload of Italian stereotypes.

Details of the pigeon starring 

• Source: The Talented Mr. Ripley Starring moment: 1:16:03, 1:40:51 and 1:52:05
• Pigeon activity: These are the typical urban pigeon flocks that roam around streets and squares.
• Symbolism: Almost none. They only represent common creatures in Italian cities.
• Relevance: None. Despite their large number, pigeons are only used for creating a familiar Italian atmosphere. No further relationship with the interesting plot of the movie.
• Training level: High. In this movie pigeons behave very naturally, showing an excellent field deployment.