Cinematic Metaphor

Why I can hate ballet but still love Black Swan

I hate ballet. There’s no getting past it. It’s puerile, pointless, pouncing around in silly outfits. And yet I loved Darren Aronofsky’s feature film ‘Black Sawn’, a film about Ballet and Ballet dancers. The conundrum expressed here speaks to the beating heart of narrative cinema, the essence of how great screen stories engage and elevate audiences. 

The reason a disdain for Ballet and a love for a film about Ballet can be happily reconciled is that Black Swan is actually not ABOUT Ballet at all… Ballet - and indeed the very notion of a Ballet Dancer - is a Metaphor for the complex themes and ideas the film is really about. The delicate, perfectionist figure of a Ballet Dancer on the stage is way to visualise and make cinematic the conceptual and emotional struggles the film Black Swan and its characters explore. Just as with his previous film The Wrestler, Aronofsky has found a way to physicalise and make cinematic what would otherwise be dull and self-indulgent internal character struggle. Recognising this mechanic at work opens the door to the most powerful weapon at the filmmakers disposal and, sadly, the element that is all too often lacking from much short and long-form screen stories. 

If we recognise the power of Metaphor we directly recognise that thing that separates the great from the mediocre in cinema. Metaphor is what makes grown men cry in a film about children’s plastic toys. Metaphor is what makes a  film about alien refugees socially confronting in the here and now. Metaphor is what elevates a vampire film to a political commentary. 

Metaphor is what screen narratives are actually About. Rocky is Not a film about Boxing, Jaws is Not a film about a Shark. Blade Runner is Not a film about Robots. Boxing, Sharks and Robots are all metaphor vehicles for bigger ideas - Struggle and Redemption, Greed and Fear, Humanity and Memory. 

So, to embrace the power of metaphor we need to break down its types and how it works. Under the bigger category of metaphor we find a host of words that, at their essence, mean the concept of understanding one thing in terms of another. 

Allegory: the representation of abstract ideas or principles through characters, figures, or events

Simile: the comparison of two different things by employing the words “like”, “as”, or “than”

Analogy: the drawing of a comparison in order to show a similarity

Just these three give us great scope to understand how the different levels and cinematic manifestations metaphors might take in a film, TV show or web-series (not to mention video game). And form this we can break down three kinds of metaphor as related to making screen media. 

Cognitive Metaphor - the association of an object to an experience outside the object’s environment. The best example here can be seen in the Toy Story series. Children are moved by the film through wide-eyed adventure, humour and character attachment. Their parents however are moved to tears but the cognitive leap they mentally make from the films actual substance  - Toys dealing with child owners growing and no longer playing with them - to the cognitive metaphoric substance - recognition that one day their own children will grow up and no longer need them. the power of the metaphor is engaged by a cognitive leap, an emotive intellectual connection.

Experiential Metaphor - a depicted experience that allows the viewer to learn about more than just that experience. Rocky (and just about any boxing or wrestling film) is a prime candidate here where the brutal physical suffering and exhilaration the protagonist goes through is a metaphor for other kinds of struggle and endurance. I might come from the wealthy, privileged, good side of the tracks but through the physical act of boxing I can metaphorically comprehend and experience Rocky Balboa’s struggle in coming from a rough neighbourhood and trying to make something of himself. 

Visual Metaphor - imagery that makes a comparison between what is visually depicted and an idea or thematic concept. There is no better contemporary example than that from the season opening prologue of series 3 of The Wire. In this scene the project towers that had so long been the home of violence, poverty and drug trafficking, are demolished. As the towers crumble a billowing cloud of smoke and rubble wafts out into the city streets. The visual metaphor clearly sets up the premise for the season to come - destroying the towers will not solve the problem, you just push the problem elsewhere; like a billowing cloud of dust.

Metaphor allows your view to understand something that might otherwise be far outside of their experience. Thankfully I have no experience of the kind of urban decay that afflicts US cities like Baltimore as depicted in the Wire, and yet I comprehend fully the ramifications of demolishing the project towers as a band-aid solution. The Visual metaphor provides me a tangible reference point.

Similarly Metaphor gives your viewers distance in order to generate greater intimacy and connection. Whilst this might seem contradictory consider what Battlestar Galactica director Michael Rhymer once said to me; he observed that if he had made a documentary about military culture, paranoia and the gulf war none but a small audience would have watched. But he could riff freely on all those topics in Battlestar Galactica and huge audiences lapped it up, engaging directly with the self-same issues through a fictitious SciFi setting. 

Lastly Metaphor, like genre, elevates cinematic narrative beyond itself. Strong and compelling metaphors provide narrative layers and depth, they make small stories universal and broaden audience appeal of niche topics or subjects.

Metaphor is the reason I can Hate Ballet but Love Black Swan.