With the Past in Front of the Character: Evidence for Spatial-Temporal Metaphors in Cinema

Abstract

Cognitive research on Ego-Reference-Point models of time in English traditionally shows that “FUTURE IS IN FRONT OF EGO” and “PAST IS IN BACK OF EGO.” Recently, however, this view has been challenged by other results, showing that there exists a major static model of time wherein “FUTURE IS IN BACK OF EGO” and “PAST IS IN FRONT OF EGO.” However, evidence for both conceptual systems comes predominantly from linguistic and gestural forms of expression. For instance, convincing empirical evidence coming from the manifestation mode of cinema is still lacking. This article attempts to fill this gap by bringing the discussion of temporal metaphors to the foreground of character subjectivity in film. Using concise case-studies taken from various films, this study provides evidence that a majority of flashback scenes seem to base their conceptions of time on a static Ego-Reference-Point model in which the past appears to be in front of the character’s eyes on screen.

Notes

¹ Note that it is not always necessary for the viewer to actually see the perceptual organ in order to identify the metonymical relationship. Top-down knowledge can help to aid in this identification. For instance, we know enough about the structure of human bodies to know that the eyes are attached to the head, so even if we only see, for example, the backside of a character’s head in the foreground of the frame with the object of his gaze in the background, we are able to infer the perceptual organ, and by extension the metonymy “EYES STAND FOR SEEING.”

² The term “homospatiality” has been introduced by Noël Carroll (1994) to denote the co-presence of source and target domain in the same figure. In this article, we retain the term, but in a slightly different way, i.e., to indicate the co-presence of PR and OP in the same larger frame.

³ For a detailed discussion of each category we refer to Coëgnarts & Kravanja (2014, 2015).

⁴ All film stills in this contribution are treated as visual citations, in accordance with the established guideline for fair use of film stills from DVDs in scholarly writings.

⁵ This analysis differs from our previous study (Coëgnarts & Kravanja, 2012c) in which the flashback scene from The Passenger was studied as an example of the Moving-Time metaphor on the grounds that the character is stationary. However, this account did not take into consideration the concept of perception, and the possibility that the perceiver’s eyesight can be expressed metaphorically by camera movement in which the camera brings the perceiver’s point of view in direct contact with the perceived object (i.e., the time). The same analysis also applies to some of the flashback scenes from Lone Star (John Sayles, 1996). For a discussion of this film from the perspective of primary metaphors, see also Ortiz (2014).

⁶ For this reason one might argue that the third case is closely related to Grady’s (1999) notion of resemblance metaphor. In contrast to the group of correlation-based metaphors that involves a set of correspondences between a concrete source domain and an abstract target domain (e.g., “TIME IS SPACE,” “KNOWING IS SEEING”), resemblance metaphors are grounded in a single resemblance between target and source. In the expression “Achilles is a lion,” for example, one feature, namely the inner characteristic quality of courage, is mapped from the lion onto Achilles. One kind of resemblance metaphor that has received much scholarly attention is the image metaphor (Deignan, 2007; Gibbs & Bogdonovich, 1999; Lakoff, 1987a; 1993; Lakoff & Turner, 1989). Here, the mapping of a single resemblance is based on a shared image structure, rather than a shared inner quality. For instance, in the much cited André Breton example of “My wife … whose waist is an hourglass,” one aspect of an hourglass, namely, its shape and more specifically its narrow center, is mapped onto the form of a woman. According to Lakoff and Turner (1989, p. 90) image structure is characterized by both part–whole structure (e.g., the relation between a roof and a house) and attribute structure (e.g., color, physical shape, intensity of light, etc.).

⁷ For a good discussion of the film in the light of flashbacks, see also Turim (2001).