Publications

Publication details [#12881]

Coëgnarts, Maarten and Peter Kravanja. 2015. With the Past in Front of the Character: Evidence for Spatial-Temporal Metaphors in Cinema. Metaphor and Symbol 30 (3) : 218–239. 22 pp.
Publication type
Article in journal
Publication language
English
Place, Publisher
Taylor & Francis Online

Abstract

This paper examines spatiotemporal metaphors in relation to films studies based on the notion of character subjectivity in cinema. More specifically, two are the major themes presented: Metaphors of Time and Embodying Character Perception in Cinema. The authors compiled a corpus of film scenes in which a static Ego-Reference-Point (Ego-RP) model of time is applied very similar to the one found in Aymara language. According to this model the past appears to be in front of the character or ego on the screen. The metaphors “KNOWLEDGE IS VISION”, “FUTURE IS IN BACK OF EGO” and “PAST IS IN FRONT OF EGO” seem to be pervasive in the scenes examined. A characteristic example is when a character (A) sees an object (B), which immediately refers metaphorically to the past i.e. the opening of a window of a hotel room brings to the female character the memory of meeting her beloved one; the scene unfolds in her mind. The point of this article is to bring a filmic perspective to the discussion of time metaphors. The implementation of the Ego-RP model of time, very similar to the one found in Aymara language, shows that the camera can induce metaphoric interpretations when watching a film.