Copyright 2018 by Gary L. Pullman
Although most of us have a
healthy respect for significant incidents, we may dismiss what we see
as trifles too quickly. The great fictional detective Sherlock Holmes
didn't make such a mistake. Indeed, as he
reminded his friend and colleague, Dr. John Watson, “You know
my method. It is founded upon the observation of trifles.”
Holmes even gives Watson
an example of the importance of so-called trifles: “I dare call
nothing trivial when I reflect that some of my most classic cases
have had the least promising commencement. You will remember, Watson,
how the dreadful business of the Abernetty family was first brought
to my notice by the depth [to] which the parsley had sunk into the
butter upon a hot day.”
Unfortunately, we know no
other details of the adventure to which Holmes refers, for it was not
one about which he or Watson wrote. Nevertheless, we can assume it
constituted a “singularity,”
a unique fact or feature, something that stands out because it
doesn't fit or add up and which turns out, in his experience, to be
“almost invariably a clue.”
Although no writer should
ever imagine the matter of metaphors to be a mere “trifle,” some,
no doubt, do. Having forgotten the difficulty they experienced in
mastering this basic, but most eloquent, figure of speech (or
imagining that they have mastered it), some authors seldom revisit it
and cease to practice the art of its creation. As a result, they are
likely to write less well than they otherwise could—and
should—write. Had Claude Monet, in having first mixed red and
yellow, obtaining orange, concluded no other shades and hues of the
color could be produced that were worth his time and effort, he might
never have painted San Giorgio Maggiore by
Twilight.
Great writers, like any other type of artist, much practice every
technique to perfect it.
While
great writers' work provide many examples worthy of emulation, other
sources of inspiration are also useful, especially to the apprentice
or aspiring author. For writers of horror fiction, for example,
posters created to publicize horror movies offer quick studies of
astute uses of metaphor to advertise, or “sell,” these products.
If copywriters, painters, and photographers can sell a film,
partially through their use of metaphors, an author of horror stories
should be able to “sell” a phrase, a sentence, a scene, or, in
some cases, even an entire story through his or her adroit use of
appropriate and emotionally powerful metaphors.
The
metaphor, we know, is a figure of speech that compares two things (or
abstractions, such as thoughts or feelings) that are not alike. A
metaphor may be thought of as an equation. One variable, “A,” is
said to be equal to another variable, “B”:
E
= MC2
wherein,
“E” is energy, “M” is mass, and “C” is the speed of light
times itself
We
can turn an equation around, writing, for example—
MC2
= E
Often,
a metaphor makes readers aware of a quality that they might otherwise
fail to notice:
All
the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players. They
have their exits and their entrances.
World
= stage
Men
and women = players
Exits
= deaths
Entrances
= births
Often,
we make metaphors by stating them directly, as William Shakespeare
does in the above quotation (“the world's a stage”).
However,
we can create a metaphor indirectly, by speaking (or writing) of an
object in relation to one (or more) of its parts. Consider this
poster for the movie Teeth:
We
see a young woman lying supine in a bathtub of soapy water. Only her
head appears above the water's surface. The featureless white wall
above her head does not distract us with color, patterned wallpaper,
paneling, or anything else. The water is also featureless, and the
layer of soap lying upon its surface makes it seem one with the tub
and the wall. Our gaze remains on her face; we are encouraged, in
effect, to consider her, to study her. We see that she is young and
beautiful. Her skin is flawless, her cheeks rosy, her lips full and
red. She looks at us directly, without fear or shame.
As
our gaze wanders down the poster, we see, beneath the dark water,
rising bubbles and a single red rose which seems to float at about
the position the young woman's genitals would be, were they visible
to us. The metaphor is unstated, but suggested: her vagina = a rose.
The image of the rose recalls the flower's qualities: delicacy,
beauty, fragrance. We might also associate the rose with romantic
love, for the flower is traditionally a symbol of erotic passion.
Beneath
the flower, we encounter a single word, in the capital letters of a
serif font: “Teeth.”
The word's blood red color is reminiscent both of the rose above it
and of the young woman's vagina, which it represents. The vagina is
bloody during the moment of deflowering and throughout each menstrual
cycle. This rose-vagina, or vagina-rose, becomes more and more
complex, as layers of meanings unfold themselves, much in the manner
of a budding rose.
This seemingly
simple poster has more to offer: the smaller text, also in the
capital letters of a serif font, but
white, not red: “EVERY ROSE HAS ITS THORNS.” White is often a
symbol of purity, or innocence, of virginity. If the young woman is a
virgin, transforming her from a state of purity and innocence into a
woman of knowledge—and of carnal knowledge, at that—and
experience, through sexual intercourse, is apt to result in violence,
injury, and, perhaps, death, not to her, but to the man who so
transforms her. This young maiden is no passive and acquiescent
Galatea, but a vengeful Fury. Such seems to be the warning conveyed
by the poster's reference to a vagina with teeth, the legendary
vagina dentata.
The
front cover of a DVD made for the Spanish-speaking segment of the
market bears the same imagery as the movie poster for its
English-language counterpart (described above), except, instead of
the title Teeth,
the Spanish version is called Vagina Dentata,
and, in case the front cover's message isn't clear enough, text on
the Spanish edition's back cover spells out the meaning of the front
cover's iconography:
[Vagina
Dentata] es la historia un
brusco desperta sexual como nunca se ha visto antes . . . Como
nuestra protagonista pasa de liderar un grupo de castidad a
experimentar sus primeras experencias sexuales de manera traumatica .
. . un extrano habita en su cuerpo. Adivine que pasa cuando Dawn
O'Keefe descrubre una dentadura en el lugar mas espantoso que usted
puedo imaginar . . . Cuidado las chicas buenas pueden morder.
(English translation):
[Teeth]
is the story
of a sudden sexual awakening unlike any ever seen before. . . As our
protagonist goes from leading a chastity group to experiencing her
first traumatic sexual experiences. . . a stranger lives in her body.
Guess what happens when Dawn O'Keefe uncovers a set of teeth in the
most frightening place you can imnagine. Beware: good girls can bite.
It
may seem that we've gotten away from the original topic of our essay,
but we haven't. The text on the back of the Spanish-language version
of Teeth
merely spells out the consequences, according to the movie's
treatment of the topic represented by the double metaphor, “rose =
vagina; thorns = teeth”: a young woman's first sexual experiences
are traumatic; she responds by murdering her partners, using her
vagina's teeth to effect bloody vengeance. For her victims (and for
male members of the audience—yes, pun intended—the location of
the young woman's second set of teeth is “the most frightening
place” they can envision.) The effects presented by the movie are
made possible by, if not contained within, the double metaphor.
One
can create a metaphor directly, as Shakespeare does with his “all
the world's a stage” trope, but a metaphor can also be created
indirectly, by associating the qualities of one term (“A”) with
the other term, “B,” with which it is linked by comparison. As we
have seen, a well-conceived metaphor can accomplish a lot more than
simply making us see something in a new light; it can become a
vehicle for an entire movie's basic situation. In the case of Teeth,
the screenwriters (and the poster's creators) have taken a leaf from
Edgar Allan Poe, whose narrator, at the opening to his story
“Berenice,” speaks of his having “derived from beauty . . [not
only] a type of unloveliness,” but also a situation ripe with
horror.
Note:
For those who are inclinded toward psychoanalytical, or Freudian,
interpretations of literature (as a rule, I am not), Teeth
might also be seen as symbolic of the so-called castration complex
and as rife with all sorts of unconscious significance.