The Metaphor Model

When I was doing my MA on visual culture, i studied a course called audio-visual culture, which we are introduced to some models and theories in order to analyze audio-visual culture. Since i found the chance to use my music background i enjoyed the course a lot. One of these models we studied is Metaphor model, which i would like to explain briefly by applying it to the film ‘Atonement’.

Atonement trailer

Academy Awards Coverage on MySpace | MySpace Video

Metaphor model takes similarities as a starting point. But it must be emphasized that similarity doesn’t mean ‘the same’. Similarity also means difference or if I put another way it bears differences at the same time. Cook says ‘the metaphor model…invokes similarity not as an end, but as a means. Meaning now inheres not in similarity, but in the difference that similarity articulates by virtue of the transfer of attributes’ (Cook, 81). He gives the example by Lakoff and Johnson which is ‘love is war’. This metaphor draws the attention to the common features of war and love such as having two parties and involving conquest. But at the same time they can be considered totally different. He continues ‘the meaning of the metaphor does not lie in the enabling similarity, it lies in what the similarity enables, which is to say, the transfer of attributes from one term of the metaphor to the other’ (Cook, 70). I think it is a very useful model to understand audio visual products.

Cook thinks Psycho is a good example to explain metaphor model. He looks at the sequence which Marion drives the car in the rain till Bates Hotel. ‘He says Hermann’s angular, repetitive music doesn’t connect in a literal manner with anything that is visible on the screen; it does not obviously synchronize….with the regular rhythm of the wiper blades, or the irregular rhythms outlined by the oncoming cars’(Cook, 66). But the music corresponds to the nervous mood and inner thoughts of the character. Although the music and the visuals look different they have common features which help to transfer meanings.

I will analyze the score of Atonement, which is composed by Dario Marianelli, as an example. The movie is a drama which includes a tragic love story. I will not give too many details about the plot since the article is not large enough. The narrator, who is also one of the main characters, is a writer and she is responsible for the drama. But there is another element causes the whole tragedy; a letter written on a typewriter by the main male character Robbie. So, therefore, the composer uses the typewriter sound in the music as percussion. But in general his music is very classical using piano and strings to capture the romantic and emotional mood of the story but also the period which the story takes place. So the period and romantic mood captured by classical instruments can be considered as similarities with the images. On the other hand, use of typewriter sound as percussion, which creates a contrast, is very innovative and makes both the music and the scene more attractive. But also the narration of the movie is innovative too, so that’s why, although the use of type writer sound creates a contrast in the scenes, it goes parallel with the general nature of the movie and it completes it perfectly once again. Thus, music completes the visuals both by making contrast and also going parallel. To sum up, music enhances the effect of the visuals and the narration dramatically and the visuals give meaning to the music-for example, explains why we hear typewriter sound.

Well...This was an introduction and an application of the metaphor model briefly. Hope to meet you guys for another model:)

Bibliography
Cook, Nicholas, Analyzing Musical Multimedia. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.