Symbols, Images and Codes, page 6
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ANATOMY
WHAT IT MEANS
The function of that body part: life force (blood), new life (sex organs), perception (eyes, ears), speech (mouth), motion (legs), connections (hands), identity, consciousness, ideas (head).
Psychiatrist Sigmund Freud famously observed, “Anatomy is destiny”: Our bodies greatly determine our experience in and with the world. Just as gods supposedly make humans in their own image, humans fashion our creations in our own image, including our gods.
Just as faces the world over look the same when experiencing the same emotions (that’s why cartoons and emoticons work), media makers also use body parts to convey emotions, situations, and concepts.
IN HISTORY, MYTH, AND CONTEMPORARY TIMES
Egyptian temples often reflect human anatomy, from the brain to the full body.
Native American kivas used for community and spiritual events reflect the womb, with entrances through birth canal-like tunnels or navel-like openings.
Hindu statuary reflects the dichotomy of gender with the stone lingam (penis) and yoni (vagina).
Christian cathedral entrances, with two towers and arched doorways topped with round windows, resemble a reclining woman with her knees up — accepting the seed of devotion, giving birth to religious blessings. Saints are often shown surrounded by the pointed oval of the Vessica Piscus, which resembles female genitalia.
Magical Egypt
Mixed species such as Egyptian animal-headed gods, Greek centaurs, Sumerian winged lions, and Incan jaguar priests convey special powers. Mixed species like the robotic Cylons and the Borg are unsettling, often terrifying. The elephant-headed Hindu god Ganesha symbolizes good-natured persistence rising above adversity.
Werewolves, weretigers, and other human shape-shifters emphasize an animal characteristic actually manifesting in the body of the human. That’s much more inconvenient than just wearing animal skins or a bear-head helmet, but it’s also much more powerful for your stories.
Distortions or disfigurement seize our attention. Some say it’s an impersonal, instinctual reaction to a defect that may weaken or harm the herd. At the extreme of that, zombies definitely catch our attention.
Both giants and tiny people convey emotional states, such as arrogance or powerlessness, and situational states, like oppression or cleverness, operating below the level of common awareness.
Many people note the resemblance to the human fetus of images of supposed extraterrestrial aliens.
WHAT THEY STAND FOR
Head — consciousness, intelligence.
Skull and Crossbones — the pirate flag and the symbol for poison. For some secret societies this refers to the two seats of creativity — brain and loins. Both skulls and eggs are symbols of fertility, imagination, and physicality.
The Great Work
Pineal gland — Buddha’s topknot, the pomegranate, the pine cone, and the pineapple in spiritual iconography all physically resemble the pineal gland, the gland of the Crown chakra.
Eyes — perception, special abilities, psychic vision, wisdom. “You are being watched.”
A university study reports that when pictures with eyes in them were put up in a coffee room, the people acted more honestly.
Ears — perception, cognition, awareness.
Hands — ability to make and do things. Relationship to others: closed equals shy, snobbish; open equals generous, friendly; fist equals scared, angry.
Mouths — communication, sexuality.
Heart — compassion, love, sacrifice, courage.
Blood — life force, compassion, familial connections.
Arms — strength, protection, ability to carry.
Legs — mobility, strength, ability to support, sexuality.
Sex Organs — stereotypical characteristics: male equals outgoing, aggressive, bold; female equals receptive, nurturing, collaborative. Regeneration.
Tunnels, chutes, ducts — Whether it’s the birth canal (seed in, baby out) or the alimentary canal (food in, waste out), tube shapes imply transformation, a transition from one state of being or awareness to another. Hopi myths tell of migrating through tunnels to new worlds.
IN MEDIA
Beauty and the Beast stories speak to both our lower and higher natures, as well as warning us to look beyond appearances. See variations on the Beauty and the Beast concept of odd anatomy in films such as Elephant Man, The Man Without A Face, and Jean Cocteau’s 1946 Beauty and the Beast.
Villendorf Venus - How Art Made the World
Modern advertising often uses the headless bodies or otherwise isolated body parts of women (and sometimes men) to promote things often having little direct relation to the body. But as the saying goes, “Sex sells.”
The Playboy Bunny sequence in Apocalypse Now makes extravagant use of anatomical symbols with the breast-shaped lights and the phallus-shaped missiles decorating the concert set.
Cult favorite Boondock Saints uses a tunnel sequence to birth the twin vigilante boys from behind the scenes to up-front and very noticeable to both the mob and the FBI.
One of the scariest monsters ever is H.R. Giger’s anatomically distorted creature in the Alien series, while the shambling creature-humanoid aliens of District 9 and the lizard-humanoids of Alien Nation engender more sympathy than fear.
Apocalypse Now
USE
To show the audience something your characters may not be aware of.
To convey a backstory or connection that would take too long in exposition.
To add emphasis to subtext.
To externalize a character’s emotional wounds or weaknesses.
To create unease or sympathy in your audience via the distortion of human anatomy.
WRITTEN DESCRIPTIONS
Use direct reference. Use secondary reference via “like” and “as” to create connections between a body part and another item: “The walls embraced them like welcoming arms.”
When referencing a specific body part, use one of the descriptive words from the lists above to signal your intent: “strong legs,” “sad eyes,” “broken heart.”
In a script, point out anatomical references to your reader/director/art director so they know to focus on that during filming: “The eyes of the portrait seem to follow them across the room.”
CINEMATIC TECHNIQUES
Highlight the actual body part with lighting, focus, or against a vague or disparate background.
Place an image of the body part (marble head, painting of hands, etc.) in the set, and depending on the story point you are making, either let it be subtle such that the audience notes it but the characters do not, or have a character note it directly by looking at it, touching it, or making a comment about it.
Reveal the similarity to or disparity between normal anatomy: Show the mechanical insides of the cyborg. This biomechanical aesthetic was most effectively visualized by H.R. Giger and has been the inspiration for many other aliens and monsters (see www.hrgiger.com).
Be aware of the “Uncanny Valley” syndrome: As robots or computer graphics get too close to human appearance, a rejection factor sets in — “That’s not right!” If you want to create unsettling images, go there. If not, then make your robots or CGI humanoids obvious creations rather than almost human.
OTHER EXAMPLES
Tunnels: Galaxy Quest, Mission Impossible, The Last Starfighter, Great Escape, Die Hard. Phallic imagery: Dr. Strangelove, Armageddon, The Right Stuff. Size disparities: Honey, I Shrunk the Kids; The Incredible Shrinking Woman; The Incredible Shrinking Man; Land of the Giants; Short; Fantastic Journey; My Giant; Iron Giant; Iron Man. Hybrids: the Star Trek Borg, the Battlestar Galactica Cylons, the Terminators.
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CLOTHES
WHAT IT MEANS
Character, status, mood, group affiliation, sexual preference and availability. The outer presentation a person makes to the world. What they want others to think and feel about them. Clothes make the man, woman, child . . . any character. Why else have an Academy Award for Costume Design?
IN HISTORY, MYTH, AND CONTEMPORARY TIMES
The first fashion show may have been fig leaves and animal skins, but humans quickly discovered that clothes could display rank and enforce our tendency to establish hierarchy. Castes and classes delineated themselves with special outfits. Tribes and families created their own color schemes — such as the famous Scottish clan tartans — or other distinct patterns forbidden to outsiders.
The Shipibo of Peru create designs that reflect geometric patterns of energy, which can also be expressed in song. Those patterns are believed to connect their ancient culture with the spirit world.
Aztec priests wore filthy black bloodstained robes; other ancient priestesses wore all white. Catholics and some Protestant denominations have different-colored raiment for different events and seasons in the church calendar.
Purple was expensive to produce in preindustrial times, so typically only royalty wore it. Some societies regulated who could wear which colors under sumptuary laws to ensure that only the higher classes could look like the higher classes. Basically it was a law against knockoffs.
Clothes can express political positions, religious affiliations, clan ties, and tribal histories. Some societies resist change at all costs, hanging onto styles and costumes even unto death.
Attire can show a person’s comprehension or disregard of a society’s rules: For example, in the American South you’re not “supposed” to wear white before Memorial Day or after Labor Day. Men who wear conservative clothing all week long in the office rebel in parrot-bright togs on the golf course.
Sexual availability or prohibition is often signaled with clothing styles, particularly in more conservative cultures.
IN MEDIA
Dressing up is a favorite pastime for most girls. The construction of Cinderella’s ball gown is a fun sequence in that animated movie. The same concept is at work in Pretty Woman, where prostitute Julia Roberts goes from the L.A. streetwalker look to Beverly Hills chic.
A running gag in the delightful British TV series Jeeves and Wooster, starring Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry, is the all-knowing butler Jeeves’ disapproval of the airheaded aristocrat Wooster’s choice of sartorial splendor.
When Marlene Dietrich first wore slacks, it stirred a scandal. Check her out in a Navy uniform in Seven Sinners.
USE
To show a shift in status, as with Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady transforming from street to salon, or a shift in profession, as in Working Girl when Melanie Griffith goes from secretary to executive.
To show a particular state of mind. In Love Actually, a young man in love with his best friend’s new bride is torn between hiding his feelings and declaring his love. He wears a four-panel suede sweater-jacket and turns back and forth in the street. The distinctly separate panels indicate his diverse emotions and, along with the turning, give us a real sensation of his dilemma.
Pretty Woman
Pretty Woman
To put someone in disguise: Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis in Some Like It Hot, Dustin Hoffman in Tootsie, Jennifer Garner in Alias.
WRITTEN DESCRIPTIONS
Use adjectives that describe emotions or attitudes as well as the clothes: button-down banker, straight-laced church lady, punked-out slacker, pink Polo preppie. In prose you can become very specific with descriptions of clothing, and it can really help your reader enter the world of your story and characters.
In screenplays you generally do not want to describe wardrobe in detail unless it is essential to the story or character. Words indicating style will give an idea of what you want but still let the director and costume designer make the creative choices. You could use words like “loosely flowing,” “street punk,” “lost in another decade,” and so on.
Working Girl
Working Girl
CINEMATIC TECHNIQUES
Show the person getting dressed. Show them shopping, as in Pretty Woman. Do close-ups on specific items, as in the opening shots of Patton.
Have the person’s actions point out the item — doffing a hat, putting on or taking off gloves, fidgeting with buttons.
Use a left-behind piece of clothing to show abandonment or death: the usually controlled man inhaling the fragrance from his ex-lover’s silk garment and finally breaking down in tears; the parent hugging the dead child’s pajamas.
Love Actually
SPECIFIC CLOTHING ITEMS
HEADWEAR
WHAT IT MEANS
Social or political status. State of mind. Religious position.
IN HISTORY, MYTH, AND CONTEMPORARY TIMES
Chieftains wear the most impressive headdresses, generals have the most trim on their caps, and church ladies vie for most elegant Easter bonnet. Princesses wear delicate, sparkling tiaras, whereas queens wear heavy, bejeweled crowns.
The Phrygian cap symbolizes freedom, from the Roman Empire to the American and French revolutions. Esoterically it’s sometimes said to represent the male sex organ. What it symbolizes for the Smurfs is anybody’s guess.
A beret can top an affected artiste, a revolutionary, or a dangerous Special Forces trooper.
Religions vary on covering the head when dealing with divinity, from shaved bald to full veiling. Some systems bare the head the better to receive the deity’s energy; others cover the head so as not to get blasted by the deity’s energy. With that same deity-receptor concept in mind, sometimes men bare their heads but women cover theirs, and sometimes vice versa.
Buddha’s topknot symbolizes the pineal gland of the Crown Center/chakra. The Egyptian Ureaus signals the kundalini energies raised up for conscious use of the pituitary gland and the Ajna Center/chakra. Most priestly headdresses reflect these universal spiritual principles.
IN MEDIA
In the old Westerns, the good guys wore white hats and the bad guys wore black hats.
Women’s hats can be exceptionally stylish and flattering but are often trifles, sometimes garish or outright ridiculous. A hat can say a lot about a lady; it can even let you know she’s not a lady.
All well-dressed men of modern times wore hats until President John F. Kennedy did not wear one to his inauguration in 1961. It was the death of hats on American men. You can see how sophisticated they looked by watching episodes of the TV series Mad Men, film noir, and most media of the first half of the 20th century.
That beat-up dusty old fedora that Indiana Jones wears just really says, “Adventure!” So much so that before we see him in the 2008 Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, we first see the fedora.
Baseball caps have been ubiquitous on American guys for the last 30 years, and whether it’s turned forward or backward is subject to local fad and interpretation. Mostly it’s meant to say, “I’m cool. I belong”. Too often it says, “I have no individual sense of style and am a total fashion victim.”
USE
To show vulnerability (taking off a hat) or determination (putting one on).
To show respect by doffing a hat or taking it totally off; or to show lack of respect by keeping it on in inappropriate places. Musician Joe Cocker croons, “You can leave your hat on” during a seduction song; not very typical, that.
To change a character’s mood.
French sailor in a Phrygian Cap Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
MASKS
WHAT IT MEANS
A different identity. Something hidden. Something assumed, rightly or not. Mystery. Crime.
IN HISTORY, MYTH, AND CONTEMPORARY TIMES
Whether a smart-aleck Cro-Magnon teen or a serious shaman first put an animal’s head atop his own, rites and ceremonies have included masks that imbue the wearer with the qualities of that representation. The king stag for Celtic fertility rites, bull heads in ancient Crete, and jaguar masks in Mesoamerica all recognize and typically honor the connection between human and animal kingdoms.
Psychologically we are all thought to have many masks, and a great part of the work with a professional is to uncover and develop one’s own authenticity.
In esoteric teachings, the personality of this particular lifetime is often referred to as the mask the soul wears while in incarnation. The work of spiritual disciplines is to learn about the distinction between persona (“mask” in Greek) and the soul and how to use the persona as an instrument of the soul.
Most of us play various societal and relationship roles. Annual masked revels are a tried-and-true safety valve against getting too stuck in the role and forgetting who one really is. Many societies celebrate role reversals, with the peasant playing king for a day and the bosses kowtowing to the lowly servants.
Secret societies often don masks and/or hoods, as in the American South’s Ku Klux Klan.
IN MEDIA
Well, Jason and that hockey mask. And then there is the classic Man in the Iron Mask. Black Orpheus is set in Rio de Janeiro during carnival, and the heroine is pursued by a man masked as Death.
Pirates stereotypically have an eye patch, and it’s often associated with adventure, derring-do, and a brave, impetuous personality. In 300, the eye patch marks a deadly warrior. In Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, Angelina Jolie plays a brave, daring pilot warrior. Commander Franky Cook wears an eye patch and is in perfect control of her ship and her men, to the admiration of old flame Jude Law and the jealous consternation of girl reporter Gwyneth Paltrow.
