With the Pastin Front ofthe 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.

Seeing Yourself in the Past: The Role of Situational (Dis)continuity and Conceptual Metaphor in the Understanding of Complex Cases of Character Perception

“…Having discussed how perception is conceptualized, we now turn to its articulation in fi lm: How are the conceptual metaphors and metonymies of perception, as discussed in the previous section, manifested cinematically? To answer this question we would like to draw on our earlier work on cinematic subjectivity (Coëgnarts and Kravanja 2014, 2015a, 2015b. In these publications we argued that the character's visual experience (i.e., the idea of a character S seeing an outer event O) can be elicited cinematically by relating the four conceptual structures (see Figure 1) to the visual content of the fi lmic frame.…”

“…For this reason the study of conceptual metaphor cannot be restricted to the study of language alone (see also Forceville 2009Forceville , 2011Forceville and Jeulink 2011;Gibbs and Perlman 2006: 215). For instance, if conceptual metaphors are modality-independent, it is plausible to assume that the same embodied conceptual structures that lie at the heart of our linguistic expressions of perception are also pervasive in those fi lmic expressions that convey information about the perceptual states of fi lm characters (Coëgnarts and Kravanja 2014, 2015a, 2015b.…”

Cinema and the embodied mind: metaphor and simulation in understanding meaning in films

“…Elsewhere (Coëgnarts and Kravanja, 2014b, 2015b, 2016a we have argued that film is similarly capable of eliciting the conceptual solutions, as raised above, to express the characters' subjective experience of seeing. It is through the forces of cinema (for example, framing, editing, camera movement) and the formal density they impose onto the first-order reality, that we have claimed, that the viewer is prompted to see a fictional character (S) and the object of his or her perception (O) as spatially connected to each other, and by further metaphorical extension that S sees O.…”

“…However, in order for the viewer to anchor additional higher-order meaning to the perception of characters, often further contextual information is needed. This is especially the case with flashbacks that are introduced through the perception of characters (see, for example, Coëgnarts and Kravanja, 2015b;Coëgnarts et al, 2016). To judge whether or not the perceived event by the character is temporally discontinuous (for example, to map O onto the past), one has to have perceived the content of the event before (equally through a prior filmed event or, differently, through textually channelled information).…”

“…Our previous work (Coëgnarts and Kravanja, 2012, 2014b, 2015b, 2016aCoëgnarts et al, 2016) can be seen as a series of attempts to explore and illustrate this line of reasoning with respect to various target domains of character subjectivity. Two such case-studies (character perception and character emotions) will be presented in the second application part below of this article.…”