Extended Metaphor
Overview - Comedy & Tragedy - Are We Still Talking About Sex? - Puppet Regime
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Overview
In this section, Metaphor & Symbol, I start by explaining ❧ how extended metaphors work, and ❧ how they can help us see complex and ambiguous situations, such as the one Russia finds itself in. I emphasize the metaphoric road or path Russia is taking, and suggest that it always has the option to take another path. I also create a symbolic landscape of my own: Russia has bitten Eve’s apple to the core and has coloured the Dnipro River red with blood, yet it might still rein in the horses of war, listen to the peaceful song of the nightingale, and see the light on the road to Damascus. This landscape is mirrored in the pages of this section (🍏 Apples, ♒️ Rivers, etc.). My symbolic landscape is also introduced and outlined most fully on the next page, 🚥 Symbolic Landscapes.
On this page I give an example of how simile, metaphor, and extended metaphor work in a comic context in the opening scene of the Friends episode, “The One with the Sonogram at the End” (S1 E2). I stress that while metaphor may seem simple, and while it slips quite naturally into our speech, it’s in fact quite subtle. It can also be extended and grow organically into a complex structure. Because it grows organically, we see precisely ❧ how it extends itself, ❧ what the component parts are, ❧ how they relate to each other, ❧ and how this relation changes in time. We can then apply this structural and symbolic understanding to other situations, fictional or real.
In 🚥 Symbolic Landscapes, 🌊 Russian Horses, and 🐎 Magic Black Horses, I look at how extended metaphor works in a more complex, tragic, mystical, redemptive mode in The Master and Margarita, where Bulgakov depicts a symbolic and redemptive journey.
In 🐦⬛ Nightingales 1 (2 isn’t online yet), I compare extended metaphors about escape and war: in “Ode to a Nightingale” Keats attempts to follow the nightingale’s song into a fantasy of death; and in their short novels Slaughterhouse-Five and Hadji Murat, Vonnegut and Tolstoy contrast the innocence of birds to the slaughter of WW II Germany and mid-19th century Chechnya. In all cases, as with Ukraine today, we can’t escape from the horror of war, and we’re left haunted by the echoing song of its devastation.
Finally, in ♒️ Rivers, I extend a series of negative linked metaphors used by a Ukrainian representative at the United Nations. I suggest that there are currents of peace and freedom that Russia could follow instead of its present course. In 🍏 Apples and 🍎 The Road to Damascus I suggest that biting deeper into Eden’s apple will only make things worse for Russia, and that Russia always has the option of changing course.
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Comedy & Tragedy
Metaphoric language can describe anything, from the Whore of Babylon on her demonic mount (below left) to the snooty Sneeches (below right), who stand in a humorous way for snobbery and prejudice:
Yet they almost always deepen our understanding by uncovering connections, ambiguities, and complexities — especially when metaphor is extended (to create an extended metaphor or conceit) or when multiple symbols create a symbolic landscape (which isn’t usually as tightly interconnected as conceit). For instance, the symbolic figure of the Whore of Babylon is linked to all kinds of depravity, not simply decadence or whoring.
Likewise, the Sneech is linked to many aspects of prejudice, from snobbery based on inconsequential colours and shapes (the Sneetches with green stars on their bellies discriminate against the un-starred Sneeches) to racism and anti-Semitism. In the well-known children’s book (which ought to be read by adults as well!), Dr. Seuss also shows us those who would profit from such mutual stupidity: Sylvester McMonkey McBean gets each side to pay him to put on and take off stars, eventually bankrupting the Sneeches.
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In both the clip from Friends and the excerpt from The Master and Margarita, we start with a single thing: a kiss in Friends; mist in Master. The former is a romantic interaction while the latter is part of a poetic landscape. Yet in both cases the original thing expands both physically and in terms of related concepts. The kiss turns into a sexual comedy that becomes increasingly sexual, humorous, and precariously gendered.
Likewise, the mist starts off as a simple thing: one element in a natural setting. It then expands into the larger contexts of nature, emotion, philosophy, and religion as the Devil’s cavalcade rides over it. It becomes an increasingly complex and ambiguous symbol for blindness, deception, and suffering. All of these negative attributes fall through the misty dark, that is, they fall through the very thing that symbolizes them. One might call this a cathartic transcendence in which human blindness, deception, and suffering fall through themselves into the oblivion of the swamps below. On the level of what T.S. Eliot called objective correlative — a concrete thing that stands for an abstract emotion — the protagonists on the magic black horses have their clothing stripped from their bodies by the cool night wind, the negative aspects of their past falling from them in the form of their discarded clothing. The spirits that once inhabited the fallen trappings then soar onward in a redemption symbolized by the dawn.
Before looking at this in detail, I’ll illustrate with a more down-to-earth example how metaphor can be extended from the simple to the complex. I do this partly to supply comic relief (given the grim nature of the war I discuss), yet mainly to illustrate a general principle about metaphor, which I’ll be applying throughout Crisis 22 — not just to Bulgakov, but to Gogol, Tolstoy, Vonnegut, Koch, Rushdie and others.
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Are We Still Talking About Sex?
In the Friends’ dialogue I’ve chosen to look at, we see how simile (an explicit comparison) shifts into metaphor (an implicit comparison). Chandler says “kissing is pretty much like an opening act,” explicitly making the comparison. Ross then turns this simile into a metaphor by dropping the explicit comparative like: he says “it’s not that we don’t like the comedian” (like here is a verb meaning appreciate, and no longer a comparative meaning similar to). The comedian now implicitly means kissing.
Monica: What you guys don’t understand is, for us, kissing is as important as any part of it.
Joey: Yeah, right!....... Y’serious?
Phoebe: Oh, yeah!
Rachel: Everything you need to know is in that first kiss.
Monica: Absolutely.
Chandler: Yeah, I think for us, kissing is pretty much like an opening act, y’know? I mean it’s like the stand-up comedian you have to sit through before Pink Floyd comes out.
Ross: Yeah, and-and it’s not that we don’t like the comedian, it’s that-that... that’s not why we bought the ticket.
Chandler: The problem is, though, after the concert’s over, no matter how great the show was, you girls are always looking for the comedian again, y’know? I mean, we’re in the car, we’re fighting traffic... basically just trying to stay awake.
Rachel: Yeah, well, word of advice: Bring back the comedian. Otherwise next time you’re gonna find yourself sitting at home, listening to that album alone.
Joey: (pause)... Are we still talking about sex?
The metaphor in which the comedian means kissing quickly shifts into conceit (also called extended metaphor). This starts when Chandler says that the men have to sit through the comedian’s act. This gives an additional or extended inter-relational dimension to the metaphor of the comedian’s act. As the audience, we must now imagine the real-life equivalent implied by this forced sitting through: the men feel that they’re forced to do all sorts of romantic things like giving flowers and kissing when all they really want is sex. They don’t want to say this directly, so they extend the metaphor, and thus succeed in implying it without saying it. The tension, basic to sexual relations, creates comedy.
Chandler immediately extends the metaphorical context further when he says that the comedian’s act will be followed by Pink Floyd. This adds a specific musical context to the conceit. Again, as the audience we must imagine how this band’s music correlates to sex in the real world: sex is like the melodious, strange, highly original music of Pink Floyd — distinct from, say, the lushly emotional yet more formulaic music of Celine Dionne.
The situation becomes more and more humorous. Much of this humour comes from the mounting tension created by having to talk about sex in a mixed group. It’s easy for any of them to talk about kissing, since it’s a fairly common act and can be performed in public. Yet when it comes to what comes after kissing they all get increasingly vague. Note that even Rachel is reluctant to say concretely what men really want when they have to sit through the comedian.
The scenario starts off simply, with a shift from simile to metaphor, but then gets more complex when the metaphor becomes a conceit. While initially it’s clear that the comedian is a metaphor for kissing, the meanings become more uncertain — and more humorous.
Viewers must imagine for themselves the real-world equivalents for ❧ going to a concert (having sex), ❧ the reason they bought the ticket (the ulterior motives of the men), ❧ evaluating the concert (evaluating sex), ❧ bringing back the comedian (keeping the romance), and ❧ listening to an album at home (being denied sex and having to find ‘musical pleasures’ by oneself…).
The scene also ends comically, by underscoring how insanely complex the simple business of kissing has become. Not the brightest bulb in the room, Joey asks if they’re in fact still talking about sex.
Joey brings closure to the scene by returning to the original physical topic rather than the metaphors used to occlude it. Joey at first may seem the brunt of the joke, given that he’s comically overwhelmed by metaphorical complexity. Yet he’s also a sort of hero. While the others side-step and avoid the issue, Joey boils it down to its basic point. He also isn’t afraid to say out loud what all of them are thinking. It’s for this reason that he’s a loveable figure, less a buffoon than a wise fool who speaks honestly while those around him escape into metaphor and white lie.
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In both the clip from Friends and the excerpt from Master we start with a single thing or situation — a kiss on a date and mist over swamps. As these things gain a larger metaphoric context, the comic or tragic meanings become more complex and penetrating. We can then more fully appreciate the comedy, bewilderment, and tragedy of our existence. While the types of experience we find in Friends and The Master and Margarita are vastly different, this difference helps us get at what literature — on whatever topic — can do for us: it can take us from our usual world into a larger situation, where we explore life in depth and where we can relate to the human protagonists (rather than being given detached descriptions or analogies). This depth can be of any type or range, from a moment’s comedy in a New York cafe to an ambiguous and redemptive tragedy played out over the night hinterlands of Russia.
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Before leaving the topic of comedy & tragedy, I should note that many of the writers I look at are intensely comic, even while dealing with the most serious topics on earth: war, death, betrayal, authoritarianism, imperialism, etc. Gogol, Bulgakov, Vonnegut, and Rushdie are especially skillful at giving their readers comic relief while yet pushing them further and further into the serious tragedies of history.
Given that I struggle in vain to integrate comedy into my look at the Ukraine War, I’d like to present the following three videos as a homage to all the writers and artists who manage to do it successfully: