SYMBOLS – Sample Text

WHAT IT MEANS
Emotions, emotions, emotions.

Fecundity. Growth. Refreshment. Sexuality. Birth. Hidden depths. Death by drowning.

The source of all life. The formlessness to which the form returns after death.

The mysterious. Lost civilizations. Hidden cities. Forbidden knowledge.

Rain can be sorrowful, joyful, dangerous. Snow can be peaceful or smothering. Storms on land or sea are typically symbolic of tempestuous emotions. Steam can symbolize contained emotions, heated up to the boiling point, in danger of burning the unwary.

IN HISTORY, MYTH, AND CONTEMPORARY TIMES
Though many creation stories have us made from clay, others see the sea as our origin. Sea foam is likened to semen in many myths, inseminating the feminine earth. Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love, arises from sea foam, most famously portrayed in Botticelli’s portrait of her on a half—shell.
Ondines are the water spirits of Greco—Roman mythology. When Jason and the Argonauts — Hercules among them — go in search of the Golden Fleece, Hercules’ boyfriend Hylas is seduced to his death by these water nymphs, breaking Hercules’ heart and diverting him from the quest.

Pisces the Fish is considered the most emotional and sensitive astrological sign.

Mystic Christianity notes that Moses parted the Red Sea, symbolizing the old way of walking through the emotions, while Jesus calmed the stormy sea and walked upon the water, symbolizing the new way of rising above the emotions and holding rational thought.

Many “foundation” myths include a great flood that destroys a great civilization or a great number of people. Atlantis and Lemuria have the grandest mythic scope, and paleogeology does chart out a number of actual floods that could have been the source of such racial—memory—become—myth instances. Floods and tsunamis have plagued humans as long as we’ve been humans; today’s technology affords us more knowledge about them all.

An iceberg brought down the Titanic and gave us the most dramatic shipwreck of modern times. Icebergs are now melting across the globe, and the polar ice sheets are thinning dangerously.

 

IN MEDIA

Considered near scandalous in 1953, the beach kiss in From Here to Eternity has the lovers drenched in water, pounded repeatedly by the relentless waves of … you get the idea.

IMAGE: From Here to Eternity

Shakespeare’s Tempest begins with a storm and goes on with interwoven story lines of emotions such as revenge, greed, and passion.

D.H. Lawrence writes in Women in Love of a young couple drowning in a lake immediately after their wedding, leaving no doubt that he sees marriage as a deadly emotional trap.

The crucified Jesuit missionary going over the South American falls at the opening of The Mission nicely signifies that colonial attempts to control the natives may not be working. The emotional strength of the indigenous people might be temporarily swayed by Catholicism, but like the forest, hills, and rivers, their traditions are very old and very strong.

In The Year of Living Dangerously, Mel Gibson’s character admires a beautiful young woman who dives into a leaf-covered swimming pool at a rundown resort. He later dreams that he dives into the murky water to save her, but she tries to drown him. This perhaps symbolizes the unused and rotten resources and emotions of the people, politics, and situation in 1967 Indonesia: Beneath the natural beauty is corruption and impending death.

IMAGE: The Year of Living Dangerously

Script consultant Linda Seger points out the use of water imagery in The English Patient to signal sensuality and emotional connectedness.

Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein begins and ends in the frozen Arctic wastes.

That exceedingly popular movie about young love on the high seas, Titanic, wouldn’t have been nearly as effective had Jack not drowned, leaving Rose and her newly awakened emotions clinging soggily to her memories, and millions of young girls sobbing at the poignant beauty of lost love.

Sailing ships play a big part in many adventure stories, some of the best being Patrick O’Brian’s Master and Commander series, where the valiant men work both with and against the majestic seas.

And let us not forget surfing films: Big Wednesday, Endless Summer, Point Break, Blue Crush, and, okay, Surf Nazis Must Die (yes, I’ve seen them all).

 

USE
To indicate various emotional states. Frozen water equals frozen emotions. Lack of water equals lack of emotions. Gushing water equals contained emotions finally freed. Steam equals dangerously repressed emotions.

To emphasize a shift in emotions, a character’s inner transformation.

To punctuate a shift in situations, typically something that affects lots of people and the environment — negatively or positively.

WRITTEN DESCRIPTIONS
Use adjectives and verb forms that apply to both water and emotions: flowing, frigid, moist, damp, and so forth.

In a script, communicate the quantity so filmmakers can create the effect you intend: looming ice cliffs, trickling stream, rising tide, soaked with sweat.

 

CINEMATIC TECHNIQUES
You have a wide array of approaches with water since you can focus on a single tear quivering on an eyelash or show a tsunami sweeping over a mountain range.

Wavy lines are the symbolic shorthand for water, as in much primitive or stylistic art, or the astrological sign for Aquarius.

You can also use fish to draw attention to water. Tropical fish in an aquarium, a print or statue of a dolphin, a whale fluke necklace.

The opening of The English Patient, with swimmers floating in paint across paper and then seen frozen on sandy desert cliffs, is an excellent example of using liquid to evoke emotions and plot points without using water itself.

An emotional turning point in Blue Crush is appropriately set in a lagoon, with the surfer girl and her boyfriend, both fully dressed, arguing about her fears and how to get over them. Following his encouragement, she goes on to surf Pipeline.

IMAGE: Blue Crush

Isolation and contrast are major factors in symbolism, so set your “small-water moment” against a contrasting background: a single drop of water in the dust, a rivulet of sweat on an otherwise dry body, one glass of icy water in a steamy setting.

A major emotion associated with water is the fear that we’ll be overwhelmed. To give your audience that sense of impending discomfort or doom in a “large-water moment,” set the lens below the midline of the water so we’re looking up at it. Or have the frame filled two-thirds or more with the water/ice/storm/steam, either vertically, horizontally, or diagonally.

OTHER EXAMPLES
Martin Sheen rising from the river in Apocalypse Now is so iconic it’s copied over and over. Waterworld, Castaway, Run Silent Run Deep, Deepa Mehta’s Water, The Hunt for Red October, The Abyss. Ice and snow are featured in a number of movies: the 1998 X-Files movie, Ice Runner, The Ice Storm, The Thing, The Day After Tomorrow, and the TV reality series Ice Road Truckers.