Cinematic Carcerality: Prison Metaphors in Film

Abstract

P UNTIL NOW, CINEMATIC PRISON METAPHORS HAVE BEEN NEGLECTED by both metaphor and film studies. By focusing on these ignored types of metaphor, this article fills a crucial gap in the critical understanding of metaphor. The first part of this article develops a taxonomy of prison and film metaphors. The first taxonomy (of prison metaphors) is based on the categories developed by Monika Fludernik and discriminates between metaphors of imprisonment that use the prison as tenor (PRISON IS X) and proper prison metaphors that use the prison as vehicle (X IS PRISON). The second list (of film metaphors) relies on Charles Forceville’s analyses of pictorial metaphors in advertisements and is intended as an alternative to already existing studies. The following discussion of prison metaphors in film demonstrates the heuristic value of these taxonomies with regard to the recipient’s quest for meaning. In other words, because the analyses of metaphors in this article are geared toward semantic significance, they serve as starting points for new interpretations of a number of films. More specifically, the use of certain prison metaphors centrally correlates with the ideological underpinnings 1 of the films that use them. For example, representations of the prison as a womb or a matrix of spiritual rebirth may be used to legitimize the prison, while portrayals of the prison in terms of hell or a tomb may serve to critique the prison. On the other hand, prison metaphors that describe a segment of the world outside prison in terms of imprisonment frequently correlate with social criticism and are used to shed a critical light on a certain aspect of society (e.g., class) by demonstrating how restrained people may be even outside the walls of the prison.