How to introduce a villain (examples: “Young Royals”, “High Noon”...)

Since you’ve had to wait for this post for quite a while (again, my sincerest apologies for the delay), I’ve decided to make this one free for everyone in its entirety. Enjoy.

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When’s the first time we meet August Horn of Årnäs on the show ‘Young Royals’?

It’s in episode one of season one, right? Fairly early into the story.

August is standing in front of the fictional boarding school of Hillerska, headmistress by his side, waiting for Prince Wilhelm to arrive.

And this is what that looks like:

We see both August and the headmistress. The car (that infamous and very much metaphorical Ferrari that will ultimately kill Crown Prince Erik) is already there. Any moment now, Wilhelm and his older brother will get out of the car; any moment the camera will give us a reverse shot, and we will get to see August’s and Anette’s expectant faces, then pan to the car itself. But for now, this is what we get, this brief shot of them waiting in front of the school.

And believe it or not, this seemingly innocuous, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it shot actually carries some rather important symbolic meaning: It introduces us to our main antagonist (perhaps even to two antagonists) on the show. And it does so by using a very well-known and widely-used visual storytelling convention – a film trope, if you will.

Should we take a look at it?

Okay.

Let me start off with a question:

When we recently discussed ‘High Noon’, the great 1952 black-and-white film classic with Gary Cooper and Grace Kelly (which we examined in the context of our little ‘Harrow’ analysis, albeit very briefly)...so, when we recently discussed ‘High Noon’ and I strongly recommended you watch it, did you actually do so?

Because, you see, ‘High Noon’ isn’t just a gripping and suspenseful film with a good story and a great cast (“You really shouldn't interrupt a guy watching ‘High Noon’!” Remember?); it’s actually a very useful film to know, too. 

For one, it’s more than just visually compelling; it teaches you how to watch other movies. There’s just so much you can learn about shot composition and filming techniques just by watching this one film classic. So, in case you haven’t watched it, I’m going to recommend it again: It’s a really great film. Do yourself a favour and watch it.

The plot is easily summarized (and you will see in a second what this has got to do with August on ‘Young Royals’): 

Word arrives in a small town in the Wild West that the dangerous outlaw Frank Miller has been pardoned and released from prison. Frank Miller terrorized this town in the past and is now on his way back; he will arrive by the noon train (hence the film’s title). Marshal Will Kane (played by the inimitable Gary Cooper) has a difficult choice to make: Retire and leave the town with his wife the way he had originally planned to…or stay behind and stand up to evil. Will he find any allies if he decides to defend the town from Frank Miller and his gang?

The movie poses some really difficult questions: Is it moral or immoral to be a pacifist? What do you do when evil comes a-knocking? And is a civilization even worth saving when it doesn’t want to stand up for itself?

And as the movie explores all of these questions (by making sure different characters embody these different principles and give voice to different ideas), it ramps up the tension minute by minute. Everyone in that little town is waiting for that noon train to arrive; everyone is dreading it, too. Everyone is anxiously checking the clock, waiting for it to strike twelve.

The film actually creates a great amount of suspense by intercutting many of its scenes with close-up shots of various clock faces with moving hands and of pendulums swinging back and forth inside old grandfather clocks. You can hear the eerie tick-tock-tick-tock sound these clocks emit as time for coming to a decision and gathering a posse to fight Frank Miller rapidly runs out and the clock hands creep closer and closer to that fateful twelve: Frank Miller’s train is coming closer and closer, we are visually told in this way. The man himself will be here any minute and take terrible, bloody revenge on this town and its inhabitants, who once put him behind bars and sent him off to be hanged.

We are also repeatedly shown a long shot of the empty train tracks throughout the movie: This is how Frank Miller will arrive, the film is telling us. He is almost here; his train will be here any minute, and his arrival will unleash unimaginable horrors on the townsfolk.

Needless to say that Frank Miller only arrives after about two thirds of this suspenseful story have already been told.

His gang are waiting for him at the train station, and then his train finally, finally appears on the horizon.

And when Frank Miller hops off that train, greeting his exuberant gang members, this is the first shot of him that we get:

Don’t forget that this is the man himself. The Big Bad^TM of the movie! That dangerous villain we have all been waiting for throughout this entire film. This is the moment! This is it! This is him! 

…And yet, we don’t get to see his face!

In his first shot, Frank Miller has his back to the camera.

In case my quick doodle above doesn’t capture the enormity of this moment in this extraordinarily suspenseful film, here have a youtube link to the scene itself: Frank Miller, the antagonist, the villain of the movie ‘High Noon’, the monster everyone in town is afraid of, in short: Frank Miller – evil incarnate, arrives at the train station and thus in our story. And he does so with his back turned to the camera!

It’s a very brief scene (less than half a minute long), and yet there’s so much in it.

We desperately want to see the face of the man who’s been the sole focus of this entire film, the monster everyone is so scared of, and yet we are denied even just a glimpse of this face for quite a long time. Frank Miller’s broad shoulders and back fill almost half of the frame; we can hear his gruff voice, but we don’t get to look into his eyes for quite a while. Not even when he takes off his jacket and proceeds to equip himself with the gun and the bandoleer he needs for his sinister purposes.

Then the camera actually gives us the reverse shot at the 0:25 minute mark (the train that had been on the left side of the frame is suddenly on the right), but we still don’t get to see Frank Miller’s face because he turns at the exact same moment, presenting us with his back again. Quite the clever trick.

Back shot after back shot – that’s what Frank Miller’s character establishing scene looks like…

…which is the whole point of it, actually.

This is a very old and very well-known Hollywood trope: Introduce the antagonist of the story with his back to the camera. This way the audience will know immediately who the villain is.

There are countless examples of this trope being employed throughout film history, and yet curiously, modern-day audiences are far less aware of it than the black-and-white cowboy movie audiences of old used to be.

(Perhaps movies have just got more complicated over time? With antiheroes and complex and relatable villains muddying the waters and making it more difficult to understand who the goodies and the baddies in any given story actually are? Perhaps our modern movies just aren’t as easy to decipher visually as those good ol’ black-and-white classics with their slower pacing and their much longer shots were? Whatever it is, people have stopped paying attention to this fairly straightforward clue.)

So, where does this convention actually come from? And why is it so very noticeable once you start paying attention to it?

As so many other things on screen, this idea originates in the theatre world, of course. 

If you’ve ever had the pleasure of appearing on stage or know someone who does that sort of thing for a living, then you’ll know that there’s an ironclad rule each and every actor on stage has to abide by: Do not turn your back to the audience. Ever.

Even when an actor seemingly turns away, they will always make sure their face can be seen at least in three-quarter profile. (The same is true for dialogue scenes where you’d think the two actors on stage would face each other head-on, both presenting you with their profile, respectively: Instead, both actors’ faces will actually be turned subtly towards the audience in a way that just isn’t reflective of a real-life conversation but gives the audience a three-quarter view of the actors’ faces.)

Needless to say that there are by now many, many, many examples of theatre productions where the rule on never turning one’s back to the audience was deliberately broken and an actor or actress was specifically asked to fully turn their back to the audience in a conspicuous, even showy way.

But these are instances of directors deliberately breaking a well-established rule in order to make a point (for whatever artistic and/or subtextual reason). Exceptions like this don’t so much disprove as reinforce the general rule.

Now, it’s important to understand that film represents a very different art form; the screen just doesn’t work in the same way as the stage.

For one, we, the viewers in front of our TV screen or at the cinema, don’t have to watch each and every scene from the exact same angle throughout the entire story. The camera acts as our eye, and it offers us so many different angles and vantage points that we could easily forget we’re comfortably sitting on our couch in front of a screen. 

The theatre stage and the auditorium are fixed points in space. The camera, on the other hand, can move whichever way.

Cinema and TV audiences are therefore much more used to seeing a character’s back on screen. As a viewer, you get your ample supply of back shots in any given movie or TV show; the camera can and often does move behind the character in question for all sorts of reasons (over-the-shoulder shots, tracking shots of characters walking along corridors, etc.).

Showing the back of some character on screen does not carry the same taboo as it does on stage.

But said taboo has migrated somewhere else: While showing a character’s back at some random point in the movie doesn’t have to mean anything at all and can be done for all sorts of reasons, showing it during a character’s character establishing scene does carry very specific connotations.

So, it’s not the back shot in and of itself; it’s specifically when it happens as the character is being introduced to us for the first time that you should sit up straight and pay attention.

As a filmmaker, you’re allowed to show a character’s back as they’re, say, randomly hurrying down some hallway…provided you have already introduced said character in an earlier scene. So, if you show a character’s back at some later point in the story (after their initial character establishing scene), it doesn’t have to mean anything.

It’s only (!) during their character establishing scene that a back shot acts as this big, red flashing warning sign: Watch out, this is a villain!

And it can obviously be done in very different ways in order to create very different effects and achieve very different ends. Different types of back shots can add different layers of nuance to a villain’s character establishing scene (as you will see in the case of ‘Young Royals’ shortly).

Those back shots of Frank Miller from ‘High Noon’ are, of course, extremely obvious. That whole character establishing scene practically screams, “Here’s a big, broad back; we’re going to put visual emphasis on it by showing it to you throughout these really long-drawn-out shots, so you really, really understand that this is the villain of the story.” That’s how conspicuous it is.

August’s character establishing scene on ‘Young Royals’ goes about it in a much more subtle way: We see August from behind for a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment, and then we cut to the reverse shot already: Now we see August’s face, and now we pan to the car…

But this doesn’t change the fact that this back shot is actually completely unnecessary when you think about it. Why even give it to us if what you want to show us is August’s expectant face? The back shot’s sole purpose is to abide by this ancient rule (well, ‘ancient’ by film history standards, at least): Introduce the villain with the back to the camera!

(And you will see in a minute that ‘Young Royals’ is actually downright meticulous when it comes to this rule – even though it plays around with it quite a bit to achieve different effects each time.)

So, you can be super-obvious or really subtle about the whole thing. And there are obviously very different (textual and subtextual) plot contexts you can embed it in, too.

Let me give you a few examples, so you know what I mean (and I’ll start with a very obvious one and then give you an extremely subtle one, alright?):

Netflix’s (now Disney Plus’s) comic book adaptation ‘Daredevil’ features a particularly cool villain: Wilson Fisk.

So, here’s how Wilson Fisk gets introduced to us…

And no worries: In case you have doubts whether to watch this clip because you’ve heard that ‘Daredevil’ is a pretty violent show, I can promise you that this specific (very brief) scene is completely, absolutely, 100% violence-free. 

It’s a very unusual character establishing scene, too, by the way, because it doesn’t just introduce us to the villain of the story; it introduces us to him at the exact moment when he meets the love of his life: Vanessa, the woman he will fall in love with and who will fall in love with him; it’s a very elegant and yet simple scene. 

So, here it is: The character establishing scene of Wilson Fisk, the antagonist of the show ‘Daredevil’.

Note how long it takes for Wilson Fisk’s face to be revealed to us. It’s only when Vanessa says, “How does it make you feel?” that we can finally look into his eyes, underlining the fact that his evilness, his being a deeply disturbed, power-hungry, brutal and violent man, his being the monster of this story, has everything to do with his feelings, with the way he feels, with the way he’s been made to feel ever since he was a little child. He is evil because of those feelings, and those feelings, we are told in no uncertain terms here, are all about his loneliness.

I love how this deeper explanation for his evilness (for his being a ‘back without a face’, so to speak), how his loneliness is juxtaposed with the fact that he is meeting the love of his life in this scene; Vanessa will become his desperate attempt at keeping the darkness at bay, at breaking out of this loneliness.

And it’s visually compelling, too, isn’t it? The back shot might be really in-your-face, but it’s not inelegant:

His black silhouette against that white canvas. The fact that we see Vanessa’s face first, but not his…that we get this super-obvious pan shot over to his back (take note, people, we have recently discussed pan shots at length and how to spot the difference between a real pan shot and, say, a tracking shot; well, this here are actual, real, proper pan shots – there’s a pan shot to the right at the 0:06 minute mark: from Vanessa to Wilson Fisk’s back in front of that completely white painting).

I really like that other pan shot, too. The one when she says, “How does it make you feel?” It’s much slower and goes from right to left. We’re much closer to their faces now, too; they’re talking about feelings, about loneliness. And you did, of course, notice how we’re practically at the absolute climax of that Chopin Nocturne we’ve heard throughout the whole scene at that very moment when the camera finally pans over to Wilson Fisk’s face and gives us that reveal and his words, “It makes me feel alone.”

…and then the scene ends on another back shot! (As I said, this is a very, very obvious example.)

There’s so much to like about this elegant and very fluidly filmed little scene. 

I mean, are you kidding me, it has an art gallery, paintings and an extremely on-the-nose dialogue about what art means to us as human beings. Of course, yours truly would just devour a scene like that, right? I loved this character establishing scene – and not just because it introduces the villain of the story with his back to the camera in this very conspicuous way. This whole conversation about art and paintings and what they mean to us is even more poignant once you remember that this is the antagonist of a story in which the protagonist (Daredevil himself) is blind! Daredevil cannot see colour. He cannot see white. He cannot appreciate art at all.

And yes, that painting, ‘Rabbit in a Snowstorm’, will, of course, play an important role on that show later on.

(Well, and now you’ll excuse me, but I’ve got itchy fingers and have to go and play me some Chopin Nocturne op. 9 No. 1 for a bit. So, I’m going to interrupt our broadcast at this point, my friends, and will be back soon. See you later.)

Okay, I’m back now.

Forgot that that piece is more of a maths problem than a piece of music. (Those who know…know. My God, how to subdivide those 22-tuplets, so they’ll organically stretch across those twelve quavers (eighths) in the left hand and still make it sound effortless? I mean, as I keep saying, Chopin could have just written, “Haha! Fuck you. Just work out your own solution for this!” across that bar and achieved the exact same effect in any pianist staring at his sheet music with their eyes popping out of their skull.)

Anyway…where were we?

Ah, yes. Wilson Fisk’s back.

Well, I can practically hear your sceptical question now, “But this scene from ‘Daredevil’ makes it all so obvious. Wilson Fisk’s back can be seen for so very long in this scene. And it really stands out against that white painting. How does this compare to August’s character establishing scene? That shot of August in front of the school is so brief; it’s basically over within a split second. Are you sure this back shot wasn’t just a coincidence?”

Yes, I’m sure. A) because shots don’t film themselves. (Remember that a whole camera crew has to be set up in the right spot for a shot like this.) Everything you see on screen is intentional even if it’s over in the blink of an eye. It doesn’t just magically happen on its own. It’s not reality. All of it has to be set up in advance.

Well, and B) there’s the fact that ‘Young Royals’ did this more than once. (And more than twice, actually…) We will come back to how very, very deliberate this actually is in a moment.

But if you’re wondering why Wilson Fisk’s character establishing scene gives you this patently obvious back shot and why August’s back shot is so unobtrusive by comparison, you might be interested in the next example:

And you just have to watch that one even though the whole scene is a bit longer, okay? Because…well, because I’m making you an offer you can’t refuse…Understood?

Here’s Don Corleone’s character establishing scene from the ‘Godfather’, as played by Marlon Brando.

It’s spectacular, right?

The way we slowly pull back (reverse dolly) from Bonasera’s face. The way the shot suddenly turns into an over-the-shoulder shot. The darkness of it all and how we gradually become aware of Vito Corleone’s blurry frame in the foreground. Then that sudden hand gesture of his. His raspy voice that we hear before we even see his face…

It’s subtle, and if this were just any scene from the ‘Godfather’, we probably wouldn’t really notice the significance of this back shot at all. But it’s Vito Corleone’s first appearance on screen; this is how we are introduced to him as a character. This is important!

And before you ask, yes, Don Vito is the protagonist of the story. And yet, he is, of course, a mob boss. In his own mafia world, he is both the epitome of justice, strangely enough a virtuous character…and at the same time, a villain who acts outside of the law. There are so many shades of grey morality in this one; it’s brilliant. The hero is the villain of the story. The protagonist is the antagonist at the same time. (We will come back to this.) So, it makes all the sense in the world to introduce him with his back to the camera.

(And obviously, we all love Cataleone photobombing his way to purr-fect cinematic immortality here. I mean, we all know Luca Brasi will end up ‘sleeping with the fishes’ – oh, piano wire, what can’t you do? – but guess who probably ate all those fishes…Miaow.)

Okay, I’ll give you another very subtle example, alright?

It’s from the 2006 movie ‘Casino Royale’.

Yes, Daniel Craig’s first stint as 007.

Now, with this film, there’s a clearer division of labour: James Bond is the protagonist, of course. And an enigmatic man with the ominous-sounding nickname Le Chiffre is the antagonist (well, textually, at least; subtextually…is a whole different can of worms). Le Chiffre is played by the phenomenal Mads Mikkelsen, and here’s how the film’s creators decided to introduce him:

This is Le Chiffre’s character establishing scene at the beginning of ‘Casino Royale’.

(And since we’re talking about villains and all things evil so much in this post, I will specifically reassure you that despite its setting in the jungles of Uganda, amongst war lords and arms dealers, this very brief scene actually features no violence whatsoever.)

This one’s really subtle, right? Much, much subtler than Frank Miller’s character establishing scene from ‘High Noon’ or Wilson Fisk’s from ‘Daredevil’.

At the 1:02 minute mark Le Chiffre gets out of his car, and we are specifically shown his back first, but it lasts all but a second. Then he turns around and shows us his creepy, scarred and yet disconcertingly handsome face.

In fact, you’d barely realize that this is a typical ‘villain back shot’ if it weren’t for two details:

One…the very obvious and deliberate sound effect we get as Le Chiffre turns around and shows us his face (you know, that wooshing noise that was incorporated into the soundtrack and paired with that sound resembling a steam locomotive whistle at the very moment when he turns around).

Well, and two…the fact that you usually just don’t show people getting out of a car in this way.

Let me explain: The whole point of a car scene like that is to reveal the character’s face. And usually this is done in a very specific way. The camera is placed in front of the opening car door (not alongside the bonnet, shooting through the window, as is the case here in this shot!). We then typically get a glimpse of the inside of the car and see the character exiting the vehicle.

When the character in question is a beautiful woman, we often get a shot of her bare leg in a stiletto first (it’s a tired trope by now, but you do, of course, remember ‘Harrow’ and what we discussed in the context of that scene where Grace is getting out of that limousine in her pretty gown; so, that’s how that’s usually filmed). 

Anyway…so, with a beautiful woman, you often get a shot of her leg first, but then you get to see her face right afterwards.

With a man, you often get his face immediately. Sometimes you will get a shot of a nice hand on the car door first (and who would I be to disagree with a shot of a beautiful hand *whistles innocently*).

But the whole point of a scene like this is to reveal the character and show us his or her face. That’s why the camera is usually positioned right in front of the opening car door.

That’s not what’s happening in this Bond movie scene, though: The camera is in a spot that you rarely ever get any shots from – alongside the bonnet, shooting in the direction of the car door but through the window.

The character then exits the car with his back to the camera. (Again, a very deliberate choice.) And we see his back through the window pane that’s covered in those very much metaphorical rain drops (you get that Daniel Craig’s James Bond era has a ‘water’ metaphor a mile wide, right?).

And only then, do we get the character turning around and revealing his face to us (whooshing sound, steam locomotive whistle and all that).

So, yes, this scene might handle the back shot of the character establishing scene of its villain in a much more subtle way than ‘High Noon’ or ‘Daredevil’, subtler even than ‘The Godfather’, but it still definitely invokes that ancient film trope – in a deftly elegant and meaningful way.

Another one?

Okay, here’s another rather unobtrusive example (just so you believe me that August’s brief back shot in his character establishing scene on ‘Young Royals’ is definitely a deliberate choice):

The otherwise much-maligned show ‘Blacklist’ introduces its main protagonist in a very interesting way.

You see, the show’s main protagonist, a man called Raymond Reddington, is a criminal mastermind. So, in a sense, he is both the show’s protagonist and its worst antagonist at the same time. (Yeah, that again!) An antihero if there ever was one. A man seeking justice, defending the innocent, locking up bad guys and all that. But also a murderer, somebody who kills and tortures, a man with a sinister agenda…And the show keeps you guessing throughout: Perhaps he is only doing all the good stuff in order to carry out his own personal vendetta? Is his brutality justified? How cruel is he deep down? And what criminal web is he weaving in secret?

I’m not going to go into the horrible fiasco that was that show’s finale (and the whole controversy and scandal surrounding the departure of its showrunner in its penultimate season). I just want to show you the way this show introduces the character who is its main protagonist and yet also clearly serves some rather antagonistic functions in the narrative.

Here, take a look at this very brief scene: The show ‘Blacklist’ starts with Raymond Reddington, the number one on the FBI’s ‘Most Wanted’ list, turning himself in to the FBI.

Note that that first shot of Reddington’s back is very brief, as he sits there on that park bench in front of the FBI building, contemplating what he is about to do.

Then, when his face is revealed to us at the 0:18 minute mark, we only see the upper half of it; we don’t get to see his full face. Well, and the sunglasses and the brim of the hat hide more than they reveal, too. (By the way, I like the little American flag whose flagpole seems to be visually growing out of his head in this shot, signifying that Reddington’s struggle on this show – what is on his mind throughout the entire story – is about a cabal that is threatening the soul of the country.)

Then we get even more back shots: Raymond Reddington is walking towards the building to turn himself in (note the metaphorical ‘baggage’ he is carrying, too!). A bit later, he turns his back to the camera as he talks to the receptionist. And we don’t get to see all that much of his face here either, a few glimpses from the side and from above. That’s it.

The first full picture of his face that we get is, in fact, his black-and-white mug shot from the FBI’s ‘Most Wanted’ list on the computer screen of that receptionist, which I think is a clever gag: This man is a wanted fugitive, and that’s how the filmmakers reveal his face to us. (It’s clever because the show will keep us guessing throughout the seasons if he actually is the man in that old black-and-white photograph or not.)

It’s only after this mug shot that we get to see his face properly as he kneels with his hands behind his back and the sirens start blaring.

More back shots. A back shot that starts as a tilt shot from above across the balustrade. And then the scene ends on that old black-and-white photograph.

Nice.

Now, why am I saying this is subtle? 

Well, because these back shots are actually motivated: After all, Raymond Reddington can actually be seen walking into the FBI building as we’re shown his back.

How often do you see shots of a character’s back as they’re walking into a building?

Exactly.

You see these types of shots all the time. 

Which is why this is so unobtrusive and probably goes over many viewers’ heads. Shots like this don’t stand out; they’re considered ordinary and boring.

But then…this is a character establishing scene. (It’s actually the very, very first scene of the whole show.) So, this gives these back shots an entirely different meaning.

Showing a character’s back as they’re walking into a building? Normal, mundane, everyday film scene.

Showing a character’s back as they’re being introduced as a character? That’s a whole different story.

This tells us how ambiguous this character actually is: He is being introduced in this way. He’s not a good guy, that’s for sure.

I do particularly like how they cut up his face in these shots, how they’re showing us only bits and pieces of it (only the upper half or only one side of it) and how they’re experimenting here (hat on, hat off, glasses on, etc.). This character is complicated, this tells us. There are many different angles from which you can look at him. Perhaps he has some good traits. But it’s also possible he is evil beyond comprehension. Maybe he has noble goals. But it’s perfectly possible that he actually enjoys killing and torturing his victims. All bets are off when it comes to Raymond Reddington, and the camera visually underscores that point in every which way during his character establishing scene.

What, you think this type of character introduction only happens when the villain in question is a man?

Oh, no, this applies to women, as well, trust me. (And we will see in a moment what ‘Young Royals’ does with its female villainess.)

This filming convention is as old as time, and there’s no gender limitation on it. You can introduce female antagonists in the same way, and many films and TV shows do exactly that.

Check out this ice cream parlour scene from the first episode of ‘Killing Eve’. It introduces the show’s main antagonist, the psychopathic assassin Villanelle, in an understated and yet really cool way. 

The scene that ensues somehow manages to be both hilarious and unsettling at the same time. 

It’s unobtrusive, wouldn’t you say? Just a quick shot showing her back, and then we’re already seeing her eat her ice cream. And yet it’s there: The villain is being introduced with her back to the camera.

(Well, and the way in which she copies that waiter’s crinkly-eyed smile down to the finest detail just screams creepy. What a brilliant character establishing scene.)

So, female villains can be introduced in the exact same way, yeah? (Hold that thought for our ‘Young Royals’ discussion.)

Well, and since I’m a huge Tom Hardy fan, I cannot not mention the first appearance of Alfie Solomons on the period crime saga ‘Peaky Blinders’. Take a look. (The scene is pretty long, and it’s actually quite alright if you just watch the first minute or so…Although that would mean depriving yourself of one of Tom Hardy’s really great performances. And whyever would you do that? Well, and Cillian Murphy’s acting chops are nothing to sneeze at either, actually. So…maybe give the whole thing a try? It’s not violent per se. Although Alfie does shove a gun in Tommy’s face at one point.)

So, this back shot is fairly subtle, too, yeah? Just your average tracking shot. We follow Alfie as he walks through his ‘bakery’, and as we do, we see his back. This could be just some ordinary tracking shot. But it’s obviously not; this is how Alfie is being introduced to us.

Well, and in case you now say, “Hang on, tvmicroscope, but I’ve seen ‘Peaky Blinders’, and I remember that epic opening scene in episode one. So, what about Tommy Shelby himself?”...Very good! You’re paying attention!

Tommy Shelby (played by Cillian Murphy) is the protagonist of this story, yes. But boy, is he a complex character. He’s certainly no fluffy goody-two-shoes, that’s for sure. And his character establishing scene reflects that by, well, almost labelling him a villain. Here, check it out (again, no violence, no blood, no nothing in this scene; and it’s a fairly short one this time, too).

That’s a long time for a guy to be sitting on a horse where we don’t get to see his face, right? Note how cleverly this is filmed: The camera only moves up to Tommy’s head once the horse has passed by and we can thus only see the back of his head…

Back shot, back shot…and then even when we do see his face, it’s only from the side, partially hidden by his signature cap. It’s remarkable how little we see of his eyes throughout the scene (which is always a loss in a scene involving Cillian Murphy’s peepers, right?).

Since we’ve already crossed over to the more violent side of the (Birmingham) street here, let’s give a brief honourable mention to the Coen brothers’ 2007 classic ‘No Country for Old Men’.

And yes, Javier Bardem’s Anton Chigurh isn’t just a terrifying and bone-chillingly effective antagonist; his character establishing scene is violent like whoa, as you can probably imagine. It’s both violent and gory, so please take that into account before clicking on the link. (If you would like to avoid all the bloody parts and just want to see the harmless part, just stop watching when you see a man on the phone; it’s impossible to miss.)

Note how different this one is: We’re seeing an arrest scene. But even as Anton Chigurh is shoved into the police car, we don’t see his face. Just like in ‘Casino Royale’, the camera has been positioned in a very weird spot here: on the other side of the car. 

Usually arrest scenes are shot from the opposite direction: This way we get to see the perp’s face as the police officer shoves him into the car (usually covering his head with his palm in the process to prevent him from slamming the top of his head into the car as he ducks).

Here, the camera has been strategically placed on the other side of the car, though, so we only see Anton Chigurh’s back as he is shoved into the car.

Even once he’s inside, we don’t see his face properly since it’s shrouded in darkness, hidden inside that prisoner partition cage in the car.

We only get the first proper shot of his face (the first one where it’s not blurry, out of focus or too dark to see) as he kills. And boy, if that one doesn’t give you nightmares, I don’t know what will.

Let’s mention two more examples, and then we will return to ‘Young Royals’ to see what the creators of our little Swedish show have done with this age-old trope.

These two I count among my all-time favourites, as a matter of fact. And both films have done something with this well-known filming convention that’s just truly unique.

The first one is Christopher Nolan’s ‘The Dark Knight’, the second movie in his ‘Batman’ trilogy. 

Despite the fact that the movie was released in 2008, this opening scene with the infamous bank heist is already a film classic. And crucially, it is also the character establishing scene of the Joker (played by a phenomenal Heath Ledger here).

This whole bank robbery scene is not gory, but (and I should probably mention that this is true for the entire movie) it’s consistently, grippingly tense and violent in that strangely bloodless way that’s just so quintessentially Nolan. You don’t get to see any blood, but you’re gripping the edge of your seat throughout this bank heist scene (and throughout this whole movie) in suspense. This is probably partly down to Hans Zimmer’s soundtrack (this is the famous soundtrack in which Zimmer used a rusty razor blade instead of a bow when playing the cello; I wonder how the poor instrument fared, to be honest). 

There literally aren’t any moments in this film where you get to take a breath…And this opening scene with the bank robbery prepares you for this experience.

The back shot of the Joker (Heath Ledger) happens at the 0:29 minute mark. And boy, is it clever.

Even if we didn’t know that back shots like this usually introduce the villain of the story, we would feel it. We don’t know that this is Heath Ledger yet. (After all, there are several other bank robbers wearing clown masks in this scene.) But somehow we just feel it. Viscerally. This must be him. The man we only see from the back, the one the camera dollies in on. 

And while he has got his back turned to the camera and is facing away from us, his mask is actually turned towards us. We can’t see his face, but we can see the mask. (How very fitting in a story such as this!)

All of which obviously makes that final reveal of his face towards the end of the bank robbery scene (at 4:45) even greater. “Whatever doesn’t kill you simply makes you…stranger.”

Last but not least, since we were already talking about the Joker…

Meet Joaquin Phoenix’s version from the 2019 movie ‘Joker’. This is his character establishing scene. (And yes, there’s a brief violent moment in this scene, too. Sorry, but all of these are villain scenes, so that much is to be expected. Most of the examples I listed above are fairly violence-free. I really tried to pick the more harmless ones for you guys. If you want to avoid that brief fight scene in this one, stop watching once the opening credits appear and the music starts up.)

As you can see, this one is very different, too.

Heath Ledger’s Joker gave us a back shot that was a dolly-in shot, where his face was hidden, but his mask was turned towards us.

This one is pretty cool, too. It’s a dolly-in shot, as well, but otherwise it’s pretty different.

This Joker has his back to the camera the way we would expect him to, yes, but we can actually see his face…in the mirror.

But then again…can we? Can we really? What with all that mask-like make-up on?

And then when we get a first clear shot of his face in the mirror…look what he’s doing with his face! Look at that tear, too. That’s fascinating, unsettling and very well played.

Well, and if you paid attention to our discussion of the ‘stairs’ symbolism back when we talked about Wilhelm’s fight club scene on ‘Young Royals’ (which incidentally is Wilhelm’s character establishing scene), you’ll be interested to hear that the ‘Joker’ movie features an interesting example of it. (I’m not going to link you to the stairs dance from ‘Joker’; you can look that up for yourself; it’s got nothing to do with the topic of today’s post, but if you’re interested in the symbolism of stairs, make sure to check it out.)

Now, we have discussed several very different scenes that show us different ways of essentially doing the same thing: All of these character establishing scenes introduce a villain, and all of them do it from behind, i.e. with the villain’s back turned towards the camera. They choose different ways and different tricks to do so. Some of these camera moves may seem more motivated than others, for example. Some are unobtrusive, others are very in-your-face about it. But all of them introduce us to the villain by showing us the villains back first.

And trust me, I’m valiantly fighting the urge to spoil a huge number of shows and films for you right now: I have specifically chosen examples above where it’s clear right from the get-go who the villain of the story is. But as a filmmaker, you can obviously use the exact same technique to sneakily hint at the fact that that character who appears to be a good guy or gal at first glance will actually be revealed to be a baddie later on in the story.

There are a huge number of crime mystery series and spy thrillers, for example, where you don’t, in fact, know who the murderer or the double agent is at the beginning of the story, where the writers only pull that reveal later on and where said reveal comes as a huge surprise to the audience.

Well, if you want a shortcut for these types of stories, if you want to see it right away (hey, I think the gardener is the one who stabbed the earl with the letter opener in the library or whatever), if you want to be faster at figuring out who the Big Bad is than your friends who are watching the show or movie together with you, pay attention to one thing: Is there a character in the story who was introduced with their back to the camera during their character establishing scene? If there is, chances are that’s the villain.

And no, I’m not saying all directors do it in this way (there are some who ignore this age-old trope and introduce all their characters, protagonists and antagonists alike, whichever way around they see fit); a filming convention is just that: a convention – not a law of nature. 

But many directors don’t, in fact, ignore this ancient rule; many like to play with it, using very different and sometimes downright sneaky ways of introducing the villain with their back to the camera during their character establishing scene. And pretty much all of them know that audiences these days (unlike back in the black-and-white western era) are usually unaware of this little rule, so they won’t pick up on it at all.

So, when you watch your next crime show or political thriller or spy movie, pay attention to the way characters are introduced during their character establishing scene. More times than not, this will pay off…

But we’re all here for ‘Young Royals’, right?

So, what does our little Swedish show do? Did the creators of this show know about this rule?

Oh, you bet they did!

But here’s the thing: This show never ever ever shows us its main villain!

Yes, really. Hard to believe but true!

If you’re a longtime reader of this blog, then you know, of course, that this story features an actual villain, a proper monster, a horrible, evil man.

But this show cleverly hides him in the subtext and never shows him to us explicitly. We know that he’s there. We know him by the effect he’s had on one of the show’s main protagonists, but we never get to see his face or know his name. We never even meet him.

By the way, here’s what I would have done:

This show (which, broadly speaking, is a story of the high school genre) doesn’t really show us all that much of the school subjects that are being taught at that school, and that’s okay. We don’t need to see long, boring, extremely obvious lessons about this and that which just code for some subtextual message the show is trying to impart. (And that Karin Boye book discussion was already bordering on cringe and so, so in-your-face, to be honest.)

We get the occasional subtextual reference to Simon’s trouble in maths paradise (right idea, wrong solution, how very fitting!). And we get that infamous tax evasion vs. welfare fraud discussion (which subtextually hasn’t got anything to do with actual money or taxes or class differences; this is all subtext and we’re looking at a classic ‘money’ metaphor here, we’ve discussed this). So, it’s okay that we get no overly elaborate school lessons on this show.

There’s just one thing that I would have definitely done: I would have written a physics lesson into the script in which the teacher would have explained what dark matter is. Something along the lines of, “Sometimes we cannot prove that something is actually there, but it still definitely is. We call it ‘dark’ because we have no way of touching or interacting with it. We cannot see it or hear it or feel it. But we can see its effects throughout our universe. We know it’s there because we see the impact it has on all the matter around it. This dark matter is everywhere in our universe. And it’s the driving force behind the formation and evolution of entire galaxies.”

A cryptic remark along those lines, and I would have been happy. But alas, nobody wrote any lines like that into the script…

Because you see, that’s how the villain on ‘Young Royals’ operates, too.

He is the show’s ‘dark matter’, so to speak. We don’t see him. We never hear about him. We cannot interact with him. But we know he’s there. We’ve examined the subtext, and just from understanding what metaphors this show employs and how it works with its mirrors, we know that he exists, who he is and what he has done. We know how he led to the formation and evolution of one of the main protagonists in this fictional universe.

Now, since the show’s creators don’t give us the villain himself, we obviously cannot get a character establishing scene for him either. The guy isn’t there; so we never get introduced to him in a scene like that.

So, why did I say that this show uses this same age-old technique to introduce its villain, too? Well, because it does.

It just doesn’t do so with the villain himself (who’s, after all, never explicitly shown to us and thus doesn’t get a character establishing scene). It does so through his mirror characters.

And since you clever people all keep asking about season three, let’s start with an example from season three right now.

Who do we meet in season three? Who’s new? Whose character establishing scene do we get to witness?

Yes, our new headmistress Vanessa Hamilton, whom I hereby officially call ‘Botox-face’. (I’m sorry; I don’t make the rules; that’s just what she looks like…What, you think that’s unkind? Okay, ‘Crazy-eyes’ it is, then. I will tolerate no further discussion on this point.)

Now, before we get to Crazy-eyes, a few words about Anette Lilja (you know, our-season-one-and-season-two headmistress).

Yes, that’s the other character in August’s back shot during August’s character establishing scene. She’s right there:

So, we’re technically not just introduced to August at this point; we’re introduced to her, as well. And yes, she’s got her back turned to the camera, too, in this shot.

This shot is the main reason why I had immediately pegged her as a baddie from episode one onwards.

Little did I know that things would get far more complicated with her over time…So, I’m still a bit on the fence when it comes to this lady; she is really quite ambiguous.

There are other (subtextual) reasons to read her as a far more sympathetic character, but we can talk about that some other time if you want.

In any case…I’m hesitating when it comes to her. She’s pretty ambiguous, all things considered. (Perhaps a deliberate choice? She is, after all, a ‘I-was-just-following-orders’ kinda gal. She lets a lot of bad stuff happen; it happens on her watch. But there are some interesting, good aspects to her, too, which you can find only in the subtext.)

In short…I don’t know. And I don’t like to play with stuff I don’t know. She is ambiguous as hell…is all I can tell you.

But back to what I actually wanted to talk about:

The acting headmistress in season three, a.k.a. Crazy-eyes.

Now, we’ve discussed the fact that this is not a good person by any stretch of the imagination. Whatever Anette Lilja’s deal was or wasn’t; things are pretty clear when it comes to our unnaturally wide-eyed new headmistress Vanessa Hamilton. Nothing is kosher about this lady. (I hope you can all see that.)

That scene where she ostensibly encourages Felice to tell the truth about the initiations to the investigators is more than just a little creepy, you understand?

We discussed this scene before, of course: Felice isn’t really Felice, in this scene; this is Simon we’re looking at here! That’s what all the mirroring in season three alludes to. (If you don’t know or don’t remember what kind of narrative technique mirroring is, please read this introduction first. It’s a narrative technique that’s used quite extensively in a huge number of TV shows and movies; mirror characters and specifically mirror scenes are something you should really know about if you’re into all things film analysis.) 

The initiations on this show aren’t really about any hazing rituals either. They are a metaphor – a metaphor for something truly awful. (We’ve discussed this.) Well, and the investigators are us! We, the viewers in front of our TV screens, are the investigators of this show. We are the ones who need to be told what is actually going on during those metaphorical ‘initiations’ (i.e. what actually happened to Simon in the past). That’s just good subtext.

And Crazy-eyes is the roadblock here. She’s the one (subtly) threatening Felice not to tell the truth. She is the dark force in the narrative. She is the force that’s preventing any kind of proper investigation into these metaphorical ‘initiations’. She’s exactly the opposite of ‘sunlight-is-the-best-disinfectant’. She is the one who’s obfuscating and hiding everything. (You can pretty much imagine what sort of conversation Simon once had to sit through with the actual villain of the story – a conversation where he was told not to breathe a word about what was going on to anybody…In other words, this is a mirror scene, and we have already discussed how incredibly creepy that remark about the ‘diverse’ kids actually is once you mirror it back onto what was going on between Simon and that man.)

So, having said all of this…you do understand that Ms. Hamilton is a pretty dark character, right?

Now, once you’ve realized this, it suddenly becomes pertinent to look up her character establishing scene…Because, boy, does she get one! She even literally introduces herself to the students (and by extension us) – standing on a podium in front of them. It doesn’t get any more ‘character-establishing-sceney’ than that.

So, let’s take a look at how she appears in front of the camera in season three for the first time:

The students are all assembled, waiting for some sort of announcement to be made.

Then she appears!

And instead of being filmed from the front as she walks down the aisle, her shoes going clack-clack-clack on the wooden floorboards, she is actually introduced with her back turned towards the camera.

It’s a typical tracking shot, in which she slowly walks up to the front of the hall through the aisle and the camera follows her. We do not see her face at first. (If you’re wondering what a tracking shot is, just think Alfie Solomons in ‘Peaky Blinders’, okay? Only…Tom Hardy with his gun somehow seemed less crazy than this headmistress lady here, to be quite honest. I mean, I almost got a Tommy Shelby-type nosebleed, just watching her. Ugh.)

Anyway…if this weren’t a character establishing scene, I’d say, “Oh, well, tracking shots like this happen all the time. Characters sometimes need to walk along some aisle somewhere and are filmed from behind while doing so. Nothing to see here.”

But it is, in fact, a character establishing scene! 

This is how the show introduces us to her as a character – with her back turned towards us! We don’t see her face. We see her back before we see anything else about her. And that’s very important in a character establishing scene, of course.

The camera is visually telling us, “Watch out! This character is an antagonist. This is a villain. This is not a good person. She’s not showing us her face.”

So, we could have guessed right away (before she even started her whole crusade at the school) that this Swedish version of Dolores Umbridge wouldn’t turn out to be a nice lady – and even more importantly, that she would serve as a mirror character for a true monster. A monster we never get to meet, but whom we can encounter through all his different mirror images on the show.

And let’s not forget that right after Crazy-eyes has slowly turned around and given us her strange, wide-eyed smile (seriously, can this lady please blink at least once, so I stop thinking she’s a robot?), right after she turns around and literally introduces herself, the Hamilbot2024 proceeds to announce that she’s going to take away the students’ phones (remember how important that is in the context of our ‘phone’ metaphor!). She also makes it pretty much impossible for Simon and Wilhelm to have sex, which the show hints at by having the boys realize right there and then that they can’t, ahem, ‘hang out’ with each other after school now.

I know we have talked quite a bit about Wilhelm’s sexual woes, about how the subtext tells us exactly what these two boys are doing in bed (and crucially what they’re not doing in bed), about Wilhelm’s sexual hangups and how difficult all of this is for him, how things are sometimes not working for him when he really, really wants them to be working and how they’re, in turn, suddenly working at times when it’s really embarrassing…Well, here we get direct subtextual confirmation that the sexual side of things is really, really difficult for Simon, too. The mirror image of that man who raped Simon many years ago makes it subtextually impossible for him to enjoy his sex life with his new boyfriend, i.e. Wilhelm.

The show’s writers have sneakily hidden that piece of information in the subtext, but it’s still not really hard to find once you know where to look. 

Simon is struggling, really, really struggling with this whole sex thing, too. His backstory keeps throwing obstacles his way, so he has to put his sex life on hold and does specifically put off experiencing that certain form of sex with Wilhelm that the subtext tells us quite clearly the two boys have not had at this point in the story. Simon really wants to have that type of sex, but he also really, really doesn’t want to have it at the same time. And seeing as we know what Simon’s backstory is…is it any wonder?

For now, the monster in his brain is tightly controlling the boys’ metaphorical ‘phones’, making sure they don’t use them too often, and coming up with obstacles that make it impossible for them to even think the word ‘penetrative sex’. Just look at Simon’s clothes in that scene: He’s sadly wearing a red t-shirt underneath his shirt. (And we have discussed the colour red on this show before, of course.) Simon is all caught up in his dark memories. The monster at the back of his mind is calling the shots. And since we never get to see the actual monster on this show, one of his many mirror characters is employed for this purpose.

Speaking of which…

I probably wouldn’t go so far as to check out all the teachers at the fictional boarding school on this show. It’s not that there aren’t any teachers serving as mirror characters for the Big Bad of the story. (There are!) The problem is rather that these teachers have such tiny parts to play in the narrative that they don’t ever get any proper character establishing scenes. (And remember: This rule of the back shot applies only to character establishing scenes, not to any old scene where a character has their back turned towards the camera.)

There are obviously some teachers who mirror the main villain of the story. (And we have discussed them before.) 

There’s Magister Englund, for example. (It’s kinda obvious that he is mirroring the main antagonist from his surname alone. And then, there is, of course, the ‘money’ metaphor, whereby Englund exchanges ‘knowledge’ about ‘things that Simon doesn’t know yet’ for metaphorical ‘money’ provided to him by Simon, which Simon, in turn, gets from another mirror character for the main villain: August! Well, and August is supposed to pay Simon metaphorical ‘money’ for being given metaphorical ‘drugs’...We have discussed all of this before. The ‘money’ isn’t actual money. The ‘drugs’ aren’t actual drugs. All of these are metaphors. All of them represent something else. What a vicious circle Simon is trapped in here!)

So, Magister Englund clearly acts as a mirror character. 

But I wouldn’t go so far as to read his first appearance on the show as a proper character establishing scene. (Not all first appearances are character establishing scenes, by the way!) There just isn’t all that much character to establish here, in the first place.

The same goes for the obvious mirror character in season three: The P.E. teacher. Again, we don’t get enough meat on the bones to speak about a proper character establishing scene here.

Compare this to the first appearance of the creepy-eyed Hamilbot2024 on screen. That’s a proper character establishing scene (literal introduction in front of the whole student body and everything). And the camera treats this scene accordingly by giving us her back shot as she walks along that aisle. (The same goes for August’s first appearance on screen, obviously. That is a classic character establishing scene, and that’s why that back shot is there.)

As far as this P.E. teacher is concerned, there just isn’t enough here to truly establish a character with. So, we don’t get a character establishing scene and hence…no back shot in a context like that.

(Just to make sure we don’t misunderstand each other: I’m not claiming Magister Englund and that P.E. teacher aren’t serving as mirrors for our villain. They clearly are. I’m just disputing the idea that they get any character establishing scenes on this show, which they clearly don’t.)

By the way, I faintly remember one of the lovely commenters on this blog telling me a while ago that the creators of this show were specifically looking for an actor of Middle-Eastern descent for the part of that P.E. teacher. Is that correct? Because I have to admit that that’s been tickling something at the back of my mind for ages now.

Why did the show’s creators need to specify that in their casting call? 

Usually, I’d caution against taking the ethnicity of a mirror character into account like that. Simon is mirrored both by the blond-and-blue-eyed Stella and by Felice who is of mixed ancestry. These things don’t always have to necessarily mean anything. Sometimes a good actor is just a good actor, and that’s the reason why they were chosen for a part.

Our villain’s mirror characters give us: August, Marcus, Englund, etc. They’re all ethnic Swedes, right?

And yet the fact that the show’s creators specifically wanted to cast somebody of Middle-Eastern appearance for the part of that P.E. teacher seems suspicious. It’s not just something that happened by accident because that actor just happened to be the best man for the job; it is my understanding that the filmmakers specified what ethnicity they wanted for that P.E. teacher in their casting call beforehand. They wanted somebody who looked like that. (Please correct me if I’m wrong on this one. I don’t follow these things as closely as some of you do.) And they wanted that for a part that comes as close to the actual villain as any part would ever get: The guy is, after all, a P.E. teacher, too! Just like our (invisible) Big Bad, the antagonist that we never get to meet. This is almost a carbon copy of the real guy. 

So, my question in this context is just: Are they telling us something about the villain in this way?

I’ll be honest with you and admit that I don’t know. But this little factoid has been stuck at the back of my head like a rather persistent headache.

I’m thinking: If you deliberately cast a man of Middle-Eastern appearance for a part that comes as close to the actual villain as we will ever get, are you hinting at something there? Simon’s case is a grooming case; the subtext is very clear about that. And there are those grooming cases in the UK everyone and their mother knows about by now. So, I’m thinking…something, something. I obviously don’t know what the situation is like on the ground in Sweden. So, I have no way of knowing if my brain just wandered off into a dead-end street. No idea.

(And just in case you’re wondering: No, I wouldn’t be offended by the insinuation, should it, in fact, turn out to be one. I’m not offended by stuff like that at all. And I don’t cry, “Racism!” If that’s what happens, then the criminals in question belong behind bars; I don’t care what their ethnicity is or isn’t. I don’t have anything in common with them. And it wouldn’t occur to me in a million years to defend someone like that. So…you know…screw them. I’m not offended at all.)

In any case, I don’t know anything about the casting decisions on this show. I just found this weird. I have no idea what it means. But if it is, indeed, the case that the creators of this show looked for somebody with that ethnic background on purpose, then we can be pretty sure that it is, indeed, intentional and that it has to mean…something. What that is I frankly don’t know.

Anyway, so tiny side characters like that (Magister Englund, that P.E. teacher in season three, etc.) can all be mirror characters for our Big Bad, but they don’t get any proper character establishing scenes, which is probably why we don’t get those typical back shots for them either. (If you’re not properly introduced to the audience, then there’s no way of introducing you with your back to the camera; it’s as simple as that.)

But let’s take a look at somebody who gets a proper character establishing scene…It’s a character establishing scene that’s just ‘chef’s kiss’ as the young‘uns tend to say these days.

Because, you see, not all back shots on this show are as brief and unobtrusive as the one during August’s character establishing moment or even as subtle as the one during that first appearance of Lady Crazy-eyes in front of her students in episode one of season three.

Here’s one that should have anyone watching the show spit out their tea in surprise; it’s just so in-your-face.

In episode one of season two (somehow I’m only just noticing that all of these character establishing scenes always happen in a season’s first episode, huh!)...so, in the season opener of season two, we are introduced to Marcus.

And what a character establishing scene that is! Wow! Just wow!

Before we meet Marcus, we get a scene of August regretting his horrible deed and whining to Wilhelm over the metaphorical ‘phone’ about his feelings. (And since August is mirroring the villain of the story, and Wilhelm is often shown to be mirroring Simon, you do, of course, understand what that means.) We have addressed the fact that August isn’t eating properly in this scene (‘food’ metaphor, ahoy!), and yeah, that should make you shudder.

So, yes, we’re literally shown what the villain of the story felt after he had done what he had done to Simon. (And we do know that self-preservation is kinda playing a big role in that whole sob-fest here.) We’re shown the villain’s (however selfishly motivated) regrets.

Cut. We’re jumping straight to Marcus, i.e. subtextually we’re travelling back in time – to that moment when Simon’s whole abuse story began. 

The first glimpse we catch of Marcus’s (ugly, horrible, no good) face is actually from the front, which is a new one, to be sure. But he’s still outside the house at that point. We see him through the open door of the Erikssons’ house together with Sara for a very brief second. (And let’s again remind ourselves how many hints there are on this show that it was actually Sara who was targeted by this man first, not Simon. That he went after Sara first. That, being a teacher at Marieberg, he most likely noticed her surname somewhere in some class register and made the connection, “I know that name. This is Linda’s kid.”)

So, we get a brief moment in which we see Marcus’s face, but then…oh, then…Here it comes!

Marcus and Sara enter the Erikssons’ house. (And remember that this isn’t really a scene about Marcus-as-Marcus. It’s not a scene about a schoolmate from Marieberg. This whole scene is a mirror scene for something else, and Marcus is mirroring someone else.)

And then, we get this here shot:

For no textual reason whatsoever, Marcus suddenly turns his back to the camera!

If you’re now saying, “But tvmicroscope, Marcus needed to take off his shoes because he had just entered somebody else’s home,” please hold your horses.

Marcus isn’t real! Marcus is a fictional character. Marcus doesn’t need to do anything – unless the writers want him to do something.

And let’s not forget that there is no reason whatsoever why he needed to turn his back to the camera at this point. (Sara could have turned her back to the camera. Marcus could have turned the other way. And before you say, “But Linda is sitting over there. Marcus was looking at her, greeting her, being polite!”...Yeah, but this is a fictional story. There’s no reason for Linda to be sitting there either. The creators of this show made her sit over there. She could have been in the hall. She could have literally been anywhere else.)

No! The creators of this show deliberately set this scene up in a way where Marcus would have to turn his back to the camera at this point. They specifically had Linda sit on that couch to make sure that Marcus had to turn this way to look at her.

And that’s why we get to see his back at this point in his character establishing scene.

We can barely remember what his face looked like from that first brief glimpse when he was still outside. (And if you want, you can read this brief glimpse of his face as the perp not really being a threat to the Eriksson children as long as he didn’t ‘enter their home’, so to speak, as long as he didn’t operate as an ‘insider’. It’s only once he became ‘part of the family’, that he became a danger to them, and we know he is most likely Linda’s ex-boyfriend, so…If you want, you can read this first brief glimpse of his face outside of the house as something like that: The actual problem only started the moment he insinuated himself into their home, into their family.)

And now all we get is his back. In a character establishing scene.

This is deliberate.

This is telling us something.

We have seen above (in those many, many example scenes from all those other films and shows that I gave you) that directors can use this back shot in very different ways; it can mean different things and can give you a different nuance, depending on how exactly it is presented.

Here we get the back shot only after Marcus has already entered the Erikssons’ house, which seems significant.

We are, indeed, introduced to Marcus through a back shot, but look even more closely: Marcus is, in fact, bending over in that shot.

And this has a very specific effect: We are presented not just with Marcus’s back, but specifically with Marcus’s backside during his character establishing scene.

If there is a better way of telling the audience, “Watch out. This character we’re introducing here is literally an arse,” then I don’t know of it.

It’s so very, very obvious. 

Here’s an arse…with an arse. 

And that arse isn’t eroticized, you know. This isn’t, say, Matt Bomer in a well-tailored suit, habitually shoving his hands into the pockets of his nicely cut trousers, so the fabric stretches across his buttocks to show off his, ahem, well-shaped strategic assets.

It’s not one of those shots. Duh.

No, this is actually totally unerotic. (Ugh, I can’t even think of the words ‘Marcus’ and ‘erotic’ in the same sentence together without having to retch. Quick, quick…think of something else to fight the urge to vomit all over my laptop. Ah, yes, thank God, this should help. Phew.)

So, this Marcus-butt scene isn’t there to entice the audience. It just looks weirdly clumsy and…uhm…unsightly? I guess. 

It’s a guy being introduced with his back and his backside turned towards the camera during his character establishing scene. Like…we’re literally one fart away from realizing that this guy ain’t smelling of roses, okay? Figuratively speaking, of course.

You can also add the fact that Marcus is literally taking off his shoes here. We have recently talked about the ‘shoe’ metaphor on this show and how it connects to the ‘foot/leg’ metaphor, and the fact that Marcus (who mirrors the main villain of the story) enters someone else’s home and then proceeds to take off his metaphorical ‘shoes’ should make you scream in horror and agony for an hour or so.

Then there’s a teensy-tiny detail that I’ll just point out for the sake of completeness because honestly…it might not mean anything: The name ‘Lars Beckung’ appears right on top of Marcus’s arse in this shot. 

This doesn’t necessarily have to mean anything, but I know for a fact that this sort of thing is sometimes done as an inside joke among screenwriters: When one of the writers in the writers’ room comes up with a certain storyline or perhaps even a whole backstory for a character, he is sometimes ‘immortalized’ in this way. His name is put ‘where it belongs’ in the title credits. (Marcus is an arse, and Lars Beckung owns that arse, so to speak.)...Obviously, I have no way of knowing if it was, indeed, Lars Beckung who originally came up with Simon’s backstory or perhaps just with the idea of introducing a Marcus-type character in season two as a mirror for the Big Bad of the story. But if one or both of those ideas did, indeed, originally spring from Lars Beckung’s mind, this is how his screenwriter colleagues would ‘salute’ him: by putting his name on Marcus’s arse…Again, I don’t know if this is what happened here. I’m just telling you that this is what shows often do as a type of inside joke.

Marcus, then, gets another back shot: Once he goes off in search of the bathroom, he hears Simon’s metaphorical ‘music’, and we get a shot like this:

Then he turns and looks through the open door of the laundry room (back still turned towards the camera).

This is still Marcus’s character introduction, and he still has his back to us. 

Even more disconcerting is the way this is shot, the way he sort of hovers in front of that door, then turns around and hovers in front of the open doorway. Like…Marcus is literally just missing a pair of black leather gloves to make him look like a serial killer in this shot. This is the type of shot I’d expect in a crime mystery show, right before the murderer walks through the door, grabs his victim from behind and strangles them; that’s the shot. Marcus looks like a serial killer here. (And I guess, you’ve probably all found the more nightmarish subtext on this show, so I don’t need to tell you that these awful feelings aren’t entirely unwarranted, right?)

Anyway…so, we get to see Marcus’s back a lot during Marcus’s character introduction. The camerawork is very deliberate here. And it’s by far not as subtle as that back shot of August in episode one of season one or as unobtrusive as the one during Vanessa Hamilton’s character establishing scene in episode one of season three.

Marcus’s back shots are pretty in-your-face, I’d say.

But those aren’t even the most demonstrative, most obvious, most ostentatious back shots during a character establishing scene on this show.

There’s actually one scene that’s even more obvious, more conspicuous, as it were.

Let’s go back to season one episode one for a moment.

Simon visits his dad because Simon wants something from him. We see Simon enter a rundown social-housing type of concrete block and hear him ring the doorbell.

And then it happens…

Something very strange and extremely jarring if you know how to read shots and understand how visual storytelling works.

For this, I need to explain something to you very, very quickly:

Whenever you read a text, there is something in it that you don’t notice consciously but that instantly stands out to you when the rule relating to it is broken: It’s called the theme-rheme progression. (It’s derived from the Greek words thema (θέμᾰ) and rhema (ῥῆμα) because the basic concepts go back to ancient concepts of discourse and philosophy.)

Now, if you had a good teacher back at school, then they might have explained this to you in your literature/language classes at some point. But if you don’t know what that is or don’t remember it, let me quickly explain it to you because it’s actually quite a useful thing to know about:

Any text (and actually any sentence) has something called a theme and a rheme. (The ‘theme’ is sometimes referred to as the ‘topic’ of the clause or text. And the ‘rheme’ is sometimes called a ‘comment’, too.)

These are basically important building blocks for constructing a proper cohesive and coherent text. And it’s useful to know about them if you want to analyze a text according to the rules of functional linguistics.

The theme is what the sentence is all about. The rheme is the element containing the new piece of information that comments on the theme and crucially (!) refers back to it.

Let me give you an example…(And this is the point where I could have just picked any random fairytale off the bookshelf but decided to give you my own totally made-up and entirely fictional example, ahem).

So, take a look at these sentences please:

“There once was a teenage pianist who was a veritable child prodigy. Every day he spent hours upon hours in rehearsal with his duo partner. Said partner was a true rascal. He had the loveliest blond curls, the most impish smile and the most beautiful hands you’ve ever seen.”

Now, if you analyze these sentences with the theme-rheme progression in mind, then the phrase ‘a teenage pianist’ is the theme of the first sentence. After all, this boy is what and who this sentence is all about. He is the ‘topic’, in other words the theme. 

The (intra-clausal) rheme of this sentence is ‘was a veritable child prodigy’. That’s the new piece of information being offered. It’s the chunk of this sentence that comments on the ‘teenage pianist’ and defines him further.

Now if you proceed to the next sentence, you will realize that the rheme here is ‘his duo partner’. That’s the new person entering the equation at this point. He’s the new element here. And a new piece of information is exactly what the rheme is defined as. But crucially, this new element refers back to the theme of the first sentence: There’s the pronoun ‘his’, so you always know that this isn’t just some random bloke; it’s actually the ‘teenage pianist’s’ duo partner. The rheme refers back to the theme: It’s ‘his duo partner’. The new piece of information is connected to the old information in the text that we already know.

The next sentence gives us ‘said partner’. Note how this duo partner has now become the theme of this new sentence. The rheme of the previous sentence (‘his duo partner’) has become the theme of the new sentence (‘said partner’). Which logically speaking, makes sense: That which was a new piece of information in the previous sentence is now old hat. It’s now an old piece of info. Now we’re adding new information to that old one (‘true rascal’, ‘blond curls’ etc.).

As you can see, it sounds rather complicated as long as you use fancy words like ‘theme’ and ‘rheme’ for it, but once you realize it’s actually all just about the question of how to connect old information to the new information being presented in a way that makes the text internally cohesive and logically coherent, so that the reader can progress though said text without stumbling upon any logical gaps in it, it’s actually quite simple.

So, that’s a theme-rheme progression. Sounds complicated but is actually really, really basic.

And I’m sure you have all read countless texts where the author broke that rule (usually, unintentionally), and whenever that happened to you, as a reader, it was always disorienting and annoying because you couldn’t exactly follow who the text was actually talking about anymore.

That’s the way little children recount stories at first. It’s actually really hard for our brains to learn how to work out a proper theme-rheme progression when we recount something, and preschool children usually can’t do it yet. They will tell you a story about a dog and a boy and their kindergarten teacher, and the story will keep jumping back and forth randomly, changing perspective all the time, so that you, the listener, will have to keep guessing who the ‘he’ the child is currently referring to is at any point in the story (the boy? the dog? the teacher?). There is no logical rhyme nor reason to a child’s story at that age, not because the child recounting the story doesn’t know exactly who bit who and who chased off who with a stick, but because the young storyteller doesn’t yet know how to build an entire story around a proper theme-rheme progression, and you, the listener, can thus never work out how the new piece of information in any given sentence is referring back to the old piece of information you got in the previous sentence.

(I’m saying this is a preschool-age problem, but to be honest, there are quite a few twenty-something students who haven’t left the toddler stage when it comes to this yet – judging by the term papers some of them hand in at least. Ahem.)

Let’s return to our totally fictional, entirely made-up piano duo story from above, just to illustrate the problem. Imagine you’re looking at a paragraph like this:

“The two boys spent all their free time with each other. They were rehearsing all the time. Their entire world consisted of Brahms and Schubert…and each other. Which is why he couldn’t stop himself from noticing his partner’s hands and the way they brushed up against his whenever they were playing.”

This paragraph sucks, right?

It breaks the theme-rheme progression big time because the theme of the first couple of sentences is ‘the two boys’ and ‘they’, and then it suddenly jumps to a random ‘he’, and this ‘he’ isn’t referring back to anyone in the previous sentence.

As a reader, you simply have no way of knowing who that ‘he’ is. They are both boys. So, who was admiring whose hands here? We don’t know. (Although if you’re a longtime reader of this blog, you can probably guess…)

A logical theme-rheme progression requires for the rheme with the new information to refer back to the theme from the previous sentence. If a paragraph breaks the theme-rheme progression, you’re suddenly lost as a reader. It all gets confusing and difficult to follow. And suddenly you, the reader, don’t know anymore what exactly happened in Venice when they went there for that concert because you can’t work out who was agonizing for an hour whether to put his arm around his shoulders on that boat out on the Canal Grande, and who kissed who first (because what does ‘he kissed him for the first time on the day of that piano competition’ actually mean? who is ‘he’? who does ‘him’ refer to?). You don’t know who blew up their friendship and piano partnership because of that one night of the Rachmaninov. And eventually you just throw up your hands when the author says, “They met again by chance at an old castle many, many, many years later, when they were both adults already. And he told him he loved him, and he finally found the courage to come out and break up with that Russian ballerina he was seeing to finally be with the man he had always loved.”

Something like this is incredibly annoying to read, right? It’s frustrating because you don’t know who is who. The text keeps jumping between ‘they’ and ‘he’, so you have no way of knowing who is doing what. And if this were a novel, you’d find it incredibly frustrating to read because of this general flaw: the break of the theme-rheme progression.

This story sucks. Because of the way it cannot string two sentences together in a way that would logically connect the new piece of information in the text to the old already presented in previous sentences.

A good story needs to know how to follow a strict theme-rheme progression. (There is a lot more that it needs, of course – the nervous splashing of the water underneath that boat in Venice, the darkness of that crazy night they stole the keys to the conservatoire, the feel of those cool piano keys underneath their fingertips, the excruciating pain of the tendonitis from that Chopin, the deep rumbling bass of that Rachmaninov in the dark, the taste of the expensive champagne after that competition, the intoxicating scent of those blond curls, the smug smile on that bassoonist’s face, the lonely, broken pencil on top of the piano – so, it needs much more than just that theme-rheme progression, but without that theme-rheme progression it doesn’t have a proper foundation in the first place. That rule is a conditio sine qua non.)

Anyway…

Would it surprise you if I told you that this type of logical cohesion can be achieved by visual means, as well? That images can (and should) follow a theme-rheme progression whenever they’re trying to tell a story, too?

No, of course, not. You’re reading this blog, so I’m sure you’ve worked out by now that visual imagery can be a language in its own right. Images tell us stories that we can decipher with our eyes.

Take this painting, for example:

(Source: Wikimedia Commons; image is in the public domain.)

This is the left (inside) panel of Hieronymus Bosch’s late triptych ‘The Haywain’ (around 1516), which you can admire at the Museo del Prado in Madrid.

If you examine it carefully, you’ll realize that, curiously, Adam and Eve appear in it several times.

That doesn’t mean that there are several different Adams and different Eves in this Biblical story. It means that this painting is telling us a story where different points in time are shown simultaneously inside the same frame (even though they’re not actually happening at the same time). This is referred to as a continuous narrative in art history.

A painting with a continuous narrative shows you events that happened at different points in time inside the same frame without visual dividers between the scenes (which is what you’d get in a comic book, for instance).

Now, be that as it may…Would you have any trouble following the logical progression of this story?

No, of course, not.

You can clearly see Adam asleep (in the upper half of the frame) and Eve being created out of his rib by God.

A bit further down you see the same naked man, i.e. Adam, again. Eve is now fully formed (and it’s clearly Eve; she’s got the same long hair and everything). And now they’re being tempted by the snake.

Sleeping Adam and little rib-Eve is the old piece of information (in a written text, you’d call them the theme); Adam and Eve as they’re being tempted by the snake constitute a new scene (a rheme, if you will), but this new scene is clearly referring back to the earlier scene: We can clearly see that those are the same two people. The old and the new are logically connected.

A bit further down, you then get the expulsion from paradise. Both Adam and Eve are now covering their naughty bits in shame and an angel is banishing them from the Garden of Eden. A new scene again…but again, the same two people.

We have no trouble following this continuous narrative even though the same people appear several times in the painting. Why? Because the progression is completely logical here. We recognize both figures every time they reappear. You could say that, in a sense, their attributes (nakedness, hair, etc.) are used each time to refer back to the theme of the earlier depiction.

The painting thus progresses logically from one scene to the next, and it would never even occur to us to think of these three pairs as separate and different people. We know that it’s Adam and Eve each and every time – even though they appear in the same painting without any visual dividers separating the different parts of the story.

That’s how logical it all is. That’s how much sense the visual language of this painting makes. It connects the old information in the frame with the new in a logical and cohesive way and thus creates a whole story around these scenes.

Now, consider that films can do this in a much simpler way. Films do actually divide their imagery into separate film shots much in the same way that a comic book does divide its story into separate panels that each move the story along.

And yet films, too, stick to very strict rules when it comes to connecting old (previously disclosed) information to new information in a visual way that creates a logical and cohesive narrative.

Does that sound complicated? It’s not, I promise.

Consider that a shot of some character looking at their phone is often followed by a close-up shot of that same phone’s display, for example.

You’d never just get a random close-up shot of some phone screen without first getting a shot establishing whose phone it is that you’re actually looking at. The two shots are logically connected just by mere proximity: You get one shot with a character looking at their phone and only then do you get the close-up of the phone itself. The old (previously disclosed) information and the new information are linked in a visual way that creates a logical connection: This is the person with the phone…and that’s what they’re looking at.

The same can be done in a hundred other ways: Establishing shots of locations are followed by scenes taking place at that very location, for example. 

There is no voice-over that has to explain that to you. “Take note, dear viewer: This dining hall scene takes place inside the building you just got to see from the outside in an establishing shot: Hillerska boarding school.”

That would be ridiculous.

The reason why there’s no need to include an explicit explanation like that is that your brain makes that connection all by itself. It connects the first shot to the second. If you’re shown an establishing shot of a location, you implicitly understand that the next scene you’re seeing is actually set at that very location.

Logical connections between shots that link one piece of information to a new piece of information are very, very common on screen. They are the theme-rheme progression of visual language, basically.

You might think that this is completely trivial, but it’s actually not. Filmmakers spend a lot of time pondering the question of how to edit their raw, filmed material. What shot is supposed to follow what other shot, so that the viewer’s brain connects them in a meaningful way and draws all the necessary conclusions not just from one shot or the other, but from both of them together? How do you make sure the viewer can draw these conclusions even though he or she wasn’t explicitly told to do so?

There’s a whole world of both content and subtext hidden just in between the shots you see on TV.

Do you show a character looking up in surprise at some strange noise and then follow that shot up with another shot showing the source of the noise? Or do you actually turn things around and show the shot with the source of the noise first and only then show us the shot of the character looking up in surprise? Does this subtly change the meaning of what we’re seeing? Does it add some other, unexpected nuance to those two shots?

You can probably see how these questions can plague filmmakers for hours on end when they’re creating a film or a TV show. These questions are far from trivial, and they all contribute to the tone and visual style of a story. And let’s not even mention the subtext that springs up in the gaps between those different shots…

Which finally brings me to the point I was trying to make: Let’s take a closer look at that scene in which Simon is visiting his dad in episode one of season one.

So…We can see Simon enter the house. We hear him ring the doorbell and then…

Well, here’s where things get really interesting.

What would you expect the next shot to be? What is the most logical image based on our discussion of the theme and the rheme of a text?

Think about that for a minute now. Because this is actually important.

Did you give it some thought?

Okay.

So, this is the shot that we actually get at that point. Simon rings the doorbell, and we get this:

We see Simon’s sheepish face…and only Micke’s back.

I cannot begin to tell you how unusual this shot is, and how surprising I found this when I first watched the show.

If you’re used to following along with the logical way in which shots progress from one to the next, if you’re used to the way films speak to their audience in their own visual language, then this shot comes as a huge surprise. It’s very, very unexpected, and I remember sitting back, going, “Huh?” as I first watched this episode.

Simon rings the doorbell, and we get to see…Simon.

This is highly unusual.

At this point in the episode, we already know what Simon looks like. We know him very well, as a matter of fact.

We know that he feels protective of his sister. We know the way he grumpily converses with August. We know the way he opens his metaphorical ‘locker’. We know how he mucks about with his friends. And we know the way he chews his thrice-cursed ketchup-covered spaghetti (you remember the ‘food’ metaphor and what those spaghetti stand for, right?). We know Simon’s face. We’ve seen a lot of him already.

And let’s not forget that, back at that church, we have all collectively fallen in love at first sight with him and his beautiful voice already.

In other words, Simon is the theme here. He is as theme as it gets. 

Simon is the old information entering a new building, so to speak.

Micke is the rheme. Obviously.

We don’t know Micke. We don’t know anything about him. And we haven’t seen him at all at this point.

This is Micke’s character establishing scene, and yet…we get this strange shot.

We get Simon ringing the doorbell and then a shot of…Simon. And we only see Micke from behind.

This breaks the rule of the theme-rheme progression in major, major ways. In any other scene like that, in any show or movie, you’d typically expect to get a shot of Simon ringing the doorbell and then a shot from the other direction, i.e. a shot of the door being opened and Micke’s face being revealed to us.

I cannot begin to tell you how surprised I was when I first watched this show: I expected this scene to be filmed the way any other movie or TV show would film it.

I feel like I’ve seen this exact scene on screen a thousand times before: Some character who I already know rings the doorbell. Cut. Shot of the door being opened. Face of the new character is revealed to me. Done.

In other words, old information and new information are harmoniously joined together by two shots.

The fact that this did not happen here is very intriguing. And it shows you how deliberate the show’s decisions on how to introduce its antagonists actually were.

What I certainly did not know when I was first watching the show, but what we all know now, is that Micke Eriksson is a deeply flawed character.

And not just because all the abusers on this show are mirroring each other and Micke is thus almost certainly mirroring the Big Bad of the series; no, there’s more to it: Micke is also where it all began. He’s the origin story of Simon. He is the source of all those tragedies that befell Simon later.

Micke isn’t just subtext; he’s not just a subtextual mirror image of that monster who abused Simon later on. Micke is also text. Micke is text in a major, major way.

It was the abuse at Micke’s hands that led to all those other horrors in Simon’s life.

If Simon hadn’t ‘learned’ what he learned from his dad (that people who love each other abuse each other), if Micke hadn’t normalized abuse for Simon when Simon was still a wee little child, none of the horrors that happened to Simon later on when he was in seventh grade would have ever occurred.

Micke and that failed marriage of Simon’s parents in general are ground zero on this show. We only know about it all from little textual hints and from the more deeply hidden subtext of this story, but the ‘drug’ metaphor in and of itself tells us all we need to know here: Micke is where it all started.

If only Micke hadn’t done what he did to his family, none of the horrors that were unleashed on Simon later on would have ever occurred in the first place. 

In that sense, Micke is Simon’s origin story, the horrible genesis of his character arc.

It makes all the sense in the world to introduce a character like this with his back to the camera. And the strangely jarring way in which the show breaks the logical progression of shots we would expect at this point fits that purpose, of course.

We expect Simon to ring the doorbell, for the door to be opened and the new face to be revealed.

Instead Simon rings the doorbell, and we get the wrong shot: Simon’s face and a stranger who isn’t showing us his face. It’s creepy and yet strangely fitting.

And look how long the camera stays on Micke’s back in that scene: They’re talking and everything…and we’re still only seeing Micke’s back. This is not subtle at all.

After this initial shot of his back, Micke retreats further into the hall; we’re getting a brief glimpse of his face, but it’s blurry and out of focus.

Simon is sharp and in focus in that shot. (And again: we know Simon! We don’t need any more shots of him. Even if they wanted to show us Simon’s sheepish and apologetic face, the filmmakers have made their point now; we’ve seen that sheepish look now, too. Why are we still seeing Simon’s face?! Why is his father disappearing deeper into the hall of his crappy apartment? Where is his dad’s face? Why is it out of focus?).

(I really like the fact that we get Simon’s shadow on that door here, by the way. But still, why are we focussing on Simon again? Why is his dad’s face all blurry? Why don’t we get a clear shot of his dad’s face? He is the new guy being introduced here, the rheme, so to speak!)

Then we finally get the reverse shot, a shot into the hall. But what’s happening here? You’d think we’d get a shot of Micke’s face now…but no! Again, no face!

Because by now Micke has turned around! How very clever.

It’s the same trick as in ‘High Noon’, remember?

Frank Miller was introduced to us as he hopped off that train with his back to the camera. Then, when we finally got a reverse shot and thought we’d see his face, he’d already turned around, so we got his back again.

Same here.

We get a reverse shot. But no face again.

Micke has turned around and is scrubbing the effects of the booze from his puffy eyes. All we see is his back. Again.

If there’s a more obvious visual clue that the character you’re introducing isn’t a good guy, I don’t know of it.

Micke’s whole character establishing moment is all back-back-back. It just screams, “I’m the antagonist. Look at me, I’m the reason for all that’s gone wrong with Simon.”

We finally get his face in focus then…but a moment later, we see his back again as he walks into his living room.

This whole scene is very well done, and it’s obvious how aware the show’s creators are of the old trope we’re discussing here.

So, if they do, indeed, know their film history so well, does that actually mean it would make sense to ask what they do with the characters that aren’t antagonists?

I mean, we have seen above that some films and shows play around with this back shot trope even when they introduce a protagonist.

Raymond Reddington is the protagonist of the show ‘Blacklist’, and yet they introduce him with his back to the camera in that scene where he turns himself in to the FBI. 

That is because he is a very specific type of protagonist: He is basically the antagonist at the same time; he is an antihero, and you keep wondering throughout the entire show if he might not be the one dark force torpedoing every move the FBI makes from behind the scenes.

Or take ‘Peaky Blinders’: Tommy Shelby (Cillian Murphy) is the protagonist of the story, and yet he is such a dark one that the show decided to introduce him with a shot where he has his back to the camera for a very, very long time (remember that horse scene?).

And I forgot to throw you one of my all-time favourites: Don Draper. Remember that guy? Protagonist of ‘Mad Men’, right? And yet…look how they introduce him with his back to the camera. Subtle, right? Downright sneaky. He’s the protagonist, but boy, is he a complex character. For one, there’s the fact that he’s lying about his identity. So, if there’s a character truly deserving of a character establishing moment that starts with a back shot, it’s Don Draper. And you know what: That’s literally on a show that has those iconic, much-imitated opening credits that show that cartoon version of Don Draper with…his back to the camera.

Ooh, and I forgot ‘Breaking Bad’. But let’s face it: If I start to analyze the character establishing scene of Walter White, a.k.a. Heisenberg, the antihero par excellence, this post here will never end; that scene is just stuffed with clever subtext. So, forgive me, but we won’t talk about it here. (At least, not now…)

So, obviously, filmmakers often play around with this old back shot trope when it fits their purposes.

And with good reason: We have briefly discussed that this whole idea was born on the theatre stage; it used to be a stage taboo that film, as a medium, reworked for its own purposes.

So, what is a back shot in a character establishing scene like that actually telling us? What does it say as it speaks to us in its visual language?

It’s saying, “Watch out! This character has got another side. We’re not showing you his or her face for a very good reason. This character has another side to them. And as you watch this story, try to keep in mind that there is this other hidden side to this character.” That’s what the back shot is telling us.

Now, I find it quite fascinating that this is not how Simon is being introduced to us. Simon shows us his face immediately. He openly sings his metaphorical ‘music’ into our hearts in episode one of season one.

But look how Wilhelm is introduced to us at the very beginning of the same episode:

We don’t see his face properly. His arm is as far as it gets. 

And even once we do catch a glimpse of his surroundings, it’s not like we see all that much of his face (or his back, for that matter).

(Now that we know Wilhelm tends to throw up in sinks, this shot somehow hits different, doesn’t it?)

No, but seriously…Wilhelm is obviously no antihero. And we don’t get a shot straight from the back, but there’s more ambiguity here than you’d expect with a classic protagonist.

We have already discussed how important that mirror is in that scene at the club at the very beginning of episode one of season one. 

And we have discussed what Wilhelm’s fight represents subtextually and why that man and that woman who are pursuing him on the stairs in that club are allegorical characters and what they represent, in turn.

All of that is undoubtedly important. 

It’s important that we’re only shown our protagonist’s bruised and bloodied face in a mirror because that mirror is telling us, “This is a mirror scene. Subtextually, it codes for another scene or situation.”

But none of that erases the fact that the first shot of Wilhelm is one that is shot from the side and hides his face.

We don’t exactly get to see his back, so this is not a villain. But we don’t get a clear shot of his face either.

I think that’s quite remarkable. And this thought is what I’d actually like to leave you with for today:

Wilhelm isn’t painted as a straightforward goody-two-shoes protagonist in this first shot we get during his character establishing scene.

Wilhelm is far, far more ambiguous.

Wilhelm has the capacity for evil in this story. (We know this from many other subtextual hints, as well.) Wilhelm isn’t just some good guy who stumbled into a bad situation. Wilhelm has the capacity to hurt the ones he loves most in the most horrific ways.

All good stories present us with protagonists who have the capacity to do evil things, this makes their conscious choice to become a good person so, so much more meaningful. The protagonist has to actively choose good over evil, in order for good to prevail in the narrative as a whole. And that active choice wouldn’t be very meaningful if the protagonist did not theoretically possess the dark traits that would make it at least plausible for him to choose evil, as well.

I think, on a show that is as meticulous about its visual language as this one, this is beautifully reflected in this very ambiguous first shot we get of Wilhelm – a shot that doesn’t show us his face properly and doesn’t show us his back properly either.

This isn’t how you introduce a villain. But it’s how you introduce an ambiguous and complex character. And Wilhelm is exactly that.

~fin~