(Please beware that this post contains multiple spoilers for the first five episodes of season three of ‘Young Royals’. It also contains my speculations about the season three finale, which are not spoilery per se since I have no connection to this show but might be perceived as such, seeing as they are about an episode that hasn’t aired yet. Keep in mind that we’re going to talk about Simon’s backstory for quite a bit, too, so proceed with caution, as this is a difficult topic.)
While initiation is the big theme of season three (as we have discussed recently), it comes with an adjacent side theme – a key you have to insert into the lock that is the ‘initiation’ metaphor: This key is the side theme of ‘hushing up vs. speaking out’, a theme illustrating the power of oppressive silence vs. the freedom that comes with raising your voice.
And since the entire ‘initiation’ metaphor basically represents Simon’s secret, i.e. his (so far only subtextually laid out) backstory of sexual abuse in early adolescence (long before this show even started), the side theme of ‘hushing up vs. speaking out’ is important in that very context, in the context of Simon’s backstory.
If you’ve been following this little blog for a while, I’m sure I’m telling you nothing new when I point out the following jaw-dropping moment in episode one of season three. You, too, dear reader, have most likely felt like your eyes almost popped out of your skull when you watched it happen on screen:
A newspaper publishes an article in which a former Hillerska student discloses all the horror, all the sexualized violence and terror, initiates had to face in the past when they were subjected to the harrowing hazing rituals (the so-called ‘initiations’) at the boarding school.
Well, if the initiations metaphorically code for the fact that Simon was raped when he was 13-14 years old, then the source the newspaper quotes in its article is, of course, a mirror character for none other than Simon himself!
And now look what this former student (subtextually: Simon) is literally telling us in print:
“He [the Crown Prince] inspired me to dare to talk about what happened there.”
This is very, very strong subtext supporting something we have been screaming about on this little blog and in its comment section for about two months now: Wilhelm’s speech must have had an effect on Simon! Simon must have been affected by Wilhelm’s speech – precisely because Simon hasn’t opened up about his past (so far?).
Wilhelm has done this great, great thing; he has come out to the world in front of rows and rows of rolling cameras. He has found his voice (and God knows how hard he struggled to do so and how much he continues to struggle to translate this singular act of finding his voice into meaningful action now, as season three shows us rather unsubtly). But at least, Wilhelm has done it: He has opened his mouth.
But Simon hasn’t. Five episodes into season three, Simon’s backstory of sexual abuse is still as subtextual as ever; it exists only in the subtext of the show. (There, it does admittedly take up most of the space in the entire subtext, being plastered all over it. But it hasn’t been mentioned in the text itself yet, so casual viewers don’t even know it exists.)
Simon hasn’t opened his mouth. Simon is silent. And continues to be silent for the entire five episodes that we have seen so far.
“What do the initiations have to do with Wille’s speech?” is an actual line, a question Vincent asks in episode one of season three. And it’s August who looks mightily uncomfortable at that. (I’m sure I don’t need to tell you who August represents here and what his subtextual function as a character is in this scene.)
Yeah, what do the initiations have to do with Wilhelm’s speech?
Everything!
They’ve got everything to do with it.
And now we get a mirror character, a former student, who confirms that. He is speaking out because of Wilhelm’s speech; he feels inspired to reveal a secret of abuse (subtextually that’s Simon’s secret!) precisely because Wilhelm found his own voice, too.
Wilhelm’s speech did something to Simon, this tells us. It is percolating through Simon’s mental defences, causing him to reevaluate his own silence, the oppressive, horrible regime of silence he was forced under by an adult child molester many years ago. Wilhelm’s speech has a profound effect on Simon, and Simon is at breaking point now.
So, now I’m asking myself that same question again, the question I recently asked in a few comments I wrote here and that generally kept plaguing me over the last couple of days:
How on earth can the show not pull Simon’s backstory out of the subtext and finally transform it into text in its final episode when it has just given us a message like this?
If the show really decides to keep Simon’s backstory entirely subtextual, if it keeps it a secret and thus never explicitly tells its more casual viewers about what happened to Simon…well, isn’t the show itself, by its very own definition, acting in an abusive and oppressive way, then?
Wouldn’t the show itself contribute to this culture of silence?
Here it has created this huge and impactful subtext about Simon’s backstory of sexual abuse, and it literally tells us how damaging it is to keep secrets like this hidden…and then it doesn’t tell us about this one singular, most important secret on the entire show in its plain text?
Wouldn’t the show be a failure then, message-wise? I mean, a failure by its own standards, of course. By the standards it is setting here in episode one of season three.
This episode plasters the newspaper headlines in bold letters across our screen:
A CULTURE OF SILENCE
And it shows us the courageous act of one single former student (subtextually: Simon) who finally finds his voice and speaks out because he feels inspired by Wilhelm’s speech:
THE PRINCE’S SPEECH INSPIRES FORMER STUDENT TO SPEAK
That’s what our screens practically scream at us when we read the newspaper headlines in episode one of season three.
The show thus juxtaposes the oppressive and horrifying omertà at the school with the freeing act of opening your mouth and speaking the truth.
If the show never pulls Simon’s rape out of the subtext and leaves it hidden even in the finale, wouldn’t the show then take the side of the oppressors in this struggle?
Simon needs to speak out is the very clear, very on-the-nose message of episode one of season three.
And I’m sorry, but if the show doesn’t give us this in its final episode, if it fails to deliver on this message, then it is failing us by its very own standards. I don’t make the rules. The writers did! Right there in episode one of season three.
Somebody mentioned the gay-themed Brazilian movie ‘Hoje Eu Quero Voltar Sozinho’ (English title: ‘The Way He Looks’) in the comments recently, and I watched it to see if there’s anything interesting in it that we could talk about on this blog. Well, that movie is an example of a film failing when measured by its own standards. (And if you want, I can write about it sometime.) But it works with a much, much weaker screenplay to begin with. It just generally isn’t very good. For ‘Young Royals’ to fail when measured by its own metrics…well, the writers would need to screw up pretty badly, I think, seeing as it is such a well-written show in general. But then…never pulling Simon’s secret out of the subtext would be exactly that: A failure by their own standards (not mine), standards that the writers themselves set in episode one of season three.
I’ve told you a while ago that boring screenplays only contain a text (i.e. the superficial plot). They have a textual layer and nothing else.
Good screenplays contain a text and a subtext (all those metaphors, etc.).
And very good screenplays operate on three levels: text, subtext and metatext.
The metatext is the layer that communicates with us, the audience in front of our TV screens; it’s the layer of the script that draws attention to the fact that what we’re seeing isn’t, in fact, real life but a work of art, and those tend to have a message.
Now, some metatext can be more obvious (hello, fourth-wall-breaks, we still love you, even if you’re a bit clunky), and some can be more subtle.
‘Young Royals’ contains some really subtle metatext:
Simon’s rape, as we have discussed before, isn’t just a tragic backstory of one teenager; this is a metaphor. Simon acts as an allegorical character on this show representing the Swedish people, the ones who have been metaphorically ‘raped’ by the upper classes. And since Simon’s sexual abuse wasn’t a case of rape-by-stranger but a case of Simon being manipulated into a seemingly romantic (in reality: abusive) relationship with an adult, this gives us the show’s message about the status quo in Sweden: According to this show, the Swedish people have been manipulated into a relationship with its elites, in which they believe to love their own oppressors but are, in fact, taken for fools by the upper classes, that have been abusing the Swedish people for many, many centuries. The fact that Simon didn’t understand that he couldn’t have consented to a sexual relationship with an adult translates as the Swedish people not understanding that there was never any consent given when it came to their abuse at the hands of the powerful reigning over them.
That is why, incidentally, the initiations of the past (the ones that clearly featured elements of sexual abuse and are just mirror images of Simon’s rape), that’s why those initiations that the former student (read: Simon) describes in the newspaper article took place at ‘The Palace’.
‘The Palace’, as we have seen, has a very important metaphorical function on this show. And it being the location of the metaphorical ‘initiations’ makes all the sense in the world when you consider that those ‘initiations’ tell us what the writers think has been done to the Swedish people in real life for centuries…and by whom! The Swedish people have been abused by those inhabiting the metaphorical palaces in the country.
This second layer of subtext is very important because it directly links up with the metatext of this story:
The metatext is the layer that directly communicates with the audience. And this metatext says, “Wake up! Stop believing you’re in a ‘romantic relationship’ with the elites ruling you. They’re just abusing you. You are being taken for fools.” It says, “To break out of that, you, i.e. the victims of this abuse, need to understand what happened, and you need to raise your voice. This culture of silence has to be broken.”
Well…if the show doesn’t disclose Simon’s backstory in the season three finale, if it doesn’t show us the core of this whole metaphorical abuse storyline, how the hell are the casual viewers of this show supposed to understand its metatextual message? The message that is about more than just Simon’s rape, the metatextual message that is about their own metaphorical ‘rape’ by the elites and the hereditary monarchy reigning over the masses?
Don’t get me wrong: I’m very sceptical that the writers will still manage to pull the rabbit of Simon’s abuse story out of the hat in the last episode. After all, it’s probably only 45 minutes long. And how do you introduce and solve a difficult topic such as this in just a few minutes…
So, I’m not saying they will disclose it; I’m asking: If they don’t, isn’t the basic message of their whole show kaput, so to speak? Aren’t they part of the culture of silence, too, then?
Even if the writers textually disclose everything that happened during those initiations via Schrödinger’s Felice and her black box scene with the investigators, even if they close down the school and replace it with something else, something better (metaphorically showing us that the constitution and the power structure of the country has to change), wouldn’t they still fail by their own metrics if they never gave us Simon’s backstory of sexual abuse in its plain-text form, so everyone, absolutely everyone, every last casual viewer could see it?
If you keep a part of the story, Simon’s horrific backstory, hidden, are you any better than the ones who are trying to hide and hush up ‘the abuse’? Especially since Simon’s abuse is the metaphorical core of your political message, too!
Look, I’ve typed up a long list of predictions for season three, all of which relied on the assumption that this show would actually do the right thing, take its subtext and transform it into text. If it doesn’t do so, then none of the items on that list stand a chance of ever coming true textually…because apparently I have been watching a show that is just not that interested in breaking the culture of silence it criticizes itself.
I get what some of you, clever readers and viewers, are saying: “Well, not everything is for the general audience. Not every bit of subtext has to be transformed into text. Not everything has to be explained. Some things the audience needs to work out on their own.” I get that. Really, I do.
And I would agree if this were just a case of, say, keeping the fact that Ludvig has extramarital affairs hidden in the subtext forever. (We have seen in our discussion of the subtext that he does. But I would be perfectly fine with that fact never seeing the light of day.)
But this core message about feeling inspired to speak out, about finding and raising your voice, about breaking the culture of silence, all of this isn’t just some side info like the Ludvig thing; it isn’t a little subtextual detail that the audience can (or cannot) discover on their own if they have the time and energy to sift through the subtext.
This is the show’s core political message, its wake-up call hidden inside the bitter pill of Simon’s rape.
If, as a writer, you don’t disclose that in the season finale of the whole show, then you’re failing by your own standards, and you’re not really delivering your message, are you? This isn’t just an illuminating side fact; it’s what the whole show is all about. And in episode one of season three, the writers have themselves set the standards by which we should judge them: Hushing things up = bad! Speaking out = good!
How on God’s green earth can they keep Simon’s backstory in the subtext now?
And if they, indeed, do that in the last episode of the show, what the hell were they thinking?
It’s not that I’m not appreciating the wonderfully intricate subtext in those first five episodes of season three. It is brilliantly written, as always. It’s just that I’m missing the text, so far.
And that in a story that is literally built around the idea of ‘speaking out’.
The subtext is great. I’m sure you guys have all seen it and probably dissected it far better than I ever could by now:
Wilhelm singing in the choir (‘music’ metaphor!) comes to mind, and the sad fact that Wilhelm leaves the choir again because performing in front of an audience is so difficult for him (another hint that translating his personal coming-out experience into an active force for good, one that other people, i.e. the audience, can benefit from, is still difficult for Wilhelm).
Then there’s the fact that I’m, of course, majorly pleased about the fact that the sexual subtext of season three seems to confirm what I had only tentatively speculated about so far: We get multiple hints that Wilhelm is struggling with the whole top-or-bottom question in the bedroom, and that it’s actually difficult for him to conform and top, that that’s just not really in his nature (because that boy has a bit of a preference between the sheets and, hint, hint, that preference is not top, duh!).
So, yeah, I really appreciate the subtext. I like that it (subtextually) confirms stuff we’ve been discussing for a while now.
But if it keeps its major bombshell (Simon’s backstory) in its subterranean hangar, I will not be pleased. If it does, indeed, do so, it’s just hushing something up, as well: Its own core message.
Which brings me to my next point:
Hushing up is the enemy of speaking out.
And now please keep in mind how that first episode of season three starts: With literal hush money being offered by August!
The episode starts with Simon (literally) being forced to back down and shut up about what happened (just another metaphorical mirror image of Simon’s backstory of rape), and the episode ends with a former student (subtextually: Simon himself) finally finding his voice and speaking out about what happened to him, feeling emboldened to speak out because Wilhelm’s speech gave him the courage to do so.
Let’s dive under the cut for this and look at it a bit more closely, shall we?