That bisexual flag (example: “Young Royals”)

Please imagine the following film scene: 

Prince Wilhelm is visiting [insert one of the bigger Swedish cities here; it doesn’t matter which one]. While he’s there, he manages to ditch his security detail to explore the city incognito on his own for a bit.

The powers that be are in a state of utter shock, of course, feverishly trying to establish if something terrible happened to the young prince or if he just wandered off of his own volition. In a desperate attempt to locate him, they even try to track his phone, which doesn’t produce any useful results because, as it turns out, Wilhelm has, of course, managed to lose that thing somewhere.

If you want, dear reader, you can insert a little crosscut film scene here, in which one Simon Eriksson, who happens to be visiting that very same city on a school trip on that day, finds Wilhelm’s phone and picks it up – for obvious, metaphorical reasons (cf. the ‘phone’ metaphor for this).

(And yes, you’ve guessed correctly, this whole hypothetical film scene is set in a completely fictional, alternate reality where Wilhelm and Simon don’t know each other yet.)

Meanwhile Wilhelm, who is, after all, all alone as he wanders around this strange city, manages to get lost within minutes, turning corner after corner, walking down ever more obscure streets and suspect alleyways and growing progressively more and more nervous because he can’t seem to find his way back to that random square where he’s left his bodyguards. It is rapidly getting darker, too [insert your own joke about Scandinavian winters here, please], and of course, the earlier drizzle is starting to turn into a frightful downpour now.

Exhausted, he ducks into a dirty, old bus shelter to hide from the rain. (Just his luck: The bus stop is abandoned and currently not served by any bus route.) He has definitely ended up in one of the more questionable neighbourhoods of the city.

Just as Wilhelm leans against the heavily graffitied wall of the bus shelter to catch his breath and figure out what to do, we get the following shot: Some right-wing idiot or – and this is more likely – some bored teenager with nothing better to do has apparently spray-painted a misshapen swastika and a misspelt slur on the wall of that bus shelter. There’s some bird shit gracing the whole tableau, but at least it provides a nice bright contrast to the dark mould along the edges of the wall, so, you know…small mercies. The swastika isn’t a particularly masterful work of political propaganda either, more of a lopsided doodle, really. But still…it’s definitely there, and the way Wilhelm is leaning against the wall of the bus shelter means that (unbeknownst to him) his head has come to rest next to the spot with said symbol.

That’s the shot.

Now, if you saw a shot such as this, would you even consider exclaiming, “Oh! There’s a swastika right next to his head! So, it’s clear what the filmmakers are trying to tell us: Wilhelm is, of course, a neo-Nazi!” Would you ever even consider thinking this?

Of course, not! Not in a million years. That would be absurd.

Instead you would examine the whole shot, trying to determine what other things are spray-painted on that wall, what they mean and how they communicate with the swastika graffiti. You would probably study everything else in the frame, too – every last detail about Wilhelm’s surroundings, his clothes, his demeanour…You would then examine the broader context of the shot. (What is the scene telling you as a whole? What is textually happening to Wilhelm in it? Who is the antagonist here?) In short, you would try to work out how the broader context interacts with that one detail (the swastika) you’ve spotted in the frame.

Here’s what you would never do: You would never just assume that, because there’s a swastika right next to Wilhelm’s head, this must mean that he is a neo-Nazi. You wouldn’t jump from the detail straight to the character and make an assumption about his identity and personality traits because of that one single detail. That would be ridiculous.

And yet, this is the way in which many people ‘analyze’ films and TV shows. (And yes, of course, I have come up with a completely ridiculous and absurd scenario here that isn’t at all realistic for the textual context of the show we’re discussing. You do understand that I was trying to make a point about shot analysis, and that’s why I picked something so ridiculously over-the-top, right?)

Many viewers just see a detail (a road sign, a symbol, a letter, an, ahem, flag…) and decide that this detail is there to immediately tell us something about the character who is handling it or seen standing next to it; they completely ignore the broader context of the shot and the scene in which the detail is embedded.

We have, of course, discussed what I like to call the ‘Fallacy of the Missing Context’ in connection with the ‘locker’ metaphor when we talked about Simon’s middle-finger keychain: Never just assume that the prop (the keychain) is supposed to tell you something about the character’s personality traits (‘doesn’t give a proverbial about what other people think of him’), without first checking what the whole shot the prop is embedded in is all about. Are there other metaphors in the shot? (The metaphorical ‘locker’, the metaphorical ‘backpack’, anyone?) Are they interacting with the prop in question (i.e. the keychain)? What does all of this mean together?

In our made-up ‘swastika-bus-shelter’ example above, you could ask yourself what Wilhelm was actually doing in that scene, for example. 

He was lost, wasn’t he? He couldn’t find his way. Could the swastika perhaps mean that he is figuratively lost, as well? Trapped in this life at the unbearably reactionary Royal Court? 

You could ask if the fact that the swastika was shown when Wilhelm was inside the bus shelter, i.e. a particularly ugly place (dirty, smelly, bird shit and mould everywhere, etc.), could mean that he is figuratively in a bad place, too.

And what about the fact that this bus stop isn’t served by any bus routes? Could this be telling us that there’s no way out for him right now? That his situation is hopeless?

You could examine all the other graffiti on that wall. Do they communicate with the swastika? (Is there perhaps a picture of a hellscape to be found? Fire and brimstone and all that? Because this wouldn’t mean we’re allowed to jump from the detail to the character either, i.e. it wouldn’t mean that Wilhelm is Satan; I hope we can all agree on that. Maybe the bus stop has a suggestive name, too. How about ‘Crown Street’? We’d get a connection between the Crown, the swastika, the hellscape and the bad place Wilhelm is at right now.)

And you would, of course, take note of the fact that Wilhelm is currently without his phone in that shot. Without a phone, emotionally numb…But, oh, the rain is already starting to come down in sheets. (Metaphorical ‘water’, remember?) So, something is about to change!

And yes, yes! We see that crosscut scene of Simon picking up Wilhelm’s lost phone. (Metaphorical ‘phones’ are very important, of course.)

And suddenly, we realize that the only way Wilhelm is going to find his way back from this hellscape (that is his life) is by being found by someone – by the one who is holding Wilhelm’s metaphorical ‘phone’ in his hand.

If there were such a scene, I’m sure you guys would all work it out and then some. You’re all clever enough; you would probably find much, much more than I ever could. 

You would never just look at that swastika and go, “Oh, that makes sense. Wilhelm must be a neo-Nazi. Case closed. Heil Wilhelm!” This wouldn’t occur to you – not even in your wildest, bränvinn-fuelled dreams.

(Although I have to admit that I would pay actual money to see a movie about staunch Nazi Wilhelm making a devastating discovery: To his utter dismay, his oh-so-pure Aryan heart has just fallen in love. And not only is the person he’s fallen for not exactly blond and blue-eyed; it’s a guy, for Adolf’s sake! Wilhelm is in an absolute state of panic, starting to question everything he’s been taught to believe.

Can we give the whole thing a snappy title? ‘Springtime for Wilhelm’ perhaps? Just imagine Jan-Olof and Ludvig dressed in brownshirts, pink tutus and feather boas, singing a duet together! We could have them step dance in shiny boots. We could give Jan-Olof a tiny moustache. Oh, the possibilities are endless…

And what about a first sex scene between Simon and Wilhelm in which Simon makes a bewildering discovery: “So, Wilhelm, you’re saying nothing about you has ever been erect before – except for your right arm?”)

But enough with the jokes…Let’s get down to business, shall we?

So, jumping from the detail straight to the character is wrong, are we agreed?

Well…What do we make of that bisexual flag, then? The one that’s pinned to the notice board in episode two of season two?

You do remember the shot, don’t you?

Jan-Olof has just dragged Wilhelm out of his class and intends to bring him back to the castle against his will. The headmistress Mk 1 is also in the frame, meekly bidding the Crown Prince goodbye. Wilhelm looks nonplussed by the whole display, barely capable of forming a coherent thought at this point. (He’s probably still wondering where he left his jumper, to be honest.) And then…well, then there’s the little bisexual flag that someone pinned to the notice board on the right side of the frame.

So, what about it? What about that bisexual flag?

I haven’t checked, but I’m reasonably sure there must be some fans of the show out there asserting that this flag is the definitive proof: Wilhelm is bisexual, after all. There! Now, we know! The flag is right there. On the notice board. So, he simply must be. After all, the filmmakers told us so, didn’t they? When a flag is in the frame and a character is in the same frame, the flag is about the character…Or isn’t it?

(If you want to mess with people, ask them why it should be Wilhelm who’s bisexual and not, say, Jan-Olof. Jan-Olof is actually closer to the flag in the frame than Wilhelm. So, by that logic…Jan-Olof enjoys both oysters and snails, if you know what I mean. If you start by dismissing the entire context of the shot and decide to jump from the prop straight (or not so straight) to the character, well, then why not make a silly approach even sillier and jump right to the character who’s closest to the prop in question, right?)

Then, there’s that other common misconception: Some people will always claim that that flag is just there because some Hillerska student pinned it to the board as a lark. In other words, some viewers will assume that fiction is real life, that fictional characters have independent thoughts and even act independently of the filmmakers, instead of, you know…realizing that anything that appears in a frame was put there by people creating a completely artificial environment in a fictional context to convey a message. 

In-universe, it was, indeed, probably some student who pinned that flag to the board. (Or maybe Göran has a hidden side we don’t know anything about.) But this whole universe is a fictional one, so anything that we’re shown in it was carefully constructed or added to a set by a crew of very creative people. It is there for a reason!

I swear I’m not trying to be mean here or anything. These two misconceptions are just incredibly common. I mean, I hear them from my closest friends all the time. In many of my real-life conversations about movies or TV shows, people inevitably end up stumbling into one of those two traps: either the ‘Fallacy of the Missing Context’ (jumping from the detail straight to the character without a second glance at the context) or the ‘Reality Misconception’ (instinctively assuming that what’s on screen is real and thus coming up with rationalizations for why things are presented in a certain way – rationalizations that are essentially real-life narratives).

It’s not something we should scoff at, by the way. We’re all susceptible to it. Film is a visual medium and as such, it is incredibly immersive – so immersive, in fact, that we tend to forget that what we’re seeing isn’t random (the way real life is), but, in fact, constructed. We connect to visual imagery in a way that is almost instinctual: I see it. So, it must be real. Which means that ‘it’ must have motivations and thoughts and reasons…

So, what is going on with that bisexual flag?

In the text below, I will argue that it doesn’t tell us that Wilhelm is bisexual. It doesn’t tell us the opposite either. The flag serves a different purpose and conveys a completely different message.

Claiming that the flag is there to point to Wilhelm’s (bisexual) orientation would mean going ‘Fallacy of the Missing Context’ on the shot. In other words, it’s so wrong that even the opposite isn’t right anymore.

We will try to understand the context of that shot (and that scene as a whole). And in the process, we will take a cursory look at Farima and Minou, the two lovely ladies that we have neglected for far too long on this little blog.

Follow me under the cut, and we’ll entertain ourselves with Sheldon Cooper’s favourite pastime: vexillology – that is…the study of flags.

Okay, I’m kidding. No worries. Just one flag. The bisexual one in all its glory.

(And if you’ve just come away from this introduction with the impression that tvmicroscope is basically just Sheldon Cooper with a blog, then I’ve only got myself to blame; I have brought that upon myself, haven’t I? Well, let’s just say, Sheldon and I have a few things in common. And no, not the good ones, unfortunately. So…)

Let’s discuss why that flag doesn’t tell us that Wilhelm is bisexual and, even more importantly, why it’s there in the first place and what the show’s creators are actually trying to tell us with it.

Welcome to tvmicroscope’s ‘Fun with Flags’...