The Symbolism of Stairs (example: “Young Royals”)

This week you’re getting a medium-length in-between kinda thing while I’m still working on a somewhat longer post.

(Also, I’m actually still reeling from that lengthy ‘leg/foot/shoe’ metaphor post last week; so, I need a little breather right now, to be honest.) But this post here will feature a couple of hopefully interesting things about visual storytelling: It’s all about the eye this week, which is, after all, what film as a medium is all about.

(Uh-oh! I’ve just typed the words ‘medium-length’ post, and already substack is complaining that this post is too long for e-mail…Ooookay. So, apparently substack counts this as a long post, after all. Go figure.)

I would like us to discuss a teensy-tiny line of dialogue in the script of season two that I found rather peculiar. (I’m actually quite sure you’ve all picked up on it by now.) It’s a line that, I think, we should examine with the ‘stairs’ symbolism in mind that the show keeps shoving in our faces again and again and which we recently discussed in the context of Wilhelm’s ‘fight club scene’, a.k.a. Wilhelm’s character establishing scene.

We looked at the symbolism of stairs in movies from all sorts of angles back then, if I recall correctly, going from the infamous ‘steps scene’ from Sergei Eisenstein’s silent film classic ‘Battleship Potemkin’ (1925) to the reference to the ‘Penrose steps’ (a.k.a. ‘the impossible staircase’) in Christopher Nolan’s ‘Inception’ (2010). So, you all know that stairs, whenever they are shown on screen, are something to pay attention to.

Towards the end of this post here, this whole discussion will also finally give me an excuse to talk about over-the-shoulder shots (OTS shots) in a little addendum.

I had mentioned them here and there before, but we haven’t so far managed to discuss them properly and in-depth. (Originally I had planned to dedicate a whole separate post to them, but I feel this is better: Let’s throw this discussion of OTS shots in here.)

Anyway…

So, the line of dialogue I’m sure all of you found noteworthy is uttered by Sara in episode two of season two; it runs over this here shot:

It’s Sara’s birthday. Simon has just given her his best ‘Cumpleaños Feliz’ (and all of us his lovely, warm singing voice), and then, during a somewhat awkward phone call from Rosh and Ayub, the conversation suddenly turns to Marcus.

Afterwards, just as Sara and Simon are shown to be walking away, Simon suddenly hops up onto a stone step, sauntering along the ledge like a tightrope walker pulling off a brilliant stunt while maintaining perfect balance.

Sara doesn’t seem particularly impressed, though, and (here comes the line!) tells him to, “Get down!” as she pulls him, rather forcefully, off the kerbstone.

So, did you ever wonder why that little exchange is in there? Because, to be quite honest, the answer, “Simon just felt like being silly for a bit, and Sara didn’t want him to twist his ankle,” really won’t cut it.

Neither Sara nor Simon are real. They’re fictional characters.

And the shot does already contain some other interesting symbolic elements: You can see the lake in the distance (cf. the ‘water’ metaphor – and please remember that this and the whole preceding ‘Cumpleaños Feliz’ scene could have easily been filmed somewhere else, but no, they were filmed specifically here: in front of the lake!). And what else can we spy with our little subtext-obsessed eye? A whole lot of metaphorical ‘baggage’, right? And not just small backpacks or little handbags; those are some hefty bags, that’s for sure.

So, the shot does already give us some interesting symbolism, and then Sara resolutely pulls Simon off that step.

What’s that all about?

Well, I think one of the first things we have to keep in mind is something we’ve been saying for quite a while already: Things that happen together (i.e. in the same scene) belong together. Close proximity in a script means close subtextual proximity, too.

You do, of course, remember that infamous ‘music room scene’ at the beginning of episode three of season one (after all, we’ve discussed it at length on this little blog): Wilhelm and Simon first talk about sheet music and then their conversation turns to that kiss, with Wilhelm notably rejecting Simon and clearly following some internalized rulebook on sexuality and love. The proximity in the script practically screams at us that these two things are subtextually connected: The ‘sheet music’ is a metaphor for the rules Wilhelm has been force-fed from an early age. 

Things that happen together belong together.

And arguably, something similar is happening here, as well:

Sara and Simon have just talked about Marcus. Sara has asked Simon (rather bluntly, as is her wont) if Simon intends to sleep with Marcus. She thinks that’d be a great idea. And then we get Simon suddenly hopping onto that kerb on a whim and Sara pulling him down again, specifically telling him to get off that step.

Well, methinks we are looking at yet another scene on ‘Young Royals’ containing the aforementioned ‘stairs’ symbolism. It’s just not a whole staircase this time; it’s just that one step.