The ‘Wristwatch’ Metaphor (examples: “Young Royals”, “Out in the Dark”, “Interstellar”...)

No, that wristwatch Wilhelm inherited from his brother is not just there to tell us how much Wilhelm misses Erik. 

And no, its function is not to showcase Wilhelm’s privilege, highlight his family’s wealth and tell us that they can afford to buy him fancy stuff (a purpose for which the prop in question, i.e. the somewhat modest watch itself, wouldn’t really be fancy enough, anyway).

No, this watch isn’t just a memento. No, it’s not just about grief. No, it’s not about wealth at all. And no, it’s not just there to highlight the passage of time either.

This watch is a metaphor!

A proper one. You know…one where the meaning of the metaphor is actually pretty different from the concrete thing that represents that meaning. 

Water represents feelings on this show, and music represents love because this is what metaphors are:

In layman’s terms, a metaphor is a thing that symbolically represents another thing – usually it’s a concrete thing that represents an abstract thing.

A metaphor is introduced into a text, so the characters in question can interact with a concrete thing in a scene (say, a prop), and you, as the reader or viewer, can understand that what they’re actually interacting with is the abstract thing, the hidden meaning behind the concrete thing. You can see the characters handling an object or talking about it, but you know they’re actually addressing that abstract, potentially intangible and invisible other thing that the scene and perhaps even the whole story is all about.

(Water is a very concrete thing that you can imbibe or drown in, but on this show, it represents an abstract thing: feelings, which are obviously much more difficult to pin down. When characters interact with water in this story, they might be touching or talking about actual, concrete, wet, hot or cold water, but as a viewer, you know that what they’re actually talking about is this abstract, intangible thing in the scene: feelings.

The same is the case with our ‘wristwatch’ metaphor: A watch is a concrete prop adorning the wrist of many an actor and actress on this show, but it represents something abstract, which we will get to in a second. And by handling it, touching it and/or talking about it, the characters in question are shown to be symbolically interacting with this abstract concept rather than just the concrete timepiece on their wrist.)

And that’s why arguing the wristwatch just vaguely shows us the passage of time or the grief the main protagonist feels over the loss of his brother, that’s why arguing that it is used to showcase his wealth and privilege, that’s why all of this is unequivocally wrong, okay?

Would all of the above explanations make the wristwatch a deeply meaningful symbolic device, too? Sure. They would give the watch an important function in the text. But they wouldn’t make the wristwatch a real metaphor. It would just be a thematic device, so to speak. Something with a purpose behind it…but not a metaphor.

But on this show, the wristwatch is, in fact, a metaphor! 

A proper one. One where a concrete thing (a watch) represents something pretty different: an abstract thing.

As viewers, we should really differentiate between things that are just meaningful and have a certain function in the text…and things that can be (much more narrowly) labelled a proper metaphor.

Clocks, wristwatches, hourglasses, sundials, alarm clocks, clock radios, pocket watches, stopwatches – all timepieces are important. 

Whenever they appear in a film or TV show, you immediately sit up straight because you know they are there to communicate something deeply meaningful and impactful to you.

Think of how they can introduce a sense of urgency to the plot, for example. Is there something more suspenseful than a race against the clock? 

Don’t you just love those film moments when characters have these intense and oh-so-deep conversations about their love life just as they’re waiting for the apocalypse or some other life-ending event that’s about to usher in their impending doom? When time is running out, important things are usually being said in a movie, right?

And how better to show us that time is running out than to give us, say, close-ups of a clock face with the hands inexorably moving forward?

We had recently talked about the 1952 film classic ‘High Noon’, featuring Gary Cooper and Grace Kelly. (I believe we had even talked about it twice: once when we discussed why the main protagonist of the Australian TV show ‘Harrow’ is first introduced watching the showdown of this very movie at the very beginning of the first episode of the show and once as we were talking about how villains are often introduced with their back to the camera during their character establishing moment because ‘High Noon’ is a prime example of this visual character establishing strategy.)

Well, let’s mention ‘High Noon’ once more here because it’s such a brilliant example of the clever use of clocks: Throughout the movie, we get close-up shots of a clock face or the pendulum inside an old grandfather clock swinging back and forth and back and forth. Why? Well, because these shots introduce urgency to the plot, which is, after all, telling us about the decidedly evil and depraved antagonist arriving via train at twelve o’clock (hence the title ‘High Noon’) and the lonely, brave protagonist (played by Gary Cooper) racing against the clock to try and secure the support of other men willing to fight the villain before he arrives and can devastate the small town this Western movie is set in.

The many, many shots of clocks and pendulums tell us, the viewers, how desperate the protagonist is and how he is literally running out of time as man after man turns away and nobody, absolutely nobody wants to help defend the town against the baddies – all while the clock hands creep closer and closer to the dreaded twelve.

We know there is a countdown in this narrative, a countdown to doom, and yet we enjoy the suspense; we watch the whole story with a sense of great anticipation because the way the film employs clocks as visual reminders of its basic premise at strategic moments in the plot is absolutely masterful.

And please take note of the soundtrack in the video I just linked you to, as well. That tick-tock like rhythm we get here clearly emphasizes the meaning of those ‘clock-and-pendulum shots’. (We will talk about two other examples of tick-tock sound effects in this post today, and one of them is so dreadfully clever, yet so incredibly devastating that I barely dare think about it.)

So, the clocks in ‘High Noon’ are clearly deeply meaningful. They are cleverly employed at just the right intervals. They ramp up the tension and keep the viewers hooked.

But are they a metaphor in the strict sense of the word? (I.e. a metaphor is a concrete thing that represents an abstract thing, etc.)

I don’t think so.

Not every visual device that is clever and important is a metaphor. Some things can be meaningful without falling into the category of a metaphor per se.

You can probably think of many other cinematic examples like this: 

In Hollywood science, bombs usually come with (frankly ridiculous) digital alarm clocks, for example.

Ultimatums are often introduced by a character turning an hourglass and thus ‘starting the clock’, as it were.

The passage of time in general is often visualized by means of timepieces: When we are to understand that some time has elapsed between one scene and the next, the sequence of shots will often be edited in such a way that you get a close-up of a clock face in between the two scenes. Sometimes the clock hands will be shown moving fast forward (in an undercranked shot) so as to show the audience just how much time has actually passed between scene A and scene B.

The 1993 comedy film ‘Groundhog Day’ even manages to pull off the opposite: It shows us the same clock radio day after day – which incidentally turns out to be the same day over and over again – but that’s not to highlight the passage of time; it’s to underline that time is, in fact, standing still. The recurring shot of the clock radio switching from 5:59 to 6:00 am is shown to bring about the awful realization that the protagonist is stuck in a time loop.

When you’re dealing with a story about time travel, you get timepieces a lot, too. The moment the protagonists travel back in time, all the clocks and wristwatches are often shown to be running backwards, too. Whenever the protagonists travel to the future, we get fast-forward shots of the clock hands, in turn.

Or think of how action movie protagonists like to synchronize their watches on dangerous assignments right before they split up to case out a building or run through the woods in high heels to chase down some criminal mastermind or something. It’s not that these watches are meaningless per se. It’s just that they usually aren’t metaphors.

And yes, sometimes wristwatches on screen hold next to no symbolic meaning; sometimes they’re mere gadgets. And fan culture can become downright ridiculous when it comes to spotting and fawning over whatever expensive wristwatch, say, Theo James wore on ‘The Gentlemen’. The timepiece in question becomes no more than a fashion statement, an iconic choice if you’re lucky (such as Sean Connery’s Rolex Submariner when he played James Bond). Nonetheless this type of film ‘analysis’ is mostly just an exercise in spot-the-watch, a style-guide-like enthusiasm for whatever accessory the great film star in question is wearing usually for product placement reasons (and God, are there some ridiculous fan clubs – usually fanboy clubs – dedicating their life to this sort of prop sleuthing). Consequently, the symbolic, subtextual value of the scenes featuring these watches is often practically zero.

(I mean, if you really want to analyze films by discussing for hours on end whether some Patek Philippe chronograph is gold-plated or not and if it costs more than your average sports car, be my guest…or rather don’t be my guest because I doubt I would enjoy your company. And I really don’t think this has anything to do with film analysis, to be honest.)

At least the infamous James Bond watches sometimes serve cool gadget purposes in the plot like, you know, being a Geiger counter. But then, sometimes the screenwriters also play with our expectations, satirizing the scenes in question, and suddenly the watch…is just a watch. (Or is it? Loud alarm means being explody, don’t you know. This is confirmed later on in the same film, so…kaboom!)

Still, we wanted to talk about timepieces being proper metaphors, didn’t we? 

So, I thought I’d show you the difference between a watch functioning as an important thematic device and a watch serving as a proper metaphor in the text.

For this, we will look at a couple of films and then switch to ‘Young Royals’ (where the wristwatches definitely are metaphors!) and then go episode by episode and scene by scene.

In all of this, we will concentrate on questions such as: How to spot a metaphor in the first place? Is there ever a universal meaning to a metaphor, i.e. a meaning which is used in every book, film and TV show? And if not, what can we do to discover and decode a metaphor, anyway?

We will quickly address the question of what the tertium comparationis is (again). And then talk about what a weak and what a strong tertium comparationis is in symbolism and why that’s important.

Ultimately, we will ask ourselves: What is Wilhelm’s watch all about and what does it stand for? What do all the wristwatches on ‘Young Royals’ represent? (Because obviously this metaphor is used as a recurring motif throughout the story.) 

And why exactly is Boris, the psychologist, the luckiest and probably happiest person on this entire show?