You made my Sunday-pretty much laughed through this post. Esp the no pineapple on pizza comment, which is to me like chocolate bagels or bagels with raisins in them. Completely horrible and wrong. Bagels are to be eaten with lox and cream cheese, preferably hot from the deli.
When the two boys meet in Bjarstad to watch Rosh play soccer, they meet in front of a gas station and start walking to the soccer field. Blink and you miss it but they pass a lighted pizza-kebab sign on a building in the background. And of course, Simon is talking about the town; 'everyone knows everyone' and 'there isn't much to do' with a kind of resignation (or so I interpret his delivery) as they pass by the sign.
I missed the pizza hamburger reference because I've been watching in Swedish with subtitles and there are no subtitles for Rosh and Ayub's conversation. I rewatched with the dubbed version. I wonder if I have missed other 'clues' by watching with subtitles but I prefer the Swedish version. Call me a snob...
(random quote)
"And right at that moment the future King in question shows up on Simon’s doorstep and verbally lays his crown, his future and his birthright down at Simon’s feet." This made me tear up a bit. I mean, holy shit. (thank you, Boris, for your part to play)
Yeah, but my cynical brain also went to the fact that Wilhelm is Simon's ticket outa there, the possibility of a life a comfort and fame, as you mention. Surely Simon is aware that he has caught a golden fish, their deep affection for one another notwithstanding. But they are both benefitting, obviously. Wilhelm has also seen a glimpse of a different life for himself, one of transparency and love, the life he wants and the life we want for him. Maybe we all do this or want this, to be held up and supported to a better, richer (in all ways) life. Perhaps it is a metaphor that is true and therefore shows up everywhere in art and literature and movies.
I'm curious to see what you come up with in you analysis of Simon and his complicated psyche.
Thank you for yet another beautiful distraction. Back to the thesis (ug)
Yes! Very good catch! The pizza sign. I had forgotten about that one. You can practically sense the 'wrongness' in that scene, can't you? As you've correctly pointed out above, Simon complains a bit about everyone knowing everyone in Bjärstad. (You can practically feel his boredom there.) But what's interesting here, as well, is the fact that Wilhelm sarcastically comments that this is just like his life. So, subtextually we get a parallel: Simon's life in Bjärstad doesn't feel all that great to Simon, and Wilhelm's life at the Royal Court doesn't feel all that great to Wilhelm. The way these two characters are currently living their lives is wrong, is what the pizza sign underlines.
And then this gets further reinforced by the girls low-key stalking Wilhelm a little bit and giggling. Wilhelm looks very uncomfortable about that. So, the whole scene is pervaded by this sense of wrongness. None of these two characters are truly happy in their lives the way they are right now, and none of them are happy where they are at at that point in the story. It's an uncomfortable scene, and the pizza sign is just the icing on the cake, so to speak.
By the way, I don't think Simon trying to get out of Bjärstad is about wealth or money at all. This isn't about breaking out of poverty per se. We shouldn't misunderstand his motivations. Wilhelm isn't a 'golden ticket' in that sense. I think what the show is doing very, very well is that it doesn't romanticize working-class life either.
It shows us the vapid life of the upper-class and the way these spoilt rich kids all struggle with the expectations that are heaped upon them, yes. But it also shows us that working-class life isn't just hard because of poverty. It isn't some sort of super valiant and romantic life, and working-class people aren't superhuman heroes; they have flaws too. It's not just the lack of money that makes this kind of life difficult. It, too, comes with expectations that can be quite dumb, even destructive sometimes. (Think: working-class parents telling their bright kid, "What do you want to go to university for? And what the hell is philosophy and literature even supposed to be? You can't eat that. No, no, we don't need those high-faluting nonsense around here. You're staying here and working a proper job as a sales assistant at a shop/taking over your dad's car repair shop, etc.") The show subtly shows us that while Simone loves the people around him and likes the place he grew up at, he is still very different from them: He's a very talented musician, a fact that only his father seems to have a very vague sense about (finally, something at least a little bit positive about the dad, phew!).
His mother, no matter how lovely she might seem, doesn't seem to realize what talent lives under her roof, and his friends don't see the point in being ambitious at all.
There are parents who would be on the phone 24/7 to find some teacher/tutor/institution/scholarship or whatever for their son if they had a child THIS talented, but nobody around him seems to notice it. (Good thing that the music teacher finally took a shine to him at least.) That's a real problem for working-class children. It's not so much the lack of opportunities because I'm sure the Scandinavian countries all offer quite a lot in that respect; it's the fact that nobody around them cares enough to check them out and sign the kid up for something and consistently support their child's life choices.
It's perfectly natural to feel trapped in an environment like that.
And in that sense, Wilhelm isn't Simon's 'meal ticket'.
Instead, they are growing together as people: If Wilhelm indeed manages to pull off the coming-out of the century by being brave enough to be the first 'out' royal in Europe and standing up to his environment, well, then Simon might feel encouraged to stand up to his environment too, to tell each and every friend and family member around him, "No, I don't want to stock shelves, paint fences, lift heavy packages for the rest of my life. I want to go to a conservatory and study music. And yes, I know you don't understand what that means and that there's no money in that at first. But you have to trust me that I'll manage. There are scholarships, and eventually I will earn a living this way. This is my life even if you don't understand and don't approve of it."
I think that's what it's all about. Not money. Not financial support from Wilhelm. For Simon, Wilhelm and a relationship with him is motivational. Simon is Wilhelm's reason to finally deal with the feelings he's been forced to repress; Wilhelm can be brave because Simon is a great motivation to be so. But Simon, too, can learn how to be brave. It's reciprocal, which is what's so charming about their dynamic, I think. So, I don't think there's anything we need to be cynical about when it comes to Simon's wish to leave his home town.
Anyway, thank you for pointing out the pizza sign. And thank you again for your lovely and thoughtful comment, as always.
Wow, thank you. I am currently in an on-line thesis classroom this morning, oh dear. And your lengthy and thoughtful responses are making me unaccountably happy. I see your point about upper crust/working class similarities/differences and thanks for the course correction for my thinking. Perhaps Wilhelm's first comment about Simon's singing (from the heart) is the catalyst for the unfolding story. That, and Simon treating Wilhelm like an ordinary person ( and seeing in Wilhelm someone HE can talk to )while the sycophants around Wilhelm bow and scrape at their first dinner together. I have read elsewhere that Simon's mom is CLUELESS about her kids. She is sweet and kind but she doesn't know the interiority of their lives. Sara is having a relationship with August (yikes) and Simon is a talented musician who gets some encouragement from the music teacher who unfortunately folds when Jan-Olof decides Simon's song is inappropriate. To be fair, Sara no longer lives at home so her behavior is unseen by mom. My kids got away with some shit when they were that age. Mom is working hard to keep a roof over their heads and food in their mouths. I can relate. I sure hope Season 3 gives us the back story about her and Micke's failed marriage and that could flesh out the kid's stories too. But there is scarce support for Simon's talent on the ground.
Simon is relentlessly bullied by some of the rich kids and it's heartbreaking. He perseveres however in spite of it. Wilhelm sees it and does what he can to protect him. Wilhelm is bullied too, by August and by the expectations of his royal family I want Season 3 to give Simon's bullies a (metaphorical ) trouncing. And for Wilhelm to break the chains of his royal life. and love on his boy openly. That would be heaven. Just saying.
Well, back to my virtual classroom. You, whoever you are, are awesome. No need to reveal yourself, btw. I even Googled film theory school, as if I want to go right into another program of study! Because I'm enjoying the hell out of your posts. Really.
Your article is recommended for all the Marcus haters out there..They will love you equating Marcus with bad vibe pizza/vomit!
You helped answer a question I have always had about that dialogue in S1E5 (which is, by the way, the most awesome Young Royals episode of all!). English subtitles. "Krille got a pizza this morning -- a really greasy one." The English dub is "Krille threw up this morning -- a big one". So why that disconnect? I checked Tumbler and other parts of Google, and apparently a slang term for vomiting is "put a pizza down". But either eating a greasy pizza when hungover (sort of a low point in life), or vomiting, your metaphor works.
I have watched Young Royals more than 20 times and I do not see any other pizza references, I think that maybe (?) the Karaoke bar was serving pizza, but it was literally just in the corner when they entered (perhaps a more forboding pizza presence would have been a fun idea). Anyway, I'd like to point out the ABSENCE of pizza discussion amoung the boarders, which also supports your point. In S2E3 Willie and Felice are skipping school dinner and hanging in his room, and decide to impose upon the Royal court to deliver them food. They are brainstoming what to order and Felice mentions sushi, pasta, bibimbop, and the winner, poke bowl . No mention of pizza at all, which is typically the sort of thing that dorm students always crave or at least consider when ordering food. Willie and Felice don't even mention pizza -- not part of their "realm" or "vibe" or "reality". By the way, the very next scene is the "Marcus-pizza-Marcus" workout scene you mentioned earlier.
Since I rewatched the karaoke bar scene to write this, I'd like to mention one terrific moment I had missed: After introducing Simon to his friends Marcus says to Simon "so, which one will you pick?". This REALLY flusters/throws Simon. Marcus pulls him back to reality with redirection to the Karaoke song list. And then the song they pick: 'Love isn't Love".
Oh, good one! I was focused on how out of tune they were. And Marcus dwarfing Simon physically. Yuck. And they do pass a pizza sign on their way to the soccer field (see above).
Thank you for your lovely comment and your kind words.
And I apologize for replying so late. All my free time goes into writing these long articles at the moment and sometimes I just can't keep up with answering everything you lovely people write to me. And then I just have to make a choice: Do I write something today or do I write replies instead.
And yes, I have to admit that I almost feel sorry for Marcus at this point; the show's metaphorical subtext really goes out of its way to show us that Marcus and Simon just don't work as a couple. The subtext is so clear on that one (from the fact that Marcus meets Simon while he's on his way to the toilet, to the implied 'fakery' of singing karaoke together, the lack of any 'water' during the 'fakest' rowing competition of all time...and finally being compared to vomit...it's not a good look for Marcus).
And yessss!!! on the Felice and Wilhelm scene, of course.
By the way, as weird as it may sound, I actually picked up on the fact that there must have been a translation mistake in the subtitles right away because 'laying a pizza' is the expression I remember very, very well from my misspent youth. So, I instantly knew that Krille hadn't eaten a pizza; he had most likely vomited all morning. (The thing that took a bit longer was to understand that this, in turn, was a metaphor.)
By the way, the karaoke song you mention is a perfect example of how this show works with intertexuality.
Largely, 'Young Royals' is a intertexuality-light show (which I'm grateful for). There are the lyrics of the respective songs, the book by Karin Boye, and the horror movie they watch in episode two of season one, of course...But the show doesn't have its main character watch three different movies every single episode, which just strikes me as a case of writers stroking their own ego whenever it happens on a show ("Look what a clever writer I am; I know all of cinematic history, and you don't!"). Picking up on several different black-and-white movie classics every episode can be quite challenging for the audience, and ultimately there are other ways of conveying the same symbolic message that are easier for the audience to understand (by resorting to decipherable metaphors, for example). Inserting songs with understandable lyrics is a nice middle ground, I think. All of us can hear the lyrics and understand how they symbolically relate to the scene in question. So, I'm glad the makers of 'Young Royals' decided to take this path instead of inserting a ton of intertextual references that would go over our heads.
Anyway, thank you again for your comment. I'm so glad to hear you like reading this.
One more thing. You mentioned the girls stalking Wilhelm while he and Simon are walking to the soccer field. He gets on public transportation and he has obviously never ridden a public bus before cuz he doesn't know how to pay the fare. There is a brief glance at passengers watching him fumble around. One woman in the back is looking at her phone. When we see her again a few minutes later, she's filming Wilhelm with her phone camera. Must happen to the poor guy all the time. So August's hissy fit back at school is stupid-he's trying to control the narrative but that ship has sailed.
I was just rewatching Season One and I noticed something interesting after Erik’s funeral when Wilhelm is eating dinner with his parents. It occurs when Queen Kristina is talking to Wilhelm about how she and Erik both knew their entire lives that they would be crowned and how difficult it is that Wilhelm is being thrown into this position. She follows this up by telling Wilhelm that he will be compared to Erik every step of the way. To which he replies “I already am, I always have been”. And Queen Kristina starts gagging on her food, and has to use a napkin to I assume spit it out. We can’t see what food they’re eating but it makes me wonder about the deeper meaning of that scene. I will have to think more about it. All I can come up with right now is that it’s representing her trying to choke down her emotions and feelings (and maybe guilt?).
Yes, you're absolutely right. That's a curious scene, isn't it?
I think it's very, very interesting that she seems to suffer from the same condition as her younger son who, as we've been told again and again, tends to throw up or at least dry-heave in times of trouble.
In real life, we would say: This sounds like a condition that's running in the family. But this isn't real life; it's art. Which is why we have to assume the show is deliberately drawing up a parallel between mother and son. Possibly to subtly draw our attention to the fact that there are other parallels between them, as well: After all, she, too, was in love with someone she wasn't supposed to fall for when she was younger. Well, and parallels usually exist to showcase a contrast: The difference is that she returned back into the embrace of the system, and Wilhelm most likely won't.
Anyway, thank you for your comment. I'm glad you're working your way through all of these articles. It's a rather daunting and long journey you're on there. There are just so many of them by now. So, thank you for letting me know you're enjoying the ride.
Dear whoever is writing these beautiful and deep analyses, I would like you to thank you from the bottom of my heart for opening a whole new world for me. Growing up as a neurodivergent person who struggled (and still sometimes does) with reading between the lines or read the emotions of people around me in a post-communist country, where the basic education focused solely on memorizing a bunch of information without a proper context, reading your elaborate texts are so fascinating for me. Of course, I knew what a symbol or a metaphor is, also understood how they work on a very basic level, but to what extent it can be employed in art in general I had no idea. As I preferred straightforward logic over complicated emotions I focused on life sciences with set rules based on math, physics and chemistry. I happily watched sci-fi or (true)crime shows/films through my eyes of a scientist, or laughed at ghost horror films where the known science was shattered. I really enjoy cinematography, but my preferences in genres clearly mirror what I am familiar with. Moreover, if your brain has to run full speed in the lab so you don't mess up, because that could mean many weeks of your work will end up in a trash, when you come home you need to switch off and watch a cleaning video on YT. But then, I accidentally came across the synopsis of YR and started to watch it out of pure curiosity and I was like: “Wait a minute. This is weird.” How can I relate so much to a TEEN drama? Come on, I did not like teen series even when I was a teenager. So why this particular show? Why watching it felt so real, beautiful and painful at the same time. I had no clue. OK, now I may look like someone who discovered emotions only late in adulthood what is obviously not true, but until now only music (and cooking, about that later) had such a deep impact that it could overpower my logic brain. So I started to do research, because that is what I am good at. Thanks to the all dedicated people here in the wide ocean of the internet I started slowly dive under the pleasing esthetics of YR, but only when I found your articles I started to understand not only the complexity of the storytelling but also let's say the scientific rules and the fulcrums used to build a meaningful story (a story for a wider publicum than it might appear at first glance on top of that). I've started from your first post and when I came to this “pizza” article, based on your narrative I could easily answer why it is so wrong before reading the actual article. Maybe that metaphor was easy to read, but anyway… I was so happy. So, dear whoever you are, you are an excellent teacher and I can't thank you enough for all the effort you put in these texts. Oh… I am so eager to learn even more.
Originally I wanted to point out something interesting what actually triggered me to write a post and join the convo, and didn't expect to write this a long “appreciation” post, so I'm sorry for that and leave that actual comment in the following 'fish' metaphor article. As I am few months late here, I hope that it reaches you. Anyway… Thank you for your hard work. Humbly your new subscriber.
You made my Sunday-pretty much laughed through this post. Esp the no pineapple on pizza comment, which is to me like chocolate bagels or bagels with raisins in them. Completely horrible and wrong. Bagels are to be eaten with lox and cream cheese, preferably hot from the deli.
When the two boys meet in Bjarstad to watch Rosh play soccer, they meet in front of a gas station and start walking to the soccer field. Blink and you miss it but they pass a lighted pizza-kebab sign on a building in the background. And of course, Simon is talking about the town; 'everyone knows everyone' and 'there isn't much to do' with a kind of resignation (or so I interpret his delivery) as they pass by the sign.
I missed the pizza hamburger reference because I've been watching in Swedish with subtitles and there are no subtitles for Rosh and Ayub's conversation. I rewatched with the dubbed version. I wonder if I have missed other 'clues' by watching with subtitles but I prefer the Swedish version. Call me a snob...
(random quote)
"And right at that moment the future King in question shows up on Simon’s doorstep and verbally lays his crown, his future and his birthright down at Simon’s feet." This made me tear up a bit. I mean, holy shit. (thank you, Boris, for your part to play)
Yeah, but my cynical brain also went to the fact that Wilhelm is Simon's ticket outa there, the possibility of a life a comfort and fame, as you mention. Surely Simon is aware that he has caught a golden fish, their deep affection for one another notwithstanding. But they are both benefitting, obviously. Wilhelm has also seen a glimpse of a different life for himself, one of transparency and love, the life he wants and the life we want for him. Maybe we all do this or want this, to be held up and supported to a better, richer (in all ways) life. Perhaps it is a metaphor that is true and therefore shows up everywhere in art and literature and movies.
I'm curious to see what you come up with in you analysis of Simon and his complicated psyche.
Thank you for yet another beautiful distraction. Back to the thesis (ug)
Yes! Very good catch! The pizza sign. I had forgotten about that one. You can practically sense the 'wrongness' in that scene, can't you? As you've correctly pointed out above, Simon complains a bit about everyone knowing everyone in Bjärstad. (You can practically feel his boredom there.) But what's interesting here, as well, is the fact that Wilhelm sarcastically comments that this is just like his life. So, subtextually we get a parallel: Simon's life in Bjärstad doesn't feel all that great to Simon, and Wilhelm's life at the Royal Court doesn't feel all that great to Wilhelm. The way these two characters are currently living their lives is wrong, is what the pizza sign underlines.
And then this gets further reinforced by the girls low-key stalking Wilhelm a little bit and giggling. Wilhelm looks very uncomfortable about that. So, the whole scene is pervaded by this sense of wrongness. None of these two characters are truly happy in their lives the way they are right now, and none of them are happy where they are at at that point in the story. It's an uncomfortable scene, and the pizza sign is just the icing on the cake, so to speak.
By the way, I don't think Simon trying to get out of Bjärstad is about wealth or money at all. This isn't about breaking out of poverty per se. We shouldn't misunderstand his motivations. Wilhelm isn't a 'golden ticket' in that sense. I think what the show is doing very, very well is that it doesn't romanticize working-class life either.
It shows us the vapid life of the upper-class and the way these spoilt rich kids all struggle with the expectations that are heaped upon them, yes. But it also shows us that working-class life isn't just hard because of poverty. It isn't some sort of super valiant and romantic life, and working-class people aren't superhuman heroes; they have flaws too. It's not just the lack of money that makes this kind of life difficult. It, too, comes with expectations that can be quite dumb, even destructive sometimes. (Think: working-class parents telling their bright kid, "What do you want to go to university for? And what the hell is philosophy and literature even supposed to be? You can't eat that. No, no, we don't need those high-faluting nonsense around here. You're staying here and working a proper job as a sales assistant at a shop/taking over your dad's car repair shop, etc.") The show subtly shows us that while Simone loves the people around him and likes the place he grew up at, he is still very different from them: He's a very talented musician, a fact that only his father seems to have a very vague sense about (finally, something at least a little bit positive about the dad, phew!).
His mother, no matter how lovely she might seem, doesn't seem to realize what talent lives under her roof, and his friends don't see the point in being ambitious at all.
There are parents who would be on the phone 24/7 to find some teacher/tutor/institution/scholarship or whatever for their son if they had a child THIS talented, but nobody around him seems to notice it. (Good thing that the music teacher finally took a shine to him at least.) That's a real problem for working-class children. It's not so much the lack of opportunities because I'm sure the Scandinavian countries all offer quite a lot in that respect; it's the fact that nobody around them cares enough to check them out and sign the kid up for something and consistently support their child's life choices.
It's perfectly natural to feel trapped in an environment like that.
And in that sense, Wilhelm isn't Simon's 'meal ticket'.
Instead, they are growing together as people: If Wilhelm indeed manages to pull off the coming-out of the century by being brave enough to be the first 'out' royal in Europe and standing up to his environment, well, then Simon might feel encouraged to stand up to his environment too, to tell each and every friend and family member around him, "No, I don't want to stock shelves, paint fences, lift heavy packages for the rest of my life. I want to go to a conservatory and study music. And yes, I know you don't understand what that means and that there's no money in that at first. But you have to trust me that I'll manage. There are scholarships, and eventually I will earn a living this way. This is my life even if you don't understand and don't approve of it."
I think that's what it's all about. Not money. Not financial support from Wilhelm. For Simon, Wilhelm and a relationship with him is motivational. Simon is Wilhelm's reason to finally deal with the feelings he's been forced to repress; Wilhelm can be brave because Simon is a great motivation to be so. But Simon, too, can learn how to be brave. It's reciprocal, which is what's so charming about their dynamic, I think. So, I don't think there's anything we need to be cynical about when it comes to Simon's wish to leave his home town.
Anyway, thank you for pointing out the pizza sign. And thank you again for your lovely and thoughtful comment, as always.
Wow, thank you. I am currently in an on-line thesis classroom this morning, oh dear. And your lengthy and thoughtful responses are making me unaccountably happy. I see your point about upper crust/working class similarities/differences and thanks for the course correction for my thinking. Perhaps Wilhelm's first comment about Simon's singing (from the heart) is the catalyst for the unfolding story. That, and Simon treating Wilhelm like an ordinary person ( and seeing in Wilhelm someone HE can talk to )while the sycophants around Wilhelm bow and scrape at their first dinner together. I have read elsewhere that Simon's mom is CLUELESS about her kids. She is sweet and kind but she doesn't know the interiority of their lives. Sara is having a relationship with August (yikes) and Simon is a talented musician who gets some encouragement from the music teacher who unfortunately folds when Jan-Olof decides Simon's song is inappropriate. To be fair, Sara no longer lives at home so her behavior is unseen by mom. My kids got away with some shit when they were that age. Mom is working hard to keep a roof over their heads and food in their mouths. I can relate. I sure hope Season 3 gives us the back story about her and Micke's failed marriage and that could flesh out the kid's stories too. But there is scarce support for Simon's talent on the ground.
Simon is relentlessly bullied by some of the rich kids and it's heartbreaking. He perseveres however in spite of it. Wilhelm sees it and does what he can to protect him. Wilhelm is bullied too, by August and by the expectations of his royal family I want Season 3 to give Simon's bullies a (metaphorical ) trouncing. And for Wilhelm to break the chains of his royal life. and love on his boy openly. That would be heaven. Just saying.
Well, back to my virtual classroom. You, whoever you are, are awesome. No need to reveal yourself, btw. I even Googled film theory school, as if I want to go right into another program of study! Because I'm enjoying the hell out of your posts. Really.
Deep bow.
Your article is recommended for all the Marcus haters out there..They will love you equating Marcus with bad vibe pizza/vomit!
You helped answer a question I have always had about that dialogue in S1E5 (which is, by the way, the most awesome Young Royals episode of all!). English subtitles. "Krille got a pizza this morning -- a really greasy one." The English dub is "Krille threw up this morning -- a big one". So why that disconnect? I checked Tumbler and other parts of Google, and apparently a slang term for vomiting is "put a pizza down". But either eating a greasy pizza when hungover (sort of a low point in life), or vomiting, your metaphor works.
I have watched Young Royals more than 20 times and I do not see any other pizza references, I think that maybe (?) the Karaoke bar was serving pizza, but it was literally just in the corner when they entered (perhaps a more forboding pizza presence would have been a fun idea). Anyway, I'd like to point out the ABSENCE of pizza discussion amoung the boarders, which also supports your point. In S2E3 Willie and Felice are skipping school dinner and hanging in his room, and decide to impose upon the Royal court to deliver them food. They are brainstoming what to order and Felice mentions sushi, pasta, bibimbop, and the winner, poke bowl . No mention of pizza at all, which is typically the sort of thing that dorm students always crave or at least consider when ordering food. Willie and Felice don't even mention pizza -- not part of their "realm" or "vibe" or "reality". By the way, the very next scene is the "Marcus-pizza-Marcus" workout scene you mentioned earlier.
Since I rewatched the karaoke bar scene to write this, I'd like to mention one terrific moment I had missed: After introducing Simon to his friends Marcus says to Simon "so, which one will you pick?". This REALLY flusters/throws Simon. Marcus pulls him back to reality with redirection to the Karaoke song list. And then the song they pick: 'Love isn't Love".
Love isn't love without this feeling
It isn't right
It isn't real at all
It's just illusion
A dream that will tumble and fall
Love isn't love when you're not lonely
In every minute that you spend apart
But when he's near you
You share every beat of his heart
He hangs on every word that you say
Love isn't love if he's not loving you this way
Love isn't love if he's not loving you this way
Oh, good one! I was focused on how out of tune they were. And Marcus dwarfing Simon physically. Yuck. And they do pass a pizza sign on their way to the soccer field (see above).
Thank you for your lovely comment and your kind words.
And I apologize for replying so late. All my free time goes into writing these long articles at the moment and sometimes I just can't keep up with answering everything you lovely people write to me. And then I just have to make a choice: Do I write something today or do I write replies instead.
And yes, I have to admit that I almost feel sorry for Marcus at this point; the show's metaphorical subtext really goes out of its way to show us that Marcus and Simon just don't work as a couple. The subtext is so clear on that one (from the fact that Marcus meets Simon while he's on his way to the toilet, to the implied 'fakery' of singing karaoke together, the lack of any 'water' during the 'fakest' rowing competition of all time...and finally being compared to vomit...it's not a good look for Marcus).
And yessss!!! on the Felice and Wilhelm scene, of course.
By the way, as weird as it may sound, I actually picked up on the fact that there must have been a translation mistake in the subtitles right away because 'laying a pizza' is the expression I remember very, very well from my misspent youth. So, I instantly knew that Krille hadn't eaten a pizza; he had most likely vomited all morning. (The thing that took a bit longer was to understand that this, in turn, was a metaphor.)
By the way, the karaoke song you mention is a perfect example of how this show works with intertexuality.
Largely, 'Young Royals' is a intertexuality-light show (which I'm grateful for). There are the lyrics of the respective songs, the book by Karin Boye, and the horror movie they watch in episode two of season one, of course...But the show doesn't have its main character watch three different movies every single episode, which just strikes me as a case of writers stroking their own ego whenever it happens on a show ("Look what a clever writer I am; I know all of cinematic history, and you don't!"). Picking up on several different black-and-white movie classics every episode can be quite challenging for the audience, and ultimately there are other ways of conveying the same symbolic message that are easier for the audience to understand (by resorting to decipherable metaphors, for example). Inserting songs with understandable lyrics is a nice middle ground, I think. All of us can hear the lyrics and understand how they symbolically relate to the scene in question. So, I'm glad the makers of 'Young Royals' decided to take this path instead of inserting a ton of intertextual references that would go over our heads.
Anyway, thank you again for your comment. I'm so glad to hear you like reading this.
One more thing. You mentioned the girls stalking Wilhelm while he and Simon are walking to the soccer field. He gets on public transportation and he has obviously never ridden a public bus before cuz he doesn't know how to pay the fare. There is a brief glance at passengers watching him fumble around. One woman in the back is looking at her phone. When we see her again a few minutes later, she's filming Wilhelm with her phone camera. Must happen to the poor guy all the time. So August's hissy fit back at school is stupid-he's trying to control the narrative but that ship has sailed.
I was just rewatching Season One and I noticed something interesting after Erik’s funeral when Wilhelm is eating dinner with his parents. It occurs when Queen Kristina is talking to Wilhelm about how she and Erik both knew their entire lives that they would be crowned and how difficult it is that Wilhelm is being thrown into this position. She follows this up by telling Wilhelm that he will be compared to Erik every step of the way. To which he replies “I already am, I always have been”. And Queen Kristina starts gagging on her food, and has to use a napkin to I assume spit it out. We can’t see what food they’re eating but it makes me wonder about the deeper meaning of that scene. I will have to think more about it. All I can come up with right now is that it’s representing her trying to choke down her emotions and feelings (and maybe guilt?).
Yes, you're absolutely right. That's a curious scene, isn't it?
I think it's very, very interesting that she seems to suffer from the same condition as her younger son who, as we've been told again and again, tends to throw up or at least dry-heave in times of trouble.
In real life, we would say: This sounds like a condition that's running in the family. But this isn't real life; it's art. Which is why we have to assume the show is deliberately drawing up a parallel between mother and son. Possibly to subtly draw our attention to the fact that there are other parallels between them, as well: After all, she, too, was in love with someone she wasn't supposed to fall for when she was younger. Well, and parallels usually exist to showcase a contrast: The difference is that she returned back into the embrace of the system, and Wilhelm most likely won't.
Anyway, thank you for your comment. I'm glad you're working your way through all of these articles. It's a rather daunting and long journey you're on there. There are just so many of them by now. So, thank you for letting me know you're enjoying the ride.
Dear whoever is writing these beautiful and deep analyses, I would like you to thank you from the bottom of my heart for opening a whole new world for me. Growing up as a neurodivergent person who struggled (and still sometimes does) with reading between the lines or read the emotions of people around me in a post-communist country, where the basic education focused solely on memorizing a bunch of information without a proper context, reading your elaborate texts are so fascinating for me. Of course, I knew what a symbol or a metaphor is, also understood how they work on a very basic level, but to what extent it can be employed in art in general I had no idea. As I preferred straightforward logic over complicated emotions I focused on life sciences with set rules based on math, physics and chemistry. I happily watched sci-fi or (true)crime shows/films through my eyes of a scientist, or laughed at ghost horror films where the known science was shattered. I really enjoy cinematography, but my preferences in genres clearly mirror what I am familiar with. Moreover, if your brain has to run full speed in the lab so you don't mess up, because that could mean many weeks of your work will end up in a trash, when you come home you need to switch off and watch a cleaning video on YT. But then, I accidentally came across the synopsis of YR and started to watch it out of pure curiosity and I was like: “Wait a minute. This is weird.” How can I relate so much to a TEEN drama? Come on, I did not like teen series even when I was a teenager. So why this particular show? Why watching it felt so real, beautiful and painful at the same time. I had no clue. OK, now I may look like someone who discovered emotions only late in adulthood what is obviously not true, but until now only music (and cooking, about that later) had such a deep impact that it could overpower my logic brain. So I started to do research, because that is what I am good at. Thanks to the all dedicated people here in the wide ocean of the internet I started slowly dive under the pleasing esthetics of YR, but only when I found your articles I started to understand not only the complexity of the storytelling but also let's say the scientific rules and the fulcrums used to build a meaningful story (a story for a wider publicum than it might appear at first glance on top of that). I've started from your first post and when I came to this “pizza” article, based on your narrative I could easily answer why it is so wrong before reading the actual article. Maybe that metaphor was easy to read, but anyway… I was so happy. So, dear whoever you are, you are an excellent teacher and I can't thank you enough for all the effort you put in these texts. Oh… I am so eager to learn even more.
Originally I wanted to point out something interesting what actually triggered me to write a post and join the convo, and didn't expect to write this a long “appreciation” post, so I'm sorry for that and leave that actual comment in the following 'fish' metaphor article. As I am few months late here, I hope that it reaches you. Anyway… Thank you for your hard work. Humbly your new subscriber.