”Den lange rejse …” – metaforiske betydningslag i filmmediet. En analyse af Aarhus Universitets vejlednings-, branding- og rekrutteringskampagne 2012 [“The Long Journey…” – Metaphorical Meanings and Branding in Film]

Abstract

This article investigates the implicit metaphorical meanings and motifs in a short campaign film and analyses the ways in which the narrative and sequential structure of the film unfolds itself in order to generate these underlying layers of meanings. The short film ‘Tænk. Hvis det er dig’ (‘Think. If It Were You’), which serves as the specific case of this study, was part of Aarhus University’s 2012 branding and student recruitment campaign, which also consisted of a dedicated website and study guidance materials. Using the theoretical insights of the Conceptual Metaphor Theory, as proposed by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson in their 1980 book Metaphors We Live By, as a framework for our analysis, we examine the nature of the metaphor(s) used in the film and establish that an implicit metaphorical understanding of ‘education as a journey’ is present throughout the film. In the article, we argue for an interpretation of the underlying narrative metaphor as ‘education as a modern Grand Tour’ – a metaphor that connotes (often culturally-anchored) concepts and notions such as ‘general education’ (Bildung, which includes academic knowledge and skills as well as the notion of the university as a social context), ‘personal development’ and ‘citizenship’. Through this analysis and the explication of underlying structurally- and visually-established metaphorical meanings, we wish to demonstrate how an originally linguistic and textual concept of metaphor as developed in the Conceptual Metaphor Theory can contribute to an in-depth understanding of visually-based cinematic and narrative techniques.

Keywords

• metaphor
• movie
• video
• branding
• higher education
• narrative