Metaphor and the One Percent!

In Il Postino, a film made in 1994, Pablo Neruda, the Chilean poet and communist, is exiled to a small island in Italy for political reasons where he meets Mario Ruoppolo, the local postman, a man of little education who is influenced by Neruda's poetry.  Mario asks Neruda to help him woe Beatrice, the woman he loves, through poetry.  In the film, Neruda teaches Mario about metaphor and its use in poetry. The funnest scene in the film is when Beatrice's aunt tells Neruda that she's very disturbed by Mario's poetry, and when he asks why, she accuses Mario of using "metaphora." The aunt thinks metaphors are dangerous, a black hole of evil that will destroy Beatrice.

I'm reminded of Beatrice's aunt when I read news articles, mainly from the Republican press, questioning the legitimacy of millionaires and billionaires who support Occupy Wall St.  Anne Hathaway (worth 58 million) who marched with the occupiers across the Brooklyn Bridge is one such example. It's not difficult to understand why Beatrice's aunt, a woman of no education, might have a problem with understanding the concept of metaphor, but questions from our supposedly educated media is a puzzlement. To make it perfectly clear to those who cut class on the day metaphor and simile were taught, One Percent is a metaphor for Wall St. greed and corporate malfeasance, for a system of laws created to protect (and then bail out) a small, non-productive segment of our society--those who make money through credit default swaps, place bets against their own clients, devise shelters to shield corporations from paying their share of taxes, peddle greed and self-interest as a way of life--to remind us that poverty, hunger, and ignorance are on the rise in the richest country in the world.  To paraphrase James Carville on the economy--it's a metaphor, stupid.

Speaking of metaphors, I've seen descriptions of those who occupied Zuccotti Park as "pigs," a one-dimensional use of the word "pig" to suggest people who are untidy in their habits.  But "pig" as metaphor means so much more.  A more literary use suggests those who are greedy--a large pink animal pushing others away from the feeding trough so it can consume more than its fair share, the ideal metaphor for those millionaires and billionaires who take from society and give nothing back.  Visualize Rush Limbaugh, Newt Gingrich, or Karl Rove, although from the pig's point of view that's a rather unfair comparison. I suspect that the pig, noble, smart, and clean, would prefer the comparison to the occupiers in Zuccotti Park.

They will be back!