Symbolism in the Poetics of Peter Greenaway

Abstrak / Ringkasan

This article examines symbolism as a structural component of the aesthetics of British film director Peter Greenaway (b. 1942), using his film Drowning by Numbers (1988) and early short films (Water Wrackets, 1975; Making a Splash, 1984; Death in the Seine, 1989). The author departs from the established tradition of interpreting Greenaway’s work exclusively within the framework of postmodernism, proposing to consider his visual language within the broader understanding of symbolist aesthetics, emphasizing the overcoming of the on-screen image simplification, the multilayered nature of space, the mythologization of the elements, and the heterogeneity of space as key features of the master’s symbolist thinking. A study of early short films reveals the evolution of the image of water: from an abstract, consuming element (Water Wrackets) through a Darwinian aesthetic of perfect form (Making a Splash) to a cataloguing of death as a museification of memory (Death in the Seine). Drowning by Numbers is explored as a polysymbolic system in which each character is associated with a specific pictorial tradition (Baroque, Magic Realism, Pre-Raphaelite). The author concludes that, alongside postmodernist play, Greenaway consciously constructs a symbolist narrative fabric, where water serves not as a metaphor but as a symbol. The numbers from 1 to 100, contrary to expectations, function as ‘empty’ simulacra, paradoxically emphasizing the impotence of rationalism in the face of thanatos.

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