6.1The Image of a Monarch: Angela Merkel as Political Message

In its September 9, 2013 edition, the German news magazine Der Spiegel’s cover portrayed Angela Merkel regally wearing a baroque dress, a sash, a necklace in German national colors, and a crown-like headgear (Figure 3 left). The picture is staged within a frame, suggesting that it is a museum object, with a title label below that reads: “Angela the Great” [Angela die Grosse]. The corresponding caption on the picture reads: “The new complacency of Angela M.” [Die neue Selbstgefälligkeit der Angela M.]. It is supposed to represent an ironic adaption of a “Portrait of Catherine II [i.e., the Great] in front of a mirror” (1762–1764), painted by Vigilius Eriksen (Figure 3 right).81

In the corresponding article, the author René Pfister criticizes Merkel’s manner of electoral campaigning for the parliamentary elections in September 2013. He blames her for avoiding the debate on complex, difficult, or unpleasant topics as well as for avoiding statements regarding the country’s future. The campaign message she is communicating instead, according to Pfister, linked the stable welfare of the country to her own person: ‘Her message is a message of reassurance: If you vote for me, then you get four good years again.’ (Pfister 2013, 24; translation mine) In his article, Pfister seeks to illustrate the ironic message of the cover picture, i.e., of a complacent monarch Merkel, on the basis of the CDU election campaign in 2013.

As an example, he mentions a huge election poster that was attached next to Berlin’s main station at the beginning of September 2013 showing solely the well-known Merkel diamond (or rhombus) next to the slogan “Germany’s future in good hands” [Deutschlands Zukunft in guten Händen] (Figure 4). Due to regular usage, the gesture has become a kind of trademark of Merkel, a fact that the poster has taken advantage of for campaign purposes. The concentration on Merkel’s gesture as a visually recognizable motif and central campaign message is remarkable as thereby meaning emerges through a close interplay of metonymy and metaphor. The gesture as such is sufficient to stand as a part for the whole person. Simultaneously, the depicted hands activate the imagery of the written metonymical expression that ‘something is in good hands’ where too a part of the body stands for the whole person bearing responsibility. It is only on that basis that Germany’s future that is said to be in good hands is metaphorically understood as a touch- and manageable object that somebody has at his or her command. The interplay of metonymical and metaphorical meaning evokes an image of Angela Merkel as a powerful and qualified decision maker on the basis of a gesture expressing power and balance.

For Pfister, these circumstances of the 2013 election campaign reveal the height of the CDU’s exclusive focusing on its party leader and the concomitant rejection of programmatic contents. The campaign commercial to be analyzed in this chapter suggests that the CDU already during the 2009 election campaign retreated completely in favor of staging Merkel alone. In this light, it is remarkable that the TV campaign ad over its entire course neither mentions nor shows the name of Merkel’s party. Only at the very end, the logo of the CDU is shown briefly. Apart from that exception, the whole campaign commercial solely revolves around Merkel in the true sense of the word with a camera focusing on her and thereby making her the center of each shot and sequence. Such an unquestioned centering of a person as a party’s political profile and flagship message exhibits strong parallels to the exclusive orientation of a state towards its sovereign in the age of absolutism. This analogy might have motivated the juxtaposition of Merkel and Catherine the Great as absolutistic monarchs on the Spiegel front cover.

The CDU campaign commercial for the parliamentary elections in 2009 seems to take up and play with that image of Merkel as a monarch (although it was produced much earlier). However, it does not examine it in the critical manner as Pfister does in his article, instead constructing it according to an understanding in Merkel’s favor. The TV campaign ad was released in the beginning of September 2009 and was telecasted several hundred times over the period of three weeks until September 25 on public and private television. It was produced by Kolle Rebbe, a Hamburg advertising agency, that specializes in promoting consumer goods for, e.g., Gauloises, Olympus, or Otto. Before, the CDU had cooperated for decades with the agency Von Mannstein and only in 2001 changed its strategy by employing McCann-Erickson, an international branding expert, in order to modify and enhance its public image (Bialek 2007). Kolle Rebbe was entrusted with the task of managing the entire promotional and communicative appearance of the party in autumn 2007. When asked for the major tasks his agency had to fulfill in the campaign, the Executive Director Stephan F. Rebbe answered that he considers the creation of images and metaphors a key point. According to him, they are able to convey complicated political issues in a straightforward manner by boiling the message down concretely (Kolle Rebbe 2007).

In the medial perception, the campaign commercial seems to have achieved this goal. The journalist Robin Meyer-Lucht (2009), for instance, refers to it as the most professional TV campaign ad of the 2009 election campaign at that point, because it was able to not only make statements but to ‘translate’ them into images. By staging Merkel as being both inside, i.e., powerful and successful, and outside, i.e., understanding of people’s needs, the campaign commercial had found a metaphor for her political style the way she wanted it to be perceived (Meyer-Lucht 2009).82 By attributing the translation of statements into images to audiovisual metaphor, the static understanding of figurativity in audiovisual media becomes manifest again, suggesting that figurative meaning was preexisting content that could be packed into moving images.83 Instead of conceiving of metaphor and metonymy solely from an abstracted product perspective, the subsequent analysis of the CDU campaign commercial is aimed at reconstructing the processual emergence of figurative meaning. From this perspective, Meyer-Lucht’s observation of Merkel’s staging as powerful officeholder inside and expert on people’s needs outside is not conceived of as the result of recognizing metaphorical expressions translated into images. Rather it is considered an emergent outcome of a dynamic interplay between metaphorical and metonymical meaning-making: metonymy unfolds a repetitive part- or aspect-for-whole pattern throughout the campaign commercial, while articulatory audiovisual modalities provide a vital metaphorical imagery on the basis of felt qualities of gravitas, power, and balance.

6.2‘I Am You’: Angela Merkel as Representative of the German People

In the case of the CDU campaign commercial, the two dimensions of audiovisual figurativity (i.e., multimodal activation of figurativity and affective experience of cinematic expressive movement) correspond to metonymical and metaphorical meaning-making. First the commercial will be briefly outlined and summarized. What is particularly noticeable is its baroque-seeming style of framing the candidate Angela Merkel, providing the viewer with an apparently exclusive insight into the separated world (‘behind the scenes’) of a powerful ruler. Merkel is presented as contemplatively looking out of the semi-reflecting windows of her chancellery, on which recollections of German historical events as well as of her professional history show up as ephemeral projections. This image of recollection is complemented by her voice-over commenting on her thoughts. It is superseded by Merkel’s walk through the chancellery that is thematically associated with future political objectives (which are – in a similar manner to the recollections – illustrated and specified through picture-in-picture fade-ins). At the end, Merkel walks straight up to the camera and announces her central message, summed up in the election slogan: “We have the power” [Wir haben die Kraft]. Ultimately, the campaign commercial creates the image of an empress who is both a powerful and successful office holder (inside) and at the same time understands what people are concerned with (outside).

Angela Merkel’s state of recollection that comprises the first 50 seconds of the TV campaign ad is permeated and characterized by audiovisual metonymies referring to central aspects in her voice-over statements. For example, the utterance “We have shown that we can decrease the number of non-workers, strengthen families, advance education and research” [Wir haben gezeigt, dass wir die Zahl der Arbeitslosen senken, Familien stärken, Bildung und Forschung voranbringen können] is complemented by the following projections on the transparent window in front of which she is standing: the families are depicted by a dissolve of a baby being held in an adult’s arms, while a young man writing equations on a transparent board represents sophisticated education and research. Words and audiovisual images thereby bring together entities that are “linked within the same experiential domain […] or frame […]” (Mittelberg and Waugh 2014, 1748). By the audiovisual depiction, one of these elements “is profiled, allowing inference of the other element(s)” (Mittelberg and Waugh 2014, 1748). In the mentioned utterance, the dissolve of a baby relates to and evokes the verbally expressed families by virtue of being one adjacent aspect of the latter. In a similar manner, the shown researcher writing math formula refers to the verbally expressed education and research by embodying a pragmatic implication belonging to the same frame. In so doing, the metonymical principle of a contiguous entity or aspect standing for the respective entire idea brings in a particular perspective on the addressed topic. This feature or effect of metonymy has been referred to as “domain highlighting” by Croft (1993, 348) and is considered an outcome of “the point of view of the speaker’s concerns” (Ruiz de Mendoza 1997, 164).84 In this respect, metonymy (just as metaphor) is considered to imply the “manipulation of experiential domains in understanding and communication” (Croft 1993, 354).

In order to grasp this effect of metonymy in more depth, it is necessary to look beyond the general observation that audiovisual images solely represent verbally expressed content and instead take a closer look at the respective dynamic interplay of words and audiovisual images. Audiovisual metonymies of the kind described above occur throughout the entire CDU campaign commercial: in its first two-thirds as ephemeral projections on the transparent window showing Merkel’s recollections of the past, in the last third as picture-in-picture fade-ins presenting associations of future objectives. Due to this recurrence, the metonymical principle of contiguity unfolds in terms of a repetitive pattern over the campaign commercial’s course, thereby strongly foregrounding metonymical meaning in a multimodal manner.

This argument opens up a link to the theoretical concept of activated metaphoricity. The activation of metaphoricity is conceived of as a dynamic and temporally organized process that finds expression in an “expressive effort that speakers […] employ to mark metaphoricity as a salient object of attendance in the flow of a conversation” (Müller and Tag 2010, 111; see also Müller 2008a, 2008b). One possibility of such a foregrounding is the employment of different modalities to convey metaphorical meaning: “Using more than one modality to express a metaphor foregrounds metaphoricity in the ongoing utterance and it follows the iconicity principle of: More material indicates more meaning.” (Müller and Tag 2010, 94) The audiovisual presentation of close and adjacent aspects of Merkel’s mentioned ideas amounts to the (additional) expressive effort of a speaker using gesture in order to convey metaphorical meaning in face-to-face interaction.85 By giving it a multimodal form, it makes the metonymical imagery salient in the viewer’s attention and thereby increases metonymy’s domain-highlighting effect: the selection of certain parts, aspects, or features complemented by their particular audiovisual concretization makes the specific profiling of the whole idea particularly obvious. In the following, the emergence and multimodal foregrounding of metonymical meaning in the CDU campaign commercial will be explained in greater detail. It will be shown that by unfolding a repetitive pattern, metonymy draws the viewer’s attention to the adjacency and closeness of the entities it is linking to one another, most notably of Merkel and the citizens.

The first 20 seconds of the TV campaign ad provide the initial and central link between Merkel and the German people by bringing together her political development and the recent German history in the event of the reunification. Merkel and the Berlin Reichstag building are closely linked to each other by constituting a fixed, twofold visual ground in relation to the faded faded-in projections that never cover it completely. Being shown in a dissolve montage with a high-angle shot of the Reichstag behind her in the first shot, Merkel’s voice-over says: “I was not born a chancellor” [Ich wurde nicht als Kanzlerin geboren]. Thereby, the verbally uttered ‘chancellor’ and the image of the Reichstag building are related to one another and create an audiovisual metonymy by linking her, the German head of government, to the seat of the government. Subsequently, the image of the Reichstag is partly covered by scenes of the fall of the Berlin wall. People climbing and standing on the wall and in front of it in November 1989 are shown while Merkel’s voice-over says: “But then came one of the greatest moments of happiness for our country, the unity” [Aber dann kam einer der größten Glücksmomente unseres Landes, die Einheit].86 The choice of the word ‘unity’ in order to refer to the event of the German reunification is remarkable for it semantically highlights the aspect of togetherness and closeness. The audiovisual concretization further foregrounds and specifies this impression by presenting groups of people holding out their hands to each other and standing crowded together, complemented by the audible shout of the Monday demonstrators, “We are the people” [Wir sind das Volk]. As a result, another audiovisual metonymy emerges, linking the verbal reference object ‘unity’ [Einheit], i.e., the German turnaround, to one of its adjacent and pragmatic implications, i.e., the re-gained togetherness of the people. Subsequently, a cut shows Merkel from a wider angle in front of the window following a cyclist passing by on the Berlin wall and in front of the Brandenburg gate, almost entirely covering the Reichstag building in the background. The cyclist, organically arising from the crowd of people (through a dissolve montage) and riding freely along the wall, on the one hand stands metonymically for the reunified citizens. Simultaneously, he becomes a metonymy for Merkel who, as one of the reunified, purposefully sets off for the future which, in her case, is her political career. The dissolve of the bicycle ride to a now rather frontal image of the Reichstag and Merkel’s comment “I wanted to serve Germany” [Ich wollte Deutschland dienen] link the cyclist’s path with her personal development: the event of the turnaround becomes the birth of her political career and she a representative of the people.

By returning to the visual ground of Merkel and the Reichstag at this point, the building is conflated with the verbally expressed ‘Germany’, i.e., the seat of the German government stands metonymically for the residents of the country it is politically representing. Thereby, the audiovisual metonymy from the beginning has changed: it has turned from an image of political representation to an image of popular representation through the historical event of the turnaround. In other words, the German reunification functions as a connecting element between the person of Merkel and the people. Through these means, the campaign commercial creates a subjective perspective on her personal background as well as her recent political position and lays the ground for the central metonymy of the campaign commercial: Merkel stands for the people.

The choice of pronouns on the verbal level supports this link: it changes from ‘I’ to a more including we (‘our’) and ends with ‘I’ again. While in the first sentence, Merkel refers exclusively to herself (“I was not born a chancellor”) with regard to her personal background and political career, she extends the scope of reference in her second utterance (“one of the greatest moments of happiness for our country”) and thereby links herself to the German citizens. She thereby constructs a shared period of history as the common ground for herself and the people.87 On that basis, she returns again to her personal story (“I wanted to serve Germany”), however, now with the background of being related to those she wants to serve. Figure 5 depicts the dynamic interplay of verbal utterances and audiovisual staging, resulting in the audiovisual metonymical meanings described above that connect Angela Merkel with the German people.

The fact that Merkel and the German people are linked with one another in this manner during the first 20 seconds of the campaign commercial does not imply that they are on the same level. This might be primarily attributable to the particular contiguity relation underlying the audiovisual metonymies just outlined: the link between the Reichstag and Merkel, the togetherness of the people and the reunification, or the connection between the Reichstag and the German people is not that of an internally motivated pars pro toto. Instead, these entities are connected by closeness, contact, and adjacency to one another as they belong to the same semantic frame (Fillmore 1982; cf. Mittelberg and Waugh 2014, 1754–1755). These considerations draw on Roman Jakobson’s distinction between synecdoche and metonymy proper88:

To show the hands of a shepherd in poetry or the cinema is not the same as showing his hut or his herd, a fact that is often insufficiently taken into account. The operation of synecdoche, with the part for the whole or the whole for the part, should be clearly distinguished from metonymic proximity. (Jakobson and Pomorska 1983, 134)

Jakobson’s emphasis on the differentiation between these two forms of contiguity relations seems to be of relevance for the analysis of the central metonymy. The metonymical pattern throughout the entire campaign commercial primarily consists of external metonymies (or metonymies proper in Jakobson’s terms) that on the one hand emphasize the closeness and (adjacent) togetherness of Merkel and the people. On the other hand, they simultaneously foreground a particular perspective on the frame (and thereby their different status) both belong to: the perspective of political representation and leadership. Merkel’s words confirm this overtone: starting from her initial sentence that she was not born a chancellor, she professedly distances herself from the ancient image of hereditary nobility, i.e., gaining political power consequently by birth, and instead emphasizes her civil background (and closeness to the people). Nevertheless, the fall of the Berlin wall became her initial moment to set out for a political career (“But then came one of the greatest moments of happiness”), that is to say, to become the first among equals in order to “serve Germany”. This way, she nevertheless affirms the aforementioned image of herself as a monarch, however, in a modified manner that amounts to her own understanding: a monarch legitimated by her civil roots and vocation and not by hereditary nobility.

This particular image of a civil sovereign is strengthened and extended in the further course of the campaign commercial by an emerging metonymical pattern: Merkel’s voice-over interacts with audiovisual images that present adjacent aspects of what is expressed verbally. What is audiovisually shown, therefore, does not merely refer to itself but stands exemplarily for something to which it is related by (external) contiguity. Such a multimodal concretization highlights the metonymical imagery as well as the particular perspective on the superior frame and puts it into the viewer’s line of focus. Saying that she finally became the German chancellor, Merkel’s voice-over is complemented by an audiovisual image of her inauguration oath. In the further course of the campaign commercial, the audiovisual concretizations keep substantiating the verbal metonymical expression while giving them a perceptible form by adjacent aspects: families through a baby, education and research by a researcher, excitement by jubilating people and a cheering Merkel. Figure 6 depicts these stages of audiovisual metonymical meaning from 0’20’’ to 0’53’’ that further strengthen the central metonymical link between Angela Merkel and the German people.

The prominent foregrounding of contiguity serves as an effective basis for Merkel’s final statement at the end of the campaign commercial: “Together we can achieve a lot. We, all together.” [Gemeinsam können wir viel erreichen. Wir, alle zusammen.] The entire TV campaign ad or, more precisely, its composition, amounts to this verbal declaration that explicitly highlights closeness and togetherness. So far, the metonymical pattern has rather structurally foregrounded the contiguity relation between Merkel and the people by constantly associating two adjacent elements from the same frame or realm. Now, at the end, the central metonymy is additionally taken up and presented semantically by the use of various collective expressions (‘together’, ‘we all’) in spoken language. Furthermore, the metonymy is foregrounded by Merkel’s gaze into the camera and her direct address of the viewer when she speaks of ‘we’ as well as by the presentation of ‘WE’ in a third modality, namely in written language.

Such an additional communicative effort that makes metonymical meaning more explicit suggests that the degree of activated metonymicity on the part of the viewer noticeably increases at the end of the campaign commercial. Before that final statement, i.e., during the last 36 seconds of the campaign commercial, the metonymical pattern continues in the same manner as in the first 53 seconds by audiovisually presenting adjacent aspects of what Merkel is talking about. For instance, the mention of the weak that need protection is complemented by the image of a leg being washed. Figure 7 gives an overview of the audiovisual metonymies during the last 36 seconds of the TV campaign ad that finally culminate in the highly activated central metonymy of the campaign commercial.

In summary, the detailed analysis of the interplay between what is being said and how it is being staged audiovisually has shown that the campaign commercial of the CDU is permeated and structured by numerous audiovisual metonymies. All of them are attributable to the dimension of figurative meaning that is grounded in the activation of figurativity through vitalizations of experiential realms (first dimension). The particular repetitive pattern of metonymical meaning that emerges and unfolds in the CDU TV campaign ad displays the following profile: its temporal dynamics are extended by the recurrence of various audiovisual metonymies throughout the whole campaign commercial that are characterized by the same audiovisual form. The extendedness does not result from a semantic elaboration of one scenario but from the structural foregrounding of the metonymical principle of contiguity. The attentional dynamics are characterized by a strong foregrounding due to the verbal and audiovisual articulation of the single metonymical meanings. This foregrounding indicates a high degree of activation because the audiovisual staging makes the metonymical imagery available as vital sources of experiences. In their dynamic unfolding as a repetitive pattern, the degree of activation is thus constantly high and even increases at the end through the additional articulation of metonymical meaning in written language. The experiential dynamics are temporally condensed from one activation to the next. However, it seems that the sensory-motor experiences of the respective single experiential realms play a minor role due to the unfolding of metonymical meaning as a repetitive pattern. Instead, the experience of contiguity and closeness between the two related experiential realms inherent in every sensory-motor experience of the emergent metonymies orchestrates the experiential dynamics in an extended and comprehensive manner.

Arising from the interplay of language and audiovisual vitalizations and unfolding as a recurrent pattern, metonymical meaning is productive in eliciting and strengthening a positive image of Merkel as a politician who is associated with her citizens through inherent closeness and pragmatic contiguity. Most importantly, the detailed reconstruction of how this central metonymy emerges and the profile of the metonymical pattern on the basis of the three aspects of dynamics clearly suggests that metonymical meaning-making is as dynamically characterized as is metaphorical: it emerges and unfolds in the course of time, in the flow of attention, and in the flow of the viewers’ experience. A metonymical mapping as the outlined one between Merkel and the German people is, according to Mittelberg and Waugh (2009, 329), an essential “prerequisite for the metaphorical mapping” in that it provides a semiotic basis that “leads the way into metaphor” (Mittelberg and Waugh 2009, 347). Before analyzing the interplay between metonymical and metaphorical meaning in the CDU campaign commercial, the following section will focus on metaphorical meaning-making from the affective experience of cinematic expressive movement.

6.3The Experience of Gravitas: Angela Merkel as Center of Power

The window that Merkel gazes out of separates and connects. On the one hand, it divides the space by creating a visible boundary between an inside and an outside. Thereby, it clearly distances Merkel (in front of it) from the social reality on the other side and creates a separate, private, and interior space for her. This boundary between a public outside and a private inside is, on the other hand, transparent and thus indicates at least a point of contact between the two spaces and the potential for their mutual link. In this respect, the transparent windowpane seems to be an adequate realm of experience for the metaphorical understanding of Merkel’s political style:

She is thereby simultaneously inside (powerful, successful office holder) and outside (understanding what people are concerned with). With this, the campaign commercial has found a metaphor – a metaphor for the political style of Merkel as she wants it to be seen. (Meyer-Lucht 2009; translation mine)

Meyer-Lucht’s conclusion seems to semantically correspond to the emergent metonymical meaning (the link between Merkel and the people) outlined in the previous section. However, what is striking in his formulation of the metaphor are the qualitative features he’s attributing to Merkel’s political style in respect to the two sides of the windowpane. Proceeding from the established cognitive-linguistic understanding of metaphor in audiovisual media, i.e., as a fixed entity that translates a statement into an image, one does not get very far as the qualitative features of success and power are neither expressed verbally nor contained visually. From the dynamic approach to audiovisual figurativity taken in this book, these qualitative attributes are considered to be grounded in experiential qualities that are evoked by audiovisual staging, more precisely, by cinematic expressive movement. As such, it is in line with Mark Johnson’s notion of “immanent or embodied meaning […] that lie[s] beneath words and sentences” as “felt qualities, images, feelings, and emotions that ground our more abstract structures of meaning” (Johnson 2007, 17). Thereby rejecting exclusively conceptually and propositionally-informed approaches to the emergence of (figurative) meaning, Johnson argues the case for the fundamental role of aesthetics for reasoning and understanding: “In the visual arts, it is images, patterns, qualities, colours, and perceptual rhythms that are the principal bearers of meaning” (Johnson 2007, 234).

This section demonstrates that the experiencing and understanding of Angela Merkel as a successful and powerful office holder is not primarily grounded in the image of the transparent windowpane but above all in the affective experience of cinematic expressive movement (Kappelhoff 2004, Kappelhoff and Bakels 2011, Müller and Kappelhoff 2018). This targets the second dimension of audiovisual figurative meaning-making. The CDU campaign commercial is composed of two expressive movement units (emu) that correspond to the division of topics into past achievements during its first two thirds (0’00’’ to 0’52’’), and things to achieve in the future during its last third (0’53’’ to 1’29’’). Their respective experiential qualities evoke a particular sensation of power and dominance that viewers experience bodily and attribute to Merkel. It is this sensation that provides the experiential ground for understanding Merkel in terms of something else, namely of a powerful, even absolutistic, sovereign.

In order to make clear the difference between audiovisually represented content and cinematic expressive movement, the analysis starts from a short outline of what is shown during the TV campaign ad’s first 52 seconds. It begins with Angela Merkel approaching a window from an interior perspective and observing the Reichstag building staged as her background behind the windowpane.89 This initial image of literally observing something subsequently transforms metaphorically into an act of recollection,90 whereby the observation of things outside becomes an observation of mental images of recollections. The outside perspective of the window is partly covered by appearing and disappearing fragments and impressions of the historical event when the Berlin wall fell in 1989. Subsequently, Merkel’s contemplative thoughts change towards her political career and the achievements of her previous period of governance (from 2005 to 2009), finally returning to herself as an adaptive, principled, and down-to-earth person.

After this rough introductory outline of the represented content (the ‘what’), the focus in the following will be on how it is brought about through audiovisual articulatory modalities. The first 52 seconds of the TV campaign ad are characterized by only a few, slow camera movements and a visual repetitive structure: Merkel standing in front of the window is the recurring motif of each shot. Neither she nor the camera is moving in a remarkable manner, evoking a calm and moderate atmosphere. When movement is part of the shot, e.g., when Merkel approaches the window or when the faded-in projections of the reunification show people climbing the wall, it is – due to slow motion technique – nevertheless always experienced in a temperate manner. The duration of the shots corresponds to this calm and moderate atmosphere. They are not changing quickly but provide adequate time for their represented content (i.e., Merkel in front of the window) to unfold as a tableau before being followed by the next one.91 The picture-in-picture fade-ins are composed in the same manner: although their duration is shorter, they all follow one another in a tempo that does not disturb the calm atmosphere. The reason for this is the rhythmic alignment and interplay between fore- and background, i.e., between the tableau and the fade-ins. They change regularly, thereby never competing with each other for the viewer’s attention, and interact harmoniously by being interrelated (e.g., through lines of sight) and thus rather compose to one image (see Figure 5 and 6).

Through the balanced composition of the Merkel tableaus with an elongated duration of time and the fade-ins alternating in quicker, but regular, succession, a consistent order is established that fits the sense of tranquility. This foregrounding of regularity and balance matches the visual composition: the recurring Merkel tableaus and the fade-ins clearly divide the audiovisual image into a deep foreground and a flat surface in the background, a visual pattern that lasts for the whole campaign commercial. On the basis of this visual arrangement within the frame, Merkel appears as the central element and vanishing point of each shot. This is primarily achieved by lighting: Merkel (and the foreground in general) appears darker – as if she was standing in front of a screen –, sharper, and clearer than the rest of the image. In contrast, the fade-ins are rather blurred and fuzzy images. This aesthetic opposition contributes to the differentiation between the here and now and the recollections on the semantic level. Furthermore, Merkel is mainly shown in close-ups and medium-close-shots whereby she is evidently in the foreground as against the other parts and objects within the frame. This visual composition contributes to the regularity and balance outlined above.

The coordinated interplay between a mainly calm foreground and a slightly moving background is also evoked by the underlying music: rhythmic and cheerful violin notes in the background are overlaid by slow legato piano and violin notes in the foreground. By analogy with the visual composition, these two components are characterized by a remarkable interplay. While the cheerful and playful melody in the background brings in a slightly moving and lilting quality, it is not strong enough to dominate the temperate and solemn melody in the foreground. On the contrary, its dynamics lap around the dominant legato notes that call the tune: there is no tonal eruption or irregularity, but a well-ordered structure that is only moving slightly. The interplay of the musical dominant and subdominant as a constant pattern over the course of the campaign commercial thus brings about an experience of regularity and temperateness. The solemn, grave, and moderate character of the underlying music corresponds to court baroque pieces of music that were used for the purpose of sovereign representation and demonstration of power and supported the sequence of determined fixed steps while dancing. This recourse to baroque majesty matches the visual motif of Merkel in front of the window that evokes the impression of an illustrious empress or commander observing her empire.

In summary, camera, visual composition, and sound design compose to a distinctive movement pattern or, more precisely, an expressive movement unit (emu) that brings about an experience of temperateness, balance, and gravitas. Through its temperateness and gravitas, it grounds the recollection image by unfolding a contemplative atmosphere. The experiential qualities of the emu are attributed to Merkel as an office holder and make her appear as a majestic and dignified ruler. Figure 8 depicts selected shots from the first emu in order to provide visual and thematic reference points for the outlined experiential qualities.

Along with the represented (i.e., Merkel looking out of the window, observing past events) and the verbal content (i.e., historical and political achievements in the past), these experiential qualities unfold a quiet and contemplative atmosphere with Merkel in the first emu. In contrast, the second emu (from 0’53’’ to 1’29’’) evokes a more dynamic atmosphere that has changed from the previous recollection to an action image. This shift is characterized and experienced by a transformation of the qualities outlined above. However, not all of them are changing completely. For instance, the balanced arrangement of elements within the frame persists as well as Merkel’s position as the visual vanishing point and stable dominant figure of each shot. What complements these features and merges with them to a different movement composition is the modest dynamization, evoked by movement within the frame, of the camera, and of the music. Therefore, the second emu is not perceived as strong contrast or disruption of the previously staged experience of temperateness, balance, and gravitas but as a consistent development or transition between two connected successive parts.

The second emu starts with a turnaround: Angela Merkel turns her back on the window (and on her reflection of the past) and strides into the depth of the room towards the camera, enumerating measures that have to be taken in the future. The mentioned actions are again audiovisually depicted by picture-in-picture fade-ins. The camera follows Merkel through the chancellery, where she meets a group of visitors and a little girl waving at her. Merkel’s stride ends in front of the camera, now addressing it as well as the viewer directly by saying the final slogan: “Together we can achieve a lot. We, all together.” [Gemeinsam können wir viel erreichen. Wir alle zusammen.] The word ‘we’ appears capitalized and in bold type in front of a small German flag. In the following dissolve to a black screen, the word becomes the beginning of the final slogan: “WE HAVE THE POWER. CDU” [WIR HABEN DIE KRAFT. CDU].

The staging of this represented content during the last third of the campaign commercial is primarily characterized by an increase of movement and dynamics. Merkel is still the recurring motif of each shot. Yet, she is not standing still anymore but striding powerfully into the depth of the room now, accompanied by a camera that circles around her at moderate speed. In doing so, the dynamics of her movement is even more foregrounded and increased. But Merkel’s walk is shown in slow motion and the circling movement of the camera is also slow, wherefore the viewer does not experience a strong dynamization but one in moderation. In this way, the dynamics of the second emu are linked to the first one in a twofold manner: they differ from it due to a higher degree of dynamics, but simultaneously build on it by advancing and accelerating its few, calm, and temperate movements. The shot duration of the tableaus and the fade-ins does not differ significantly from the first emu: generally, they follow one another in a smooth manner by dissolves and in a regular tempo. As compared to the first emu, it is striking that in the middle of the second emu (i.e., approximately from 1’06’’ to 1’20’’) the shot duration is marginally shorter than at its beginning and end, evoking the impression of a slight intensification. The temperateness and balance of the dynamics from the first emu are thus maintained in the second (more active and energetic) one.

The visual arrangement of Merkel and the fade-ins as the two central and interrelated elements within the frame that foregrounds her as the vanishing point of each shot is even more prominent than in the first emu due to the widening of space. Merkel’s turning away from the flat windowpane and striding into the depth opens a half-rounded room she is entering after leaving her office. This semicircle embraces her and puts her evidently in its center. The camera that continuously circles around her creates the same effect: Merkel is the unquestioned focal point of each shot. As in the first emu, lighting and field size also contribute to this highlighting by making her appear darker, sharper, and clearer than the rest of the audiovisual image. This principle of a well-ordered, balanced arrangement within the frame corresponds to the power and temperateness evoked by the movement dynamics and further qualifies it by dominance.

Corresponding with the movement dynamics within and evoked by the shots, the underlying music slightly intensifies and dynamizes, too. The previously prevailing gravitas and solemnity through dominating slow legato piano and violin notes persists. However, the pitch of the whole melody rises remarkably as compared to the first emu. Moreover, the melodic line is more notably structured by means of sforzandos that recur regularly and lead to a clear dominance of and concentration on one single note that sets the tone with respect to the remaining notes. Through this accentuation as well as by a slight increase of its tempo, the playful melody interacts with the solemn one on equal grounds and thereby evokes the experience of an intensification heading for a point of culmination. This culmination is no eruption, though, but the clear return of dominance of the solemn over the playful melody, fading harmoniously away as a decrescendo at the end of the campaign commercial. Although the music dynamizes and intensifies in this second emu, its regularity and well-ordered structure never get lost. As in the first emu, the melodies are moving temperately but never irregularly or unexpectedly. Thus, music’s controlled powerful swelling with a dominant accentuated center corresponds to the visual composition.

In summary, it is again the interplay of camera, visual composition, and sound design that dominates the movement composition of the second emu which is why its experiential qualities are so closely related to the first emu. In the second emu, they are persisting, intensifying, or elaborated and evoke an experience of dominance, balance, and power. As with the first emu, it grounds the action image by unfolding a progressive atmosphere. These experiential qualities are attributed to Merkel as an office holder that make her appear as a powerful ruler who holds everything under control and in balance. The selection of shots depicted in Figure 9 serves as visual and thematic reference points for the experiential qualities.

Cinematic expressive movements are not considered as distinct temporal units (Scherer, Greifenstein, and Kappelhoff 2014, 2088; cf. also Kappelhoff 2004, Kappelhoff and Bakels 2011, Müller and Kappelhoff 2018, Müller and Schmitt 2015). Instead, they amount to viewers’ flow of experience in the process of viewing reconstructed through their analysis in terms of individual expressive movement units. Therefore, the two previously analyzed emus of the CDU campaign commercial are not regarded as separate but as being interrelated. As such, they orchestrate the whole TV campaign ad by “creating an affective course that the spectators go through experientially by watching it” (Scherer, Greifenstein, and Kappelhoff 2014, 2088; see also Kappelhoff and Bakels 2011, Müller and Kappelhoff 2018). That is to say, viewers feel the gravitas, the dominance, and the power that are orchestrated by the audiovisual compositions of the two emus and attribute these qualities to Merkel. They go through the transformation from the initial rather contemplative atmosphere that subsequently dynamizes and intensifies to an action image. As both emus are also closely interrelated with regard to their experiential qualities, this transformation does not represent a disruption in the flow of experience but a consistent unfolding and development: the interplay of gravitas, temperateness, and balance of the first emu and dominance, power, and balance of the second emu brings about an affective experience of stability that grounds the ‘metaphorizing’ (see Cameron 2018) of Angela Merkel, i.e., of experiencing and understanding her in terms of something else. This emergent metaphorical meaning that arises from the affective experience of cinematic expressive movement can be formulated as follows: Angela Merkel is experienced and understood as an (absolutistic) sovereign who is the center of power.

Wearing the formal pant suit that makes her stand out in each shot, and either standing nearly still or moving very temperately, Merkel is introduced from the very beginning as the stable and mighty center of power everything is related and subordinated to. The orderliness and regularity evoked by camera, visual composition, and the arrangement and rhythm of music provide the ground to conceive of her as a self-controlled and dignified office holder. The increase and intensification of movement dynamics from the first to the second emu does not run contrary to this image as it unfolds in a temperate, controlled manner (e.g., through slow motion). This modest and restrained dynamization is directly associated with Merkel’s political position, power, and influence: viewers immediately experience what it means to be in the center of power, to be the dominant one who sets the tone. This emergent meaning is not attributable to the expressive qualities of audiovisual staging alone. The visual motif of an empress observing her empire that is activated through Merkel’s staging in front of the window as well as the classification of the underlying music as baroque court music complement the emergent metaphorical conceptualization and create a consistent image of Merkel. Such an interaction of various levels is in line with Schmitt’s notion of multimodality in regard to metaphorical meaning-making in audiovisual media as integrating “verbal utterances, represented audiovisual elements and the figuration of an expressive movement” (Schmitt 2015, 321).

Remarkably enough, the metaphor of Angela Merkel as a (absolutistic) sovereign is neither contained in the language, nor in the audiovisual representation of the campaign commercial. Instead, it emerges dynamically in the flow of experience the viewers go through when watching the TV campaign ad, i.e., while being moved by experiential qualities that are evoked by the two emus. The bodily experience of gravitas, dominance, and power provides viewers with the experiential ground for an image of (sovereign, absolutistic) power that is associated with Angela Merkel. Within the affective experience of stability that unfolds through the interplay of emu 1 and emu 2, an (post-hoc) activation of metaphoricity takes place at the very end of the campaign commercial. The campaign slogan “We have the power” makes the sensation of stability explicit by putting it into a word (‘power’) and at the same time concretizing its imagery (‘we’). This concretization seems to be contradictory because the experiential quality is on the level of audiovisual representation actually attributed to Merkel, whereas now it is verbally extended to a collective ‘we’. However, by bringing together the multimodal activation of figurativity and the affective experience of cinematic expressive movement and, concomitantly, metonymical and metaphorical meaning, in the following section it will be demonstrated that the extension of the experiential quality (i.e., power and stability) from Merkel to a collective ‘we’ is by no means a contradiction. It instead paves the way for Merkel’s central political message.

6.4“We Have the Power”: Angela Merkel and a Sense of Commonality

Strictly speaking, the metonymical and the metaphorical meaning in the campaign commercial are inconsistent with one another. While the emergent metonymical meaning foregrounds Merkel’s civil affiliation and closeness to the people, the audiovisually evoked sensation of stability make her experience- and understandable as a powerful (downright absolutistic) sovereign in control. The image of a citizen who belongs to the collective of civil society and the image of a head of state who is outranking all other individuals are strict opposites and do not seem to be compatible in a consistent image or political message. On the other hand, Meyer-Lucht (2009) considers the campaign commercial the most professional TV campaign ad of the 2009 election campaign which brings about a “lulling at the highest stage”. If the campaign commercial was indeed contradictory and inconsistent with regard to its central message, Meyer-Lucht (2009) could hardly rate it as a “bravura piece of political persuasive communication’ that ‘achieves its communicative objective very efficiently”. It seems that the viewer does not feel any semantic inconsistency between the metonymical and metaphorical meaning by watching the campaign commercial, i.e., between Merkel as one of the people and Merkel as a downright absolutistic sovereign. One possibility to clarify this issue might be the recourse to a principle that Mittelberg and Waugh (2009) have called “metonymy first, metaphor second” in order to describe the structural interplay of both figurative modes. In the case of the CDU campaign commercial, metonymy indeed leads the way into metaphor by providing an obviously more basic and intuitive connection between Merkel and the people as suggested by the cognitive theory of metaphor and metonymy:

The grounding of metonymic concepts is, according to Lakoff and Johnson (1980: 39), “in general more obvious than is the case with metaphoric concepts, since it usually involves physical or causal association”. Hence, metaphors which are grounded in metonymy are more basic and natural than these which do not have a metonymic basis: with these, metonymy provides an associative and motivated link between the two conceptual domains involved in metaphor. (Radden 2000, 93)

The distinct basicness of metonymical meaning is due to the fact that it brings together two entities from the same experiential domain (e.g., Barcelona 2009) or frame (Fillmore 1982) that are either linked through an inner contiguity relation (e.g., part for whole) or an outer contiguity relation (i.e., by being pragmatically linked) (see Mittelberg 2006, 2010, 2013 for the differentiation of internal and external metonymy in verbo-gestural contexts of use). Merkel’s metonymical relation with the civil society is actually general knowledge that is moreover made explicit when Merkel’s voice-over says, “I was not born a chancellor” and thereby implicitly distances herself from sovereignty by birth. However, the metonymical link between Merkel and the German people emerges and unfolds dynamically over the course of the entire campaign commercial in the form of a repetitive pattern foregrounding the principle of contiguity.

This link is established and highly foregrounded at the beginning of the campaign commercial, namely in the historic event of German reunification. In doing so, the campaign commercial actually does not draw on the mere fact that Merkel is a citizen like others. She even implicitly disagrees by her utterance “I was not born a chancellor” with a basic connection of herself by birth. Through her verbal utterance “But then came on of the greatest moments of happiness for our country, the unity” she makes the event of the turnaround the birth of her political career. At the same time, the use of the collective personal pronoun ‘we’ opens up a point of contact with the German people. In other words, the German reunification provides the ground for an outer contiguity relation between Merkel and the people. Both are connected by the pragmatic context of having experienced the same historic event. This metonymical link persists through the multimodal foregrounding of contiguity that strengthens Merkel as one of the people, her civil roots, and her proximity to people’s concerns. As such, it builds an evident ground for metaphorical meaning that, in turn, brings about the image of a sovereign ruling everything. However, the audiovisual metaphorical meaning that makes Merkel experienceable as a stable center to which everything is related and clustered around, does not run contrary to her metonymical closeness to the people. Through the interplay of metonymical and metaphorical meaning, an overarching figurative theme of the TV campaign ad emerges that can be formulated as follows: ANGELA MERKEL IS EXPERIENCED AND UNDERSTOOD AS A POWERFUL SOVEREIGN WITH CIVIL ROOTS WHO IS CLOSE TO THE PEOPLE.

The reason for why the two facets of the campaign commercial’s figurative theme are not contradictory becomes particularly apparent through the written statement at the very end of the campaign commercial: “We have the power”. Due to the ongoing metonymical foregrounding of contiguity between Merkel and the people this ‘we’ cannot be referred to Merkel’s party, the CDU. Indeed, her party is not once mentioned throughout the entire campaign commercial except for its faded-in logo at the very end in the lower right corner. Thus, the extension of the mentioned power, which viewers over the course of the entire campaign commercial have solely experienced with Merkel, to her party is unlikely, as the latter has hitherto played no role.92 Instead, everything has been oriented towards Merkel: she has the power because she is always in the center, because everything is subordinated to her, because she sets the tone. Now, at the end, the metonymical link between her and the German people becomes verbally explicit (“Together we can achieve a lot. We, all together”) and is thereby highly activated. Through the final slogan “We have the power” the experience of Merkel’s power is thus retrospectively extended to the people, the citizens, and thus also to the viewers. They are allowed to feel themselves incorporated into this stable center of power – a literal sense of commonality (see Kappelhoff 2018). Put differently, Merkel’s power is the people’s, or viewers’, power. She gives them the feeling of stability and balance. Therefore, she is entitled to stand and speak for the people: “We, all together”.

In this respect, the emergent figurative theme ANGELA MERKEL IS EXPERIENCED AND UNDERSTOOD AS A POWERFUL SOVEREIGN WITH CIVIL ROOTS WHO IS CLOSE TO THE PEOPLE is consistent with the metaphor of the transparent window for Merkel’s political style that Meyer-Lucht (2009) has mentioned in his article. According to him, the window locates her both inside, i.e., as a powerful and successful office holder, and outside, i.e., understanding people’s concerns. This twofold presence of a political and a civil or social, as well as of a private and a public self, on the level of audiovisual representation fits into the figurative theme of the campaign commercial. Such emergent figurative meanings are, however, not exclusively attributable to visual motifs and audiovisual representation, but primarily emerge from the dynamics of activated metaphoricity or metonymicity and of audiovisually orchestrated affective experiences.

To conclude, the developed figurative theme of the campaign commercial clearly indicates that the Spiegel cover picture of Angela Merkel as Catherine the Great is consistent with Merkel’s self-understanding and her party’s understanding of her as staged in the 2009 TV campaign ad. What Pfister (2013) had criticized with regard to the CDU’s 2013 election campaign, namely the party’s exclusive focus on the person and competence of its chancellor, proves itself already in the campaign commercial of 2009. Merkel sends a message of reassurance to the citizens (Pfister 2013, 24): as long as she is in the center, has control, sets the tone, and ensures stability and balance, the citizen is entitled to be included in this power and safety.

It is Merkel’s sovereignty, her position as the supreme monarch who has her eye on everything that is the central message and justification for her re-election: ‘Because I am the center of power, i.e., because I am the queen, we will succeed.’

6.5Conclusion: Metaphor and Metonymy as Interrelated Meaning-Making Processes

The analysis of the CDU campaign commercial clearly indicates that both metaphor and metonymy contribute to the emergence of the overall figurative theme in equal measure. The exclusion of either would amount to extracting a crucial aspect of the TV campaign ad’s overall statement and completely change it. Without the metonymical link of Merkel with the people through the pragmatic context of the German reunification, the experiential quality of monarchic and stability-providing power remained restricted to her. Without it and thus solely with the metonymical connection of ‘I am one of you’, in turn, the campaign commercial would lack the decisive sensation of stability and power that provides Merkel with an affective contour and makes her experientially palpable. Due to that intricate interplay of metaphor and metonymy that Goossens (1990) has aptly termed by the notion of metaphtonymy, an exclusive focus on metaphor might overlook crucial processes and aspects of audiovisual figurative meaning but also of figurative meaning in general. In line with its dynamic understanding of audiovisual figurativity, the analysis documents the dynamic nature of not only metaphor but also of metonymy. As such, it is likewise considered a process of meaning-making that unfolds in time and that can be cognitively and affectively activated, e.g., through audiovisual vitalizations of its imagery. Thereby, it provides evidence that Müller’s (2008a) concept of activation of metaphoricity and Müller and Tag’s (2010) analysis of the foregrounding of metaphoricity are equally applicable to metonymy; clearly illustrated by how the activated metonymies in the campaign commercial and their temporal unfolding as a repetitive pattern make the principle of contiguity salient.

In the analysis, metonymical as well as metaphorical meaning have turned out not to be isolated representational contents that are instantiated or contained in words and audiovisual images.93 Rather, it is clearly indicated that they emerge and unfold as ongoing processes through the flow of time, attention, and experience.

In the CDU campaign commercial, metonymy and metaphor each play out in the two dimensions of figurative meaning-making (see Chapter 5). Metonymical meaning emerges through the audiovisual concretization, i.e., the activation of mainly verbally expressed experiential realms and thus in a rather explicit manner. Metaphorical meaning, on the other hand, arises from the affective experience of cinematic expressive movement and thus in a subtler manner. The interplay of both brings together the contiguity between Merkel and the people (the more explicit form of figurative meaning) and the majestic power of an empress (the subtler, rather felt form of figurative meaning) in equal measure. This intricate mutual relatedness in the process of audiovisual figurative meaning-making reminds of Johnson’s phenomenologically informed take on meaning-making in general:

[M]eaning is a matter of relations and connections grounded in bodily organism-environment coupling, or interaction. The meaning of something is its relations, actual and potential, to other qualities, things, events, and experiences. In pragmatist lingo, the meaning of something is a matter of how it connects to what has gone before and what it entails for present or future experiences and actions. (Johnson 2007, 265)

On the macro level of figurative meaning-making, the CDU campaign commercial thus displays a balanced interplay of the two dimensions of figurative meaning and also of language and audiovisual staging. This balanced form brings about the overall theme and political message that the viewer associates with Angela Merkel. In this manner, the aesthetic arrangement and narrative structure make obvious recourse to film and cinema. Instead of a clear predominance of language over audiovisual staging (as it is assumed to be typical for television news reports), the CDU campaign commercial tends to “make the audio-visual orchestration salient, whereof dialogue is only one compositional element” (Scherer, Greifenstein, and Kappelhoff 2014, 2089). Moreover, its composition of the two expressive movements amounts to an elaborated affective dramaturgy (cf. Scherer, Greifenstein, and Kappelhoff 2014, 2089) that orchestrates a transition from a recollection image to an action image. In doing so, Merkel is integrated into an aesthetic and narrative space that provides her in a film-like manner with a framework, a role, and a story. In other words, by telling Merkel’s political story, the TV campaign ad at the same time creates a story about Merkel that makes her palpable, comprehensible, and ultimately evident. On the one hand, it creates the image of a powerful sovereign that is not of hereditary nobility but of civil origin and therefore close to the people. On the other hand, the well-established metonymical pattern extends the qualities of power associated with Merkel to the people she is standing for and thereby evokes a feeling of stability and security. Viewers conceive of her as being powerful and competent because they feel her gravitas, power, and dominance as experiential qualities in their own bodies.