There is one word, among many, of great suggestion and incredible symbolic power: we have returned to use it often these days, in a particular variation, for the fear and return of Covid, both in small outbreaks and in a possible more massive form in autumn. It is the word wave, from which derives also wave and therefore second wave.
Listen to "The word of the week: wave (by Massimo Sebastiani)" on Spreaker.
Even much of the wave charm derives, once again, from its ambiguity, that is, literally, from amb and agere, from 'going around' and therefore from taking on different perspectives. Beneficial or terrible, vital or deadly, the wave, elegant, sinuous, powerful or microscopic, lifts and drags, brings us to the top and crushes us.
The terrible social experiment described in the film The wave, in turn based on the novel written by Todd Strasser and inspired by events that really happened in California in 1967, contains all these elements: the union that makes strength, the spirit of cohesion, the ability to have an impact but also destructive consequences.
As part of a contemporary history course, Professor Ron Jones tried to show how Nazism managed to get involved by involving the second year students of Cubberley High School in Palo Alto in a sort of role-playing game focused precisely on discipline, cohesion exaltation of the group. The movement was called The third wave while the symbol chosen by the professor of German film transposition was just a wave.
The image of the wave, the most famous of which is perhaps that of the Japanese painter Hokusai that globalization or whatever you want, has also worn on the t shirts and sweatshirts of many western young people, perfectly represents everything we have talked about so far and makes all the meanings of the term very well: sublime beauty, hypnotic attraction, destructive fascination, fear and vulnerability of men (the boats on which the storm looms in the 19th century Japanese artist's woodcut), crests like claws and therefore almost a nature animal of the sea itself.
The etymology of the word is certainly aquatic: the Latin unda derives from the Sanskrit root ud- which refers to the wet, the wet water, the fertility (the waves in Nordic mythology corresponded to the nymphs: beauty but also dangerousness of desire). The ambiguity of the wave, however, is also reflected in the most used and most famous idioms: when we say that an actor, a singer, a political character is on the crest of the wave, we are actually saying that it has reached the highest point of his celebrity, his glory and perhaps also his strength but implicitly and, we can say, physiologically, we are also flashing the idea of the inevitable subsequent fall. You don't stay forever on the crest of the wave: because the crest itself breaks and because staying there is still a difficult balance exercise as every surfer knows.
On the other hand, the shock wave in fluid dynamics and aerodynamics can vary greatly in its effects depending on the intensity: sound waves, for example, are small disturbances of pressure and speed and do not greatly modify the flow that passes through them , but there are frightening shock waves like that of a MOAB bomb, an acronym that stands for Massive Ordinance Air Blast, but has been renamed Mother of All the Bomb because it is the most powerful nuclear device ever conceived, used by the US first time in Afghanistan in 2017, but which are beneficial shock waves such as the acoustic waves, which are now successfully used in therapies for orthopedic diseases and beyond.
And then, just to say the symbolic force of the wave, there are less evident but equally effective and efficient: like the wave of brands and marketing whose secret has been described in the book of one of the best known advertisers of Italy, Alberto De Martini: Brand Narrative Strategy. It is proper to the wave, as it is understood in physics, an oscillatory trend represented by a harmonic motion that in the sinusoidal wave rises and falls continuously. It is about establishing, deciding or understanding if you want to follow the wave, contrast the wave, take advantage of the wave, ride the wave, act on the wave of something (a feeling, a current, someone else's decision, etc.) : in short, the wave is something to be handled with certain care but it doesn't have to scare us as you can follow it gently, ride it and perhaps even steer it or take advantage of the impact.
And it can be destructive but also innovative: new wave or nouvelle vague or neue welle are the musical and cinematographic movements that have occurred in various countries and have innovated the cultural landscape of the moment. The seventh wave is an idea we do not know how mythical or realistic, of the strongest movement of the sea that can help us, accompany us, literally free us, as in the film Papillon in which Steve Mc Queen proposes to his friend Dega to escape from the penal colony of the Devil's Island by jumping into the sea and exploiting the seventh wave, that is the strongest of all that wins the others and can take us far from here.
Legend has it that some surfers from Barbados in Sting also spoke of the seventh wave: the result was The seventh wave, in which that most powerful wave of all becomes love.