The Winter a Tulip Bulb Cost More Than a Farmhouse
In the winter of 1637, tulipmania was in full swing in Holland. The tulip was an exotic new export from Central Asia, and the price had soared to record highs: bulbs were being sold for more than most farmers' houses, as fortunes were won, lost and gambled anew. That scene opens a peer-reviewed essay in Senses of Cinema, and the detail carrying it is not a number but a comparison. Prices at record highs is a statistic; a bulb outbidding a farmhouse is an image, which may be why the comparison travels further than any price series. A plant that arrived as a foreign novelty had become, in Holland, worth more than a house.
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The comparison is the whole engine of the story. Prices at record highs is a statistic; a bulb priced above a farmhouse is a picture, and pictures travel.
Pictures also flatten. The scene is at its most specific when it names the place, the season and the flower's origin in Central Asia, and at its least useful when it collapses into a single word: mania.