Blue
Although blue is the colour of the clear summer sky, the colour of heaven and of the robes of the Virgin in Renaissance paintings (the azure pigment, lapis lazuli, being extremely valuable), it also has a more sinister side. Marina Warner mentions the tale of Bluebeard, in which a brutal murderer, who forbids his new bride to enter a certain room (frequently a blue chamber), is distinguished by the unnatural hue of his luxuriant beard:
The colour blue, the colour of ambiguous depth, of the heavens and the abyss at once, encodes the frightening character of Bluebeard, his house and his deeds … The chamber he forbids his wife becomes a blue chamber in some retellings: blue is the colour of the shadow side, the tint of the marvellous and the inexplicable, of desire, of knowledge, of the blueprint, the blue movie, of blue talk, of raw meat and rare steak (un steak bleu, in French), of melancholy, the rare and the unexpected (singing the blues, once in a blue moon, out of the blue, blue blood)
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“Blue” is also used to denote the obscene. Blue movies, which contain sexually explicit scenes, have frequently been banned by film censors. In 1922 the Hays office was established in the United States of America to monitor the sexual content of films, a move that followed the establishment of the British Board of Film Censors in 1912. No doubt the script was subjected to the “blue pencil”, that erased the forbidden. The ultimate blue movie, however, contains no scenes of sex (or of anything else). Called Blue, it was made by the British film-maker, Derek Jarman, shortly before his death from AIDS. Throughout the film, the screen remains a uniform blue, while the narrator, now blind as a result of the disease, describes all things blue.
In New Haven, Connecticut, severe puritanical laws, enacted in the 18th century, were known as “blue laws”. The physiological dangers of the colour are indicated by Kandinsky, who proposed that blue light can cause temporary paralysis to the heart, while Goethe states in his Theory of Colours that blue “brings a principle of darkness with it, gives an impression of cold, reminds us of shade, affinity to black, the appearance of objects seen through a dark glass is gloomy and melancholy”
Green
Green is the colour of plants, leaves, grass, vegetables and young crops and epitomises the fervour and life of spring and regeneration. The Christian, Chinese and Muslim religions all agree on this. Mohammed is thought to have been attended by angels in green turbans at pivotal points in his life and a green banner was identified with the prophet. Under a former Turkish law, only Muslims were allowed to wear green. Yet green can also be a dangerous colour. Frédéric Portal says of it:
Green, like other colours, had a nefarious meaning; as it had been the symbol of the soul’s regeneration and of wisdom, it also signified, by opposition, moral degradation and madness. The Swedish theosophist, Swedenborg, gives green eyes to the madmen in hell. A window in Chartres Cathedral depicts the temptation of Jesus – Satan has green skin and great green eyes …
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Green is certainly a colour of ill omen for Muirchertach, the King of Ireland in a Celtic tale. While out hunting one day he is resting alone on a mound when a beautiful girl in a green mantel appears beside him. He is captivated and she offers herself to him on condition that he never utters her name and that neither the mother of his children, nor clerics should be in her sight. The king turns his wife and children from his door and asks her the name which must never be spoken. “It is Sigh, Sough, Storm, Rough Wind, Winternight, Cry, Wail, Groan”, she wails. She is a mistress of magic and illusion, conjuring enchanted pigs and a headless battalion, but one dark evening a storm arises and the king exclaims: “This is the sigh of a winter night”. He has uttered her name and is doomed. Now the storm (Irish sin) sets his house on fire and he is attacked by phantoms. He climbs into a barrel of wine and is drowned while fire falls on his head and burns him.
Here green is associated with the supernatural (Sin is an enchantress though she is not, in this tale, immortal) but also with the forces of nature, of awesome yet terrible beauty. The Green Knight, beheaded by Gawain at the court of King Arthur yet with remarkable regenerative powers, has a similar affinity with the natural world. He, too, is potentially lethal, awaiting Gawain’s visit so that he can return the blow. The green of nature is God’s colour, says Alec Gill, and that is the reason one should never burn anything green. Just as green-leafed trees are followed by black bark in winter, the wearing of green must be avoided if one is to escape death.
Rationalist explanations for the taboo on the colour point to its association in Elizabethan times with the loss of virginity and pregnancy, and the fact that it is the colour of envy, mould, unripe fruit and putrefaction. Historical instances where green clothes or artefacts have proved particularly unlucky can also be cited but would not explain why the prohibition is so widespread within the British Isles.
Red
Red, the most salient of colours, is linked with passion, shame and danger. One is red-hot, attracted to a scarlet woman, red-faced, caught red-handed (perhaps in a red-light district), red in tooth and claw, seeing red, waving a red rag, put on a red alert, frustrated by red tape, a red traffic-light or a red herring. Red-heads are famous in European folklore for their fiery tempers and wilful witchcraft, while the ardent Mary Magdalene, sinner turned saint, is traditionally painted with flowing auburn locks. Another biblical character, Esau, was born with a ruddy complexion and hairy – a sign of his bestial nature – and he sold his birthright for a bowl of broth made from red lentils. Red is the colour of revolution, of fire, of love, of vitality, but also of blood, of wounds and of sacrifice.
Because it is the colour of blood, red shares many of the taboos surrounding bloodshed. The anthropologist, James Frazer, relates how Native American Indians, after slaughtering Inuit, would take red earth or ochre, and paint the lower parts of their faces with it before touching food. Red ochre was also daubed on the unfortunate Maori man whose duty it was to feed a fellow citizen who had been tainted through contact with a corpse, and in New Zealand, a canoe which had carried a corpse was never used again, but was pulled up onto the shore and painted red. In Madagascar, the funeral colour is red and the brightly coloured striped shrouds are referred to as “red rags”.
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Curiously, among the Baktaman of New Guinea, the red pandanus plant signifies not weakness but virility. In the secret fourth-degree initiation rituals, which the women are forbidden to see, seniors mix red pandanus juice with red berber bark and melted pork fat, to the accompaniment of war cries, and pour the solution on red ochre which they smear all over the novices, chanting “I paint you red”. For the Baktaman, red is a colour that betokens strength, secrecy, and the sacred. It is identified with blood lineage and the ancestors, life, growth, increase, strength and maleness.
Sometimes red is chosen as a colour because it is so noticeable. Hutton Webster records that a priest in the Hawaiian islands declared everything red to be sacred to his spirit, banning people from wearing red clothes or eating red foods, while in New Zealand red was the sacred colour of the Maori and if a chief laid a taboo on anything he set up a post and painted it red. Red light is thought to stimulate and excite the heart and, after black and white, red is the colour identified in the simplest societies.
Yellow
In German-occupied countries, during the Third Reich, it became mandatory for Jews to wear a yellow star so that they might be identified as “tabooed” persons. Those wearing the yellow star were denied food, society, work, education, and finally, life itself. The star represents the ‘Shield of David’, a traditional Jewish symbol, but the colour plays no significant role in Jewish iconography. Yellow is traditionally associated with brightness and sunlight.
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Yellow became the colour of jealousy, of envy, of treachery. Judas was painted in yellow garments and in some countries Jews were compelled to be so dressed. In France, in the sixteenth century the doors of traitors and felons were daubed with yellow. In Spain heretics who recanted were enjoined to wear a yellow cross as a penance and the Inquisition required them to appear at public autos da fe in penitential garments and carrying a yellow candle.
There is a special reason why Christianity should have viewed yellow with suspicion. It had been associated with wanton love. In the beginning the association was with legitimate love … but in Greece, and to a still more marked extent in Rome, the courtesan began to take advantage of this association.
The common European prejudice against yellow can be confirmed by such expressions as “yellow-livered” and “yellow streak” to denote cowardice. During the reign of Francis I of France, the traitor Charles de Bourbon had yellow paint smeared on his door and an executioner in medieval Spain wore a garment of yellow and red – yellow to symbolise the treachery of the accused and red for the retribution of society. Jews in medieval Spain identified the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden as a lemon, a sour fruit, and johann Wolfgang von Goethe, in his Theory of Colours, is aware of the disagreeable effect of the colour yellow when it appears on course surfaces such as cloth or felt.
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Yellow also signifies disease. A yellow flag flown on a ship was a warning that its crew were in quarantine, infected with the “yellow plague” or jaundice. Illness, more psychological than physical, also underlies a novel by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Yellow Wallpaper. In this feminist tale, a young mother is oppressed by the social restraints of a patriarchal society. Forbidden by her husband to continue with her writing, she is trapped within a room which has hideous yellow wallpaper. As she observes, “The colour is repellent, almost revolting; a smouldering unclean yellow” and “It makes me think of all the yellow things I ever saw – not beautiful ones like buttercups, but old foul, bad yellow things”. The wallpaper, with its twisted patterns, evokes nightmarish visions of contorted shapes. Behind the yellow paper, a woman, trapped like herself, crawls around the room and struggles to escape: “I pulled and she shook, I shook and she pulled, and before morning we had peeled off yards of that paper”.
Yellow was also the colour that symbolised social revolution in China in the millenarian revolt of the Yellow Turbans in 182 ce..
from: Encyclopedia of taboos, Lynn Holden
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