'The Balance of Red & Blue': Color Symbolism in context of Fate & Free Will in Season Five

[zimshan]

So, apparently I’ve been out of school for too long and had the urge to write a paper? Who knows…

This thing got ridiculously massive very quickly, I blame it all on Serge Ladouceur for making me all thinky. I want my brain back, Serge

Comments

[destina]

This post is completely made of awesome. I'll have to read it all again now and try to absorb it, but: wow. So much to think about! I love your visual examples; it really brings home things I haven't noticed or thought about as the season has progressed. A really fantastic dissection of the color theme.

[zimshan]

Wow, thank you. I'm actually ridiculously glad to hear it makes some semblance of sense! I had moments while working on this of my brain going, 'What are you doing? This is just pure madness.' So I'm overjoyed you found it worthwhile and was able to hit some things home for you!

[harwhon]

This is such an interesting piece of meta! I've been wondering about it too, this season, although, I have to admit I hadn't noticed much more red and blue aside from their ties. But seeing it like this is just - really striking.

You did this so well - looking through this season's episodes and providing us with caps. I applaud you. And your theory sounds completely valid. I really hope you're right! I would love to see the boys save the world!

I'm gonna link this in my own lj, I hope you don't mind?

[zimshan]

Ah, the ties definitely were the first thing to really make my head scratch. I can't remember fully, obviously we've had 82 episodes before filled with the boys ties, but to my knowledge, they freely wore black and blue pretty often in the past. Sometimes both would wear black, sometimes both blue, and an occasional couple reds in there, but never a consistent pattern like this, that I can recall.

Anyway, I'm so glad to hear you thought the method worked well. There was a lot of pieces to it, and I wasn't sure how exactly to present it, but it's great that you thought the concluding theory sounded plausible!

I'm gonna link this in my own lj, I hope you don't mind?
Oh, of course, feel free to link away! :)

[bohemiabythesea]

What an amazing post! Which I will have to read later tonight, to be able to give it my full attention...

[zimshan]

Glad you were able to find it worthwhile! :)

[smilla02]

Wonderful, wonderful post. You've convinced me. It's been a while I've noticed the blue/red connection - also becasue it's one of my favored mix of colors - but your explanation and the visuals you bring with it are fantastic.
I love your conclusions, if nothing else because I want to be hopeful about the end, whatever it is.

Again, great job with this!

[smilla02]

Oh, and you are absolutely right about Renaissance Art. Beato Angelico, Piero della Francesca and of course Botticelli all use an incredible mix of blue and red.

[zimshan]

Ah-ha! Botticelli! That's who I was thinking of!

Thanks for verifying my hazy memory!

[zimshan]

Yay! I'm glad you were able to find it plausible! I too just love the contrast red and blue provides, which probably why it was able to drive me so crazy with the WHY? But I'm happy to hear the post worked for you!

I love your conclusions, if nothing else because I want to be hopeful about the end, whatever it is.
Hee, I think I can find hope in just about anything these days, which is hysterical because I definitely used to be the 'Blaze of Glory' gal all the way. But then Kripke put us through the ringer that was S4 and now all I want for everyone is rainbows and lollipops! ;)

[dev_earl]

I've been making icons of this show since S1, and this?

Season 1's major color palette was of blue and green hues. Season 2's major color palette faded to even less color, though trending toward less blue, and more green. Season 3's major color palette is largely regarded as predominately yellow. And Season 4's had the most red, warmth hues we've seen yet, primarily seen in dealing with Sam, Ruby, and Dean's Hell experiences.

Is very, VERY much true. This is such an incredible meta. It was like you were pinging my "make sense" radar left and right. I particularly love the section about the conscious choices in props, set, lighting and shots. I didn't even realize re. the colors of cars in 5.02 and Paris Hilton's shoes! Ahahaha.

Also, THIS:

Sam, with his ambition but tendency for rebellion, trends toward Fire. Dean, with his rationality and loyalty but tendency for coldness, trends toward Water. We can see this in their reactions to one another’s deaths. Dean slips into such depression he commits himself to death. Sam angers and

[zimshan]

AH!! YES! You know, I almost emailed you to verify, 'cause I knew you'd know dealing with icons for so long, but then I ran out of time. But that's fantastic that you've thought so as well.

And I'm SO glad you found that this all made sense! And that you enjoyed the different caps. I had known there was a lot of red and blue but when I started putting them into a separate folder, I realized I had NO IDEA just how much. I had like 256 caps at the end. Obviously I didn't used even half that but the only way I could begin to organize it was to divide it up into sets, props, lighting, and shots like that. Nice to hear it was effective!

And YAY! I'm happy the Fire/Water thing rang true for you! I just adore the contrasts the show employs with the two, and this gave me the obvious chance to delve into that, so it was fun!

I wish we could get Kripke talking about this, man. It'll be awesome. RIGHT? I'd love for them to go into how they've broken down the psychology of the boys, because it's remained remarkably consistent over the years.