Color Me Blue
[Images: Feeling blue, fangleman via flickr; Blue rain, DBarefoot via flickr; Blue Man Group, qnibert00 via flickr;
Artwork: designslinger]
Blue. Correct me if I'm wrong here, but I can't think of another color that describes
so many of the vagaries of life. I mean it is just one of the three primary colors after all. Yet, all on its own, red doesn't describe a mood, nor does yellow describe a style of music.
The word comes down through the Germans to the French and on to the Middle English,
where it came to be blue. Why then did the color of the sky and the ocean come to describe the human state of depression and melancholy? Well, we have to look back to the Greeks. When Zeus was sad and cried he created rain, and since rain falls from the sky and creates the oceans, if Zeus is sad and cries water and water is the color blue, then who are we to say another color is more appropriate to describe sadness.
Of course this doesn't explain the "blue movie." Here the color is used to describe a
risqué or pornographic film. Blue became identified with the obscene and indecent back in the early 19th century. A song, Thread o' blue, was called, "a smutty touch in song-singing." Chinese brothels were painted blue back then, and in the early to mid-20th century, porn movies, shown on home projectors, were said to cast a blue tint. At least that explanation is a more direct result of the color itself.
Billie Holiday was the Lady [who] Sings the Blues. The blues. A style of African
American secular music that grew out of the remnants of the Civil War, which emphasized personal feelings rather than religious beliefs.
Then there are things that "come out of the blue." Which seems to refer to the Chicken
Little theory that the sky is falling. An exasperated person becomes "blue in the face." I guess that's so you can differentiate between someone who's angry and turns red, and someone whose blue neck veins pop out in frustration.
The Blue Man Group consists of 3 men who are painted the color blue. The only literal
interpretation of a group of "blue" men that I know of.
Posted by designslinger at 4/3/2009 5:00 AM 
Categories: Dictionary, Color
Tags: Blue Man Group feeling blue blue movie blues
Categories: Dictionary, Color
Tags: Blue Man Group feeling blue blue movie blues
You forgot the Ancient Mayans who used a shade of blue to paint their captives for sacrafice. Plus more recently the blue Avatars in the James Cameron blockbuster
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Didn' t know about the Mayans, and hadn't seen Cameron's yet when we posted! Thanks for the info and the visit.
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