BANANACUE
REPUBLIC
Vol I, No. 14
Dec 08, 2004
social criticisms by
Vicente-Ignacio de Veyra III
Oranges and
Apples
THE
YOUNG MAN I hired to cut the bamboo in my yard is now painting my ceiling.
The ceiling is going to be painted orange, the color presently rounding
the restaurants and fastfood shops of the country. Orange seems also to
have only recently become a popular color among button-down short-sleeved
shirt makers and buyers. And although gays seemed to have wanted to claim
it in the mid-‘90s as yet another of their color flags, heterosexuals
seemed to have acted in defiance of the virtual demand, denying gays that
privilege which the former had stamped successfully only on the color
lavender. Pink was liberated from the gay fences by corporate taste,
thanks perhaps to Japanese TQM gurus and the golf clubs of the USA. Pink
used to be the official color of socialists in Europe. Deep purple,
meanwhile, used to be a hippie band, later a gay symbol, although Latinos
would every now and then proudly parade the color as a symbol of their
race qua masters of color boldness and handling. It later became the color
of feminists, still is I believe. But heterosexual males in the interior
design of their offices are also slowly reclaiming it, as if to reassert
the color’s early associations with royalty. Reading all the above,
what’s obvious is this: the quirky use of color is almost to the level
of copyrighting them, if only people could, for certain political
statuses.
Anyway,
some of the bamboo we cut we used for scaffolding. This in the year and
month when the Philippines once again reached the CNN top three headlines
with the entry about flashfloods in Quezon province, Bicol provinces, and
the central Luzon area, killing as many as 400+ Filipinos accounted for. A
total log ban was enforced, and I suppose bamboo shouldn’t be exempted
if located in hills overlooking towns or otherwise inside flood-prone
areas of a city or municipality.
But
in my neighborhood there would be need-not-be-asked demand or so for the
bamboo to save GI-sheet roofing life and likewise save on energy-drink
required by daily sweeping of fallen bamboo leaves on my and my
neighbor’s lawns. So the bamboo went away and found new function.
The new function was as scaffolding for some decorative or psychological purpose.
ALL
DECORATIVE things are psychological things, the reason why I have always
put a high premium on decorators in my lifetime, no lower than my regard
for the great men of science and philosopher-kings. But there are good
decorators and bad decorators, or otherwise there are good decorations
that are not good to you and so therefore do not serve their psychological
purpose, unless their purpose is psych-war, decidedly with the intention
of hurting your eyes.
So,
back to my orange ceiling, yellow-orange to be precise. What are the
politics around it, accompanying the politics of the bamboo used for
scaffolding? Well, there is the quasi-science around it, the psychology of
the décor. Orange makes you feel warm, a function handy in a
city-subdivision that receives constant winds from the Pacific bouncing
off the recurrently damp hills with their bamboo and coconut vegetation.
One cannot anymore be suspected of being gay with an orange ceiling,
unlike five years back when a Boy Abunda would visit the ad agency I
worked for and exclaim “this orange sofa of yours is just so . . . gay.
Only somebody like that can think of a color like this.” Maybe because
it was a more pinkish kind of orange, and two of our bosses were
gay. No, especially with the proliferation of restaurants and donut or
burger shops boasting of the orange flag, orange is now for everybody and
anybody. Recently also, the Ukrainian opposition carried the orange color
as its symbol, and CNN averred this was probably intended to avert
possible violence in the restless country. There is orange and there’s
orange. The saffron kind is usually associated with pain and Hinduism, but
put that same color in a Dunkin' Donuts shop and you’d get an entirely
different context, more gustatory than yogi-tory. Put the same Dunkin’
Donuts scheme in an Indian shop and it’s another thing again.
What
does all this say? If color can be an indication of a person’s or
building’s personality or mood, the opposite is also true. The
statements of certain persons and establishments can also recontextualize
a color. If, for example, a neo-Nazi group were to be born somewhere,
displaying an orange flag with a black and white swastika circle in the
middle would certainly displace the warmth of orange, likewise the
Hinduist sacrifice context. It will become the new color of disguised
hate.
Therefore,
I could list down all the values the color orange will deliver into my
living room and dining room and bedroom from the ceiling. But what I do in
my house in the days when glossy yellow-orange remains my ceiling's color
will carry all the shades of that color to several possibilities. If I one
night start throwing plates, get out of my house and challenge my
neighbors to a bolo-play, the color orange will certainly be stamped in my
neighbors’ memories as a color that once ran amok in the
city-subdivision. I could be tagged with a new nickname, Oring the Bolo
King, or something like that.
I
most noticed and felt this flexibility in colors’ amiabilities or
offensiveness in corporate Manila. Manila offices have increasingly become
more experimental in coloration. Undoubtedly, office designers of chicness
have truly transformed some of today's offices into friendlier spaces. But
it all depends. Unsmiling faces could turn the whole atmospheric
amiability into a sort of fearsome Trojan horse that you may suddenly
discover as merely wanting to invade your approval. You step back,
withdrawing your application or customership. Beautiful offices with
probably the best feng shui designs may suddenly expose labor restlessness
that would quickly convert the establishment into a political arena with
mental gladiators and lions and possible blood. Conversely, the
worst-dressed lady executive who was despised by all that carried a ready
Bonamine against her cheap perfume in a horrifying violet and flowered
bottle may actually suddenly turn out to be the champion of the workforce
and become the heroine with the suddenly adorable coloration.
There
are colors to objects that carry “intrinsic” psychological or cultural
values. However, there are also colors in actions and body and facial
language and in speech that will synaesthetically blend with the visual
colors of the physical surrounding of any establishment during moments of
special assertions of these human-derived movements. That combination will
be noticed. Black worn by yuppies in coffeeshops make for a different mood
against black worn by rockers who can’t afford P30 beers. And anyway,
the black of corporate people are usually new black while rockers and
underpaid artists may favor the fading kind of lamp black that’s almost
just soot.
Let
us place ourselves in a fine arts college. A student who might often be
seen in gray shirts could be looked upon as a drab person. After a certain
local recognition of his prolificacy and creativity, the gray will
certainly become a symbol of his moderation against the differently-placed
flamboyance in his person. Most successful painters, after all, avoid
colorful clothing in the same way that models pick up their jeans and
t-shirts after a glamorous show.
Ultimately,
therefore, in the same sense that the BAD feng shui of an owner may
overshadow the GOOD feng shui of his building and office, a nicely-painted
house may anytime be overwhelmed by a horrifying behavior in its
inhabitants.
Colors
and you. The you will be the achievement, the colors the mere
psychological facade. The colors you choose, with their politics and
psychological effects, could speak of a truth about you, but also possibly
a lie.
I
suggest we save money for re-coloring our houses and lives as our lives
move forward, but ideally all in the service of truth. A welcoming color
is apt for welcoming inhabitants in a house. But, then, of course, many
offices operate on lies; so be careful with those oranges and apple
greens. That holds true for political colors as well.
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Posted at the Bananacue
Republic website 12/08/04. Send comments to:
[email protected]
"The colors you
choose, with their politics and psychological effects, could speak of a
truth about you, but also possibly a lie."