White versus black, red versus blue, Gatsby’s green light, Dorothy’s ruby red slippers, Belle’s blue dress.
Color is perhaps the most ubiquitous motif used across both fiction and reality to thread people or objects through a common theme, or to pit two ideologies against each other beyond their verbal spats. Color is also perhaps the simplest motif, but that doesn’t make it any lesser in its potency.
In fiction, color is an easy way for the audience to learn as fast as possible who’s on whose side, and who their opponents are, and today, we’re going to look at a few.
But first: Crash course into color theory:
Warmer colors evoke passion or uncertainty, movement and excitement, happiness and warmth, but also rage, aggression, love, and lust. The cooler colors evoke sadness and serenity, but also youth and spring and winter and death.
Most of the time when a creator wants to juxtapose color in a narrative or other work, they’re going to use inverses, just google one of the hundreds of teal and orange movie posters. Inverses are whatever colors lie at opposite sides of the wheel. Blue and Orange, Red and Green, Purple and Yellow. These pairs show up either in opposition, or as an ensemble of one character or a group or team.
Part 1: Black and White
Yes it has grounds in racism, but black and white are also accepted to mean chaos and order, good and evil, death and life.
In a show like Lost, themes of black and white are constant. The black and white backgammon pieces, the colors of the Dharma station logos, the show’s main title card, God stand-in Jacob (Lucifer from Supernatural), and his unnamed brother, the Man in Black.
Black and white show up everywhere, in some places subtler than others. In fiction with a male and female lead, if they are coded in black and white, the man is almost always the one in black. Black means strength and mystery and this deep, almost corrupted darkness. White is purity, femininity, youth, and nurturing, when a woman wears it, unless she's the villain.
Villains in white are very often surprise villains:
The White Witch (Chronicles of Narnia)
Saruman (Lord of the Rings)
President Coin (Hunger Games)
Hans (Frozen), Mayor Bellweather (Zootopia), Auto (Wall-E)
Elizabeth from Pirates of the Caribbean is an interesting case. She begins the first movie wearing light colors and being trapped in the pure and lawful life of the governor’s daughter. She ends her arc in the third movie in solid black (through several costumes) a badass Pirate King and wife of the new Captain of the Flying Dutchman.
Men in black are chivalrous, dark knights, or morally grey vigilantes, silent badasses, or edgy badboys. Black is also of course reserved for villains a la Darth Vader, or Severus Snape and Voldemort and a million others. The "Black Knight" is his own trope, whether he's in a fantasy setting or not.
Women in black are temptresses, or seductive badasses. Black is the color of corruption, sin, and angst in western media 9 times out of 10 unless a narrative wants to subvert it.
I could do an entire essay on black and white in Lord of the Rings alone but here's a few other contrasts: The white Tower of Ecthelion, Minas Tirith, the "White City", the White Tree, Gandalf the White. The Black Riders, Black Speech, Black Land of Mordor, Orthanc (Saruman's Tower).
But you don’t have to make your character’s entire costumes black and white, no, you can just make their hair light and dark.
Part 2: Hair
Possibly also because racism but we don’t have time to unpack all that right now
When you have your male protagonist and his male foil, love interest, competition, companion, lancer, or villain, most of the time (in western media where blonds are in abundance) the more noble or “good” character of the two will be blond, the other brunet, especially in a love triangle. If two male characters have opposing ideologies on any level, they will often have opposing hair. A male and female lead duo will also tend to have opposing hair, but it’s most obvious what they’re doing when it’s two dudes and not just coincidence.
Here’s a nonexhaustive list, with the brunet first (ignoring if the adaptation was faithful):
Frodo Baggins and Samwise Gamnee (LoTR)
Aragorn and Boromir (LoTR)
Aragorn and Theoden (LoTR)
Denethor and Faramir (LoTR)
Thorin and Bilbo (Hobbit)
Jack Shephard and James “Sawyer” Ford (Lost)
Jack Twist and Ennis Del Mar (Brokeback Mountain) Also have opposing hats
Bruce Wayne and Harvey Dent (The Dark Knight)
Tony Stark and Steve Rogers (Marvel)
Bucky Barnes and Steve Rogers (Marvel)
Loki and Thor (Marvel)
Nico di Angelo and Will Solace (Percy Jackson)
Percy Jackson and Jason Grace (Percy Jackson)
Sherlock Holmes and John Watson (the Cumberbatch one)
Sam Winchester and Dean Winchester (Supernatural)
Edmund Pevensie and Peter Pevensie (Chronicles of Narnia)
Gale Hawthorne and Peeta Mellark (Hunger Games)
Damon Salvatore and Stefan Salvatore (Vampire Diaries)
Tom Buchanan and Jay Gatsby (2013 Gatsby)
Caledon Hockley and Jack Dawson (Titanic)
Notable nonexhaustive exceptions:
Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy (Harry Potter)
Percy Jackson and Luke Castellan (Percy Jackson)
Jacob Black and Edward Cullen (Twilight)
Batman and Superman (DC Comics)
Luke Skywalker and Han Solo (Star Wars)
Anakin Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi (Star Wars) wardrobe makes up for it
Not every brunet on the list is a “bad” guy, nor is every blond the “good” guy, but compared to each other, the brunet tends to be the more morally grey, the more corrupted, the one who’s ideologies end up getting them hurt or killed or proving them wrong. Or, the brunet faces more demons, has a darker personality, or tends to have a “shoot first ask questions later” philosophy.
This of course goes out the window if the media is set in a region or with a cast of characters who are meant to share similar features, like how there’s no blondes at all in Last Airbender (otherwise Aang would absolutely fit the pattern).
Whether that’s Frodo getting corrupted by the Ring and Sam being his rock, Jack Twist getting murdered while Ennis lives on, or the beloved Dark Knight and his bat-black demons while Harvey’s White legacy saves Gotham, next time you write a brunet and his blond competition, ask yourself just why you’re doing it.
Side note, I’m pretty sure Harvey Dent, when he’s animated, is usually a brunet, but he’s also usually Two-Face by then and no longer a hero.
I don’t even have time for black and white in anime or the trope of the white-haired anime boy and since natural hair colors are kind of moot, I don’t think the same rules apply. But outside of the westernized “black knight vs white knight” I do want to dig deeper into color motifs in anime at some point.
Here's some notable dark and light dichotomies nonetheless in wardrobe and/or hair:
Kirito and Asuna (Sword Art Online)
Lelouch and Suzaku (Code Geass)
Midoriya and Bakugo (My Hero Academia)
L and Light (Death Note)
Medusa and Stein (Soul Eater)
Sasuke and Naruto (Naruto)
Roy Mustang and Riza Hawkeye (Fullmetal Alchemist)
Eiji and Ash (Banana Fish)
Kyoya and Tamaki (OHSHC)
Yuri and Viktor (Yuri!!! On Ice)
Dracula and Alucard (Castlevania)
Part 3: Red v. Blue and everything in between
The megalith that is the color motif extends past the white/black dichotomy.
It’s also red and blue.
If red is pitted against blue in any story, red is always the team the audience is supposed to root against, unless this is sports. Red is the color of the Sith, the Fire Nation, red eyes are seen as evil, red is blood and rage and wrath and fire. Red is the color of evil empires. Blue is the color of heroes. It’s water and healing and camaraderie, serenity. Blue is the color of rebels and underdogs.
Red versus blue is in everything from the color of lightsabers in Star Wars to the color of cybertronian eyes in Transformers, to the color of the Water Tribes and Fire Nations (with some exceptions a la Azula’s blue fire) to the colors of the pills in the Matrix. Red is the ‘dangerous’ choice, blue is the ‘safe’ choice. Unless your character is patriotically sporting the red, white and blue of the UK, USA, or France.
Villains usually only wear blue if they're ice-coded, or belong to a faction wearing navy blue uniforms.
Red versus blue also shows up between leaders and their lancers. The first one I can think up off the top of my head is Robin and Raven from Teen Titans.
Purple is also usually lumped in with the bad guys and green with the good guys, but purple and green also show up a ton as contrasting colors of the same character like the Hulk or the Joker. But both can swing either way. The Decepticons in the early cartoons for Transformers had purple everywhere and reclaimed it in Transformers: Prime. Megatron, Soundwave, Shockwave, the Vehicons, Airachnid, and the Dark Star Saber, and some G1s]. Prime also has three sets of red-blue dichotomies within their factions: [Arcee/Cliffjumper, Optimus/Ratchet, and Knockout/Breakdown].
Green is the color of more Jedi, and the Green Lanterns, but green also represents sickness or disease or generic evil energy a la Loki, Dr. Facilier (Princess and the Frog) or the Hyenas and Scar in the Lion King.
Pink is really up in the air, as is orange and yellow, especially when it comes to female characters, especially female anime characters.
But enough about color dichotomy.
Part 4: Color Singularity
Color singularly is either meant to evoke a specific emotion, like using blue everywhere to represent sadness, or it’s meant to be a bold statement in an otherwise grayscale world.
I mentioned a few at the top of the post and I’ll elaborate on them here:
In Great Gatsby, green and yellow are very important colors. The “green light” is this real object at the end of the titular character’s love interest’s dock. This light and this color are motifs that represent Gatsby’s longing for Daisy and to return to a glorious past he can never have again (it’s also the color of American money). Yellow is also everywhere in this book. It’s the color of his chekov’s car and several dresses at his extravagant party. Yellow is the color of his current life of glitz and glam and riches (and is also the color of gold). If you listen to one of the accompanying songs to the 2013 film, Florence and the Machine’s “Over the Love” recognizes the importance of yellow in the narrative.
Dorothy’s red slippers in the Wizard of Oz are hyperbolically bold, especially since the movie starts out in black and white. Color is a huge piece of this film- the Emerald City, the Yellow Brick Road, the horse of many colors. Red scientifically is the color humans tend to notice first, those shoes were made to be remembered. Color in Wizard of Oz is the symbol of the fantastical, which was really helped by the time the film was made and simply seeing so much color on screen dazzled audiences.
Red catches your eye faster than any other color, and red in a world of black and white sticks in your mind, just look at Schindler’s List.
Belle from Beauty and the Beast, along with a lot of fictional women wear blue. Blue is biblically Mary’s color, and at one time was the color marketed to women before the shift to “blue for boys”. In the original Beauty and the Beast, Belle was the only character who wore blue, because she was an outsider, and outlier, a free-thinker. Or at least, Belle is the only one who wears blue until she dances with the Beast. The live-action remake didn’t maintain this extra level of the narrative and that’s a shame.
I didn't mention eye color much above (also maybe because racism) but blue eyes, especially animated blue and green eyes, go to characters who are more hopeful, heroic, nurturing, morally just, honest, or brave than their brown-eyed counterparts, unless he's a blue-eyed Tall, Dark, and Handsome. Blue-eyed people tend to be blond, so the traits go hand in hand for the "good" character.
Weirdly enough, this also applies to blue-eyed animal characters—your animated anthropomorphised villain is rarely going to be drawn with eyes that aren't brown, black, green, red, orange, or yellow.
Because color is also a subliminal or overt way of foreshadowing in both written and visual media as much as any other motif and recurring symbol. You can foreshadow death, or impending doom, or an eventual identity reveal, whatever you want.
You can also subvert the usual associations with specific colors. Black doesn’t have to mean evil in your world. Black can be life, too. White doesn’t have to be pure, white can be clinical and sterile and lifeless (but please no more lady villains in white pantsuits, that's its own cliche at this point). Shake it up a bit every once in a while.
So whether it’s dueling ideologies or the very forces of good and evil, a harbinger of doom or a secret tell, or community and camaraderie, or an enduring hope, you can represent it all with a careful dose of color.
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