'Colouring in between the lines'- Part 2: 'Red' Earth

'All Geographers do is colour in'....'Geographer's love Crayola'...'It's all about the colouring pencils'....

 

In a five part series, exclusively for Geography with Dan, Daniel discusses how colour should be treated seriously within the subject. Each week, he selects a colour that helps to shape the planet we live on today, and studies that colour from a distinctively geographical perspective.

 

This week, he focuses on all things Red and argues that this colour is instrumental for a subject such as Geography.

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There's a bright, yet dispiriting light intermittently flashing on my computer mouse beside me, reminding me that its days of service for me are limited. A similar warning symbol is displayed on my digital camera screen too; a testament, if nothing else, at how appalling I am at monitoring battery life. At least I can rely on the warning lights to alert me as to when I should find my chargers. Those red warning lights.

"Red light spells danger..." as Billy Ocean famously sang, although I'm unsure if I agree. After all, let us consider the red lights that confront us on Planet Earth. The red lights which forewarn battery death do not necessarily cause danger; quite the opposite in fact. They alert us that some action is required of us to replace the said batteries or, in my case, re-charge them. The top bulb on a set of traffic lights or a car's rear breaking lights are there for reasons of safety and security rather than to implant a sense of inevitable doom into our lives. The speckles of red lights that cluster on the tops of buildings are of great use to pilots and the like; they don't spell insurmountable peril, but rather prevent it.

 

There is, however, a case to be made that red and redness infuses a sense of completion, expiration and extremity. The end to a battery's life; the cessation to a stretch of driving; the very tip of a building; maximum speed on a speedometer; a red card in a football match. It's fascinating to consider that these principals- the fundamental idea of red denoting termination and extremity- is almost instinctive to us. After all, which lesson at school was devoted to colour symbology? (Perhaps that's on the curriculum now?)

So how do we know that red light spells expiration? I would argue that the answer, or at least the clues, can be found in Earth's natural phenomena. When our long summer days are completed, our woodlands undergo a spectacular metamorphosis; lush and leafy green foliage transforms into crisp autumnally red articles that depart their aerial position and float gracefully down to a welcoming blanket of further redness below. It's a sight to warm the heart, and I often enjoy ambling through my local woodlands during October, listening to the crunch and crisp that nature's red carpet provides.

 

Anyone that has marvelled at a sunrise or witnessed a sunset will note about the palette of dark reds and light reds which are interspersed within the tints of gold and the tones of orange, and once again, they collectively celebrate the end of a day cycle or a night cycle. The sunset marks the end of the day shift for some; the end of guiltless back garden sunbathing for others. For plants, the end of photosynthesis; for nocturnal fauna, the end (hopefully) of a good sleep. There is, then, a symbolic colour that manifests through nature's body clock; an unmistakable redness in our landscape.

Perhaps, it doesn't just exemplify completion or termination. How many times have you been sitting in your car waiting for the lights to change from red to green and silently contemplated over your day; your week; your life? How many times has a walk through your red autumnal forests sparked memories of a summer spent? How many times has a sunset triggered a moment of deep reflection? I may argue therefore that Earth's 'redness' elicits a sense of profound meditation in all of us. If contemplation had to be coloured, perhaps it would be red; we express our emotions through redness. A rose on Valentine's Day. A poppy when we remember the fallen. Red faces upon embarrassment or anger.

For those within the UK, red has become embraced and incorporated into the very texture of our nationalism. The red London bus, the red letterbox, the red telephone box; if any colour was to exhibit British culture and British nationalism, I would argue that red would be the successful applicant. From the BBC logo to the English flag and Red Nose Day, a trail of redness swarms around our villages, towns and cities in immeasurable volumes; our national pride, although diminishing in the face of globalisation, is sustained within the very redness of our urban environment.

But that very association- the intangible links between nationalism and redness- is one that is imagined; indeed, the very idea of a nation is imagined. Benedict Anderson famously wrote in 1973 that individuals construct the concept of a society; an 'imagined community' composed of a group who share common heritage, common views; common identity and affiliation to a particular nation. Likewise, our association between redness and nationalism is one deeply set in the core of our own imagination. It's so deeply embedded into our culture, that it appears permanent and irreversible. The truth is, all it comes down to is a whirring mix of chemicals and hormones inside our minds.

So if it isn't fixed- if these geographical discourses on colour are mere emotion, thought and feeling- why study them so intensively? Well, Geography's pivotal agenda according to Bonnett (2008) is to "find and impose meaning into a seemingly chaotic world" and most of those meanings are ones that reside inside our mind. Man's greatest theories stem from mere ideas; our greatest landmarks inspire emotions; our finest landscapes stir and excite our imaginations. Places remind us of memories; sometimes of our darkest hours, sometimes of our highest achievements. Places spark curiosity, they initiate fears; they propagate hope. Colours such as red, when they do appear either on the leaves of our trees, or behind the clouds of our dusk-lit skies, remind us of the sheer presence and vitality of the world in which we live. A planet that through intricate connections with our emotions, thoughts and feelings, is one that we have settled to call 'home'.