Orange: the Colour of Toxicity

Orange shades are associated with negative effects mostly, but not necessarily, when orange is related to chemicals. Anxiety, depression, insanity, in general, negative mental states can be associated with the characters surrounded by a context featuring toxic orange components.

In visual storytelling orange shades emanating harmful, poisonous atmosphere may feature objects commonly seen in industrial contexts (barrels, pipes, smokes, etc.), but not necessarily: one of the special cases of toxic orange can be seen in Bong’s Parasite where rusty orange comes in two variants, none of which can be considered an industrial visual trope: in smooth and balanced surfaces or attached to murky and disturbed texture.

Toxic Orange in Antonioni’s Red Desert

Red Desert (Antonioni, 1964) – orange comes in a range of striking hues in this Italian masterpiece focusing on existential crisis. Deep rusty orange is typically characterising the overpowering industrial complex and its featured elements, large containers, the barrels carried by the tanker, or the huge pipes running on the industrial site emanating toxic waste. In fact, the industrial can be so powerful, so futuristic that the architectural features, as Schwarzer points out, can controversially become more attractive than the dull human made spaces, luring with their potent toxicity as if the ‘red desert’ was a beautiful magic wasteland. Post-war monstrous constructions, despite their potentially alluring aesthetics, spread toxicity in air, water, land, which leads to a growing anxiety and constant fear in Giuliana, the protagonist. Like the industrial setting, her anxiety, carries an impenetrable mystery (Pomerance, 2011).

The wooden cabin with the love game of three couples features a vibrant reddish orange hue: Sedona and amber orange covers the flimsy planks, in parts decomposing. Although the atmosphere begins as playfully decadent, everyone laughing and flirting about, it gradually morphs into a strange unnerving atmosphere, confirming Giuliana’s anxiety: she starts to hear a baby crying just when she is about to physically join the joyful carelessness of skin deep love with her husband’s friend (while her husband, Ugo, keeps flirting with another woman on the same mattress). Despite the warm colours, and the heightened feelings, the cabin feels cold, the characters physically feel the chilly air, so they start to tear down and throw the orange planks on the fire, which transforms and questions the earlier coy mood.

Toxic Orange in Coppola’s Apocalypse Now

Apocalypse Now (Coppola, 1979) – orange in Coppola’s classic anti-war film is used in explosions (jungle fires) as well as suffocating mustard yellow-orange napalm fumes to support the concept of madness and the overall toxic effects of the Vietnam war. The final scene also features orange, the orange flames illuminate Captain Willard’s face, hairy chest: his whole body is ready to kill, connecting war induced insanity – through crosscut scenes – with the ritual barbarism of the tribe slaughtering the water buffalo. In his seminal book on colour meanings called ‘If It’s Purple, Someone’s Gonna Die: The Power of Color in Visual Storytelling,’ Bellantoni calls this hue the Agent Orange, which, ‘coming from the bowels of the earth’ envelopes everyone and everything, the (fictional) river Nung, the jungle in Vietnam, animals and humans, the tribesmen, the locals, the soldiers – regardless of which side they are on or what intention or purpose they should have, evoking a hellish darkness like in Conrad’s novel Heart of Darkness on which the story was based on.

Bibliography

Schwarzer, M.  2013. The Consuming Landscape: Architecture in the Films of Michelangelo Antonioni in Mark Lamster, ed. Architecture and Film. New York: Princeton Architectural Press

Bellantoni, P. 2013. If It’s Purple, Someone’s Gonna Die: The Power of Color in Visual Storytelling. New York: Focal Press.

Pomerance, M. 2011. Michelangelo Red Antonioni Blue Eight Reflections on Cinema. Berkeley: University of California Press.