Of any scene in the movie the one that remained with me the most was the two colored tea time. In this scene, for starters, Orlando is a woman, also, the room is filled with people dressed in blue and yellow. More specifically, all the men are dressed in blue and the woman in yellow. The only exceptions to this being Orlando and her newly won suitor. Here Orlando is shown is a massive pale blue dress decked with flowers and her suitor is shown in bright yellow garments, each in the exact same shade of the opposite genders in the room.
As to the meaning of the color switch, I’m not entirely sure, but the way I saw it, was that Orlando was taking the more “expected” masculine role while her suitor acted similar to the way woman were considered to respond. Orlando is unlike the expectation of women then, she is not sitting there waiting to attract a suitors eye, rather, she aims to actively contribute to the conversation and debate that which the men were discussing. So this is what I was able to grasp from the scene, but honestly, I found most of the movie pretty confusing. I was only able to grasp a bit of the underlying meaning. I understood that, overall, it was suggesting that men and women have been treated differently throughout the years. A person, for example Orlando, could be the same sort of person whether they were a man or woman, personality wise, but, based on their sex there are different things they are permitted to do and certain ways they are expected to act.
Anyways, the tea time scene was definitely the scene that stuck out the most for me. Now, I’m not saying it was my favorite scene, because it was not, there were other scenes that I found much more impressive, either visually or through the dialogue. However, when I think back on the movie this is the first scene that comes to mind and I take that as being pretty important.
Jackie,
ReplyDeleteI definitely agree with you that the tea time scene was signficiant, although I never thought to look into the color schemes as you did. At that point in the movie, I was listening more to the conversation Orlando had with the poets on what a woman is, and how they should be treated. And as you said, there was the female Orlando, jumping in and holding a conversation with the men, who are only patronizing her by saying that if she were their wife, she would be flowered with perfumes, flowers, and clothes, like a doll. Granted, this was what was done to women at the time, but it was clear that Orlando wanted much more, or else she would not have attended the party. That is what I also picked up on during this scene (as you did)--that what men and women are changes with the time period and social expectations.
The color structure of this scene (and the entire film) was frequently commenting on gender and social class. pale yellow is often associated with childhood, innocence, or youth. pale blue is also associated with innocence, but also with purity, serenity and melancholy.
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