Monday, April 20, 2009

Silence of the Lambs analysis - part 23: Color mixing as a metaphor

CATEGORY: MOVIES

In the previous post in this analysis, it was observed that one of Lecter's clues to Starling given to her in Tennessee, refers to Saint Thomas Aquinas's Summa Theologica, Part 1 Question 3: "Of The Simplicity Of God." Aquinas says that since we cannot know what God is, he can only be known by what he is not. When theology follows the doctrine of divine simplicity, various modes of simplicity are distinguished by subtraction of various kinds of composition from the meaning of terms used to describe God.[a] The Silence of the Lambs uses color mixing as a 'metaphor' for this simplicity:




Above Left: Starling wears a green sweater when facing evil in Gumb's basement. As stated earlier in the analysis, green, as worn by Starling, indicates the presence of the Holy Spirit. Above Right: A simulated example of subtractive color mixing.[c] A subtractive color model explains the mixing of paints, dyes, and inks. Since Starling is wearing the sweater, which is, of course, dyed to give it its green color, and since dyes are obtained from subtractive color mixing, this is a metaphor for the subtractive model of Aquinas, and points to God's simplicity.


Below Left: Starling, still in pursuit of Gumb. The green 'glow' is due to the fact that Clarice is now being viewed through Gumb's night vision goggles. Below Right: Red, green, and blue lights combining by reflecting from a white wall.[c] An additive color model is used for lighting applications. Gumb is evil, indicating that additive coloring, as used for lighting in the movie, is used to represent the presence of evil in certain scenes.



Some of the above material was gone over in part 9 of this analysis, but we did not there link subtractive color mixing to the simplicity of God.


a. Wikipedia, 'Divine Simplicity'. Web, n.d. URL = https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divine_simplicity.
b. Image from the Wikipedia 'Color mixing' page; A simulated example of subtractive color mixing, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commmons.
c. Image from the Wikipedia 'Additive color' page; RGB illumination by en:User:Bb3cxv, licensed under GFDL or CC-BY-SA-3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

St. Thomas Aquinas's Summa Theologica on Logos Virtual Library


      

Posted at 12:13 AM
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