Colour of the Character

The character, Hatsumomo in 'Memoirs of a Geisha' striked me the most as she has a very powerful appearance. She is the first Geisha that Chiyo sees. It is very clear to see what type of person she is and the colours she wears make this just as clear too. When we first see Hatsumomo she is wearing red which symbolises everything she is. She is a fiery woman with a temper which associates with red as the colour of heat. She also wears red when she is caught having sex, which relates to how the colour also symbolizes lust. She is later in the film 'considered a prostitute more than a geisha' which relates back to how lustful she really is and associating with red. She wears her kimonos off the shoulder in some of the scenes she's in - this could relate to the 'lust' idea as she wants to show off more skin and look more sleazy.

When Chiyo officially meets Hatsumomo she is also wearing red. As she is being introduced to the story in red the colour's symbolism sticks to her character throughout the rest of the story along with being bitter and jealous. I'm surprised she rarely wears green!

Colours of 'House of Flying Daggers'

When Mei first appears in the film she is wearing blue which represents her cold character and the sadness of her back story as we first see it. Her skin is very pale and clean to represent her purity and her lips have a bold red colour which could symbolise how dangerous she really is as she appears as a dancer but then reveals herself as a skillful martial arts fighter being part of the House of Flying Daggers movement that want to take down the government.

The scene where Mei and Jin are in the flower field has a soft yellow tinge. He gives her a bunch of flowers and puts the most beautiful flower behind her ear which is also yellow. This could represent the bond they are making and the warmth they have between each other as well as how they are falling for each other too despite the game plans they have.

Green is the colour of the film for it appears many times throughout and when it does it has a very powerful, bright, saturated colour that you can't ignore. It stands out the most out of all the other colours in the film. It could represent the evil game plans and twisted plots behind what we see as when I watched the film I found it hard to trust any of the characters as they constantly had a game plan and were lying to eachother. Even though we could see Mei and Jin falling in love it was still hard to understand the trust they had for each other even though I found out in the end it was real love.

In the final scene is the final battle of the love triangle between Mei, Jin and Leo. When Jin and Leo start to fight to the death over Mei snow starts to fall quickly making the scene white. To me I thought the white symbolized how this is the final battle and a new type of battle as the colour white had not been shown in the film yet and came off very powerful as it covers the entire scene. I felt that it made the film more intense than ever showing the equal strength and rage the men had towards eachother.

Summary of Guest Lecture

The lecture I attended was on the 8th May 2014. The name of the 1st part of the lecture was held by speaker, Victor Tong and named 'Chinese Opera Mask Art and Chinese Tradition' followed by the 2nd lecture which was named 'The Fashion Battlefield in China' which was held by speaker,
Pacino Wan.

The first part was explained in detail about different character types in Chinese Opera and how the shapes of features, colours and symbols in each character's makeup describes who they are. Victor Tong also spoke about well known characters that appear in Chinese Opera.

From this part of the lecture I learnt the composition of makeup such as the eyebrow and eye types character's have. There are many different types which have some intriguing shapes that don't even look like an eyebrow or eye such as an almond shaped eyebrow or a spot eyebrow which is only
applied on old characters as well as cudgel eyebrow and kidney eye. Other eyebrow types can be related to the eye type as well such as if the eyebrow is straight then so is the eye. There many eyebrow  and eye types that symbolise strong characters:

Long life eyebrow - the character, Xiang Yu has this eyebrow type

Panther eye type - warrior

Tiger beard eyebrow - shows valour quality

Fish tail eye (round shape) - intelligent, courageous, warrior

Victor Tong spoke colours used in Chinese Opera and how they symbolise and describe a character. He also explained which known characters have these colours as part of their makeup/ mask.

Red - righteous and loyal which is Guan Yu

Pink - elderly age and senility

Gold - spirits, God which is Er Lang

Black - moral and decency


White - crafty evil which is Cao Cao

Yellow - cruel which is Ying Bu

Green - violent which is Cheng Yao Jin

Blue - bravery which is Xia Hou Dun

Tong also spoke about semiotics that were shown in Chinese Opera makeup which are symbols, and what they mean. He also said there is a Confucius influence in opera which is personal and government morality.

Taijitu - a symbol for the concept of Yin and Yang, a religion symbol for Taoism and a symbol for opposites living in harmony

Filial - symbol for young revere old

Longevity - symbol for long life

Seal script - ancient Chinese calligraphy that is used for chinese decorative art and paper cutting art

Victor also talked about more characters that are popular in Chinese Opera:

Demi-X - superheros

Thor - he has a body of a dragon and the head of a human

Yama - the God of Death who is involved in a story about miscarriage of justice and wears a mask of Cantonese opera

Monkey King - a half monkey character in Beijing Opera who is a demi God and has a Sarira symbol on forhead which stands for Buddhism.

God of Wealth - had gold and black makeup, symbolises ancient money, has coins on face with Sarira symbol on his head too.

The second part of the lecture was about Pacino Wan's fashion collection. He showed us a video of his collection on the catwalk. I found his collection interesting as I haven't seen many fashion designers clothing lines from Asia. Although I wasn't sure if this part of the lecture was
focused more towards the Fashion Styling students in the lecture, I still took in the hairstyles and makeup of the models in the show.

Overall I found the lecture quite eye opening for me as I've never had the opportunity to research this type of makeup and found it extravagant and exciting. I think I've learnt a lot already just from this one lecture. The only thing I was unsure on was the second half of the lecture by Pacino Wan as I felt there wasn't enough relevance towards the Makeup course and was more for the Fashion Styling course. I took in some notes of the catwalk show anyway.