http://tags.library.upenn.edu/tag/Jacob PennTags Feed http://tags.library.upenn.edu/makerecord/vcat/37462 http://tags.library.upenn.edu/makerecord/vcat/37462 http://tags.library.upenn.edu/makerecord/voyager/4374 http://tags.library.upenn.edu/makerecord/voyager/4374 <strong>Benz, Ernst.&nbsp; &ldquo;Color in Christian Visionary Experience.&rdquo;&nbsp; <u>Color Symbolism: The Eranos Lectures</u>.&nbsp; Ed. Klaus Ottmann.&nbsp; Putnam: Spring Publications, 2005. 155-214.</strong><br /> <br /> Color plays an important part in <em>Don&rsquo;t Look Now</em>, especially the color red.&nbsp; Roeg weaves red throughout the film, from Christine&rsquo;s plastic raincoat to the Band-Aid on Johnnie&rsquo;s finger, from the lettering of the &ldquo;Venice in Peril&rdquo; sign to the bathrobe of the sisters&rsquo; neighbor.&nbsp; In Du Maurier&rsquo;s story, the color red is not mentioned, so the use of the color is all Roeg&rsquo;s doing.&nbsp; Beyond merely linking Christine to the murderer, the color red also serves a more symbolic purpose.&nbsp; Roeg ties the color red to the blind sister, Heather, and her psychic visions.&nbsp; The fact that Heather can see Christine&rsquo;s red jacket is not as mysterious as the fact that she knows what the color red is.&nbsp; If she has been blind since childbirth, which her sister, Wendy, intimates to Laura and John, there is no way she would know what red looked like.&nbsp; Heather is already semi-divine in her ability to see the future, but the presence of color in her prophetic visions ties her into the tradition of Christian visions.<br /> Benz&rsquo;s text was part of a 1972 conference in Switzerland call the Eranos conference.&nbsp; Famous psychologists, theologists, phenomenologists, and other types of scholars from around the globe met to discuss &ldquo;The Realms of Colour&rdquo; (ix).&nbsp; Benz, a well-known protestant theologian and church historian, focused his lecture on color and its relation to Christian visions, such as the prophecies of Revelations (170-171).&nbsp; At times hard to follow, Benz basically explores the connection between the vivid colors and physical descriptions in Christian visions and their relation to God and mortality.<br /> Benz explains that, &ldquo;As a rule the eyes are closed in the visionary ecstatic state; the physical capacity for sight through the eye is eliminated&rdquo; (159).&nbsp; Heather&rsquo;s visions definitely follow in this tradition, because, as a blind person, she does not have the capacity for sight.&nbsp; The &ldquo;ecstatic state,&rdquo; which Benz references, is ambiguous, but could be interpreted as the epileptic-like trance that Heather falls into when experiencing her visions...<br /> <br />