Red Hats

We had a pretty good discussion of the film An Angel at My Table at Steve's screening (held back on the 2nd of this month). Since then, I've thought about and briefly researched the film, but during these explorations I encountered a startling series of events that seem beyond coincidence! I'll tell my story and let you decide what it all really means...

The film, to me, mainly spoke in colors. Red. Janet's hair was outrageous. In her youth especially the red was so bright... It was like a punch in the face. "THIS COLOR/HAIR MEANS SOMETHING," the film screamed at me. The bright red hair became symbolic of [young] Janet's uniqueness, her unspoiled imagination, the bright/fiery/intense world that she lived in, but that was only alive in her head. What we get is just a peak, through her hair (what's leaked out), of Janet's inner-world.

The contrast between Janet's inner-world and the real, outer-world is turned up with the filmmakers choice to work in complementary color schemes. In some scenes, everything around Janet (the walls, furniture, and clothing) is bathed in various shades of green ("opposite" of red). In France (maybe in other places too), Janet often wears green herself, as if we're to believe that she's integrated herself into this new life, or that she's found out who she really is. We can see, however, that she's only fooling herself into believing that she's a happy citizen of earth (France). She cannot fight the fact that she comes from planet Janet, and that she can only return there to find out who she really is.

Even as she grows older, but before she fully enters and is affected by the real world, her hair begins to fade. Like E.T.'s glowing heart, her hair is a sign of her well-being, her life-force. Some people even "steal" her life-force directly, by wearing bright red dresses, hats and shoes in her presence (her sisters do this for sure). These people now have the confidence, or at least optimism that Janet once possessed in childhood.

Janet's red hair got me thinking of another person in Literature (No, not Carrot Top, a fictional character.) who is identifiable by a red cap. In Catcher In the Rye, Holden Caulfield dons a red hunting cap when he goes out on the town. Like Ms. Frame's hair, I gather that Holden's red cap is significant in the way it visually separates the passionate Holden from the comparatively drab world. But I also remembered something my high school English teacher told us about the historical/cultural significance of a red cap and how it relates to death, especially in Scotland. Because Holden and Janet share a similar ancestry (Scotland/UK), I thought it would be pertinent, but I couldn't find anymore info on that track. Maybe that was a long shot anyway.

But this is where it gets weird.

I grew tired of looking through my fruitless search results for various combinations of "red cap symbolism Scottish," and found myself, once again, on Wikipedia where I found a page about Red Hat. A very general page where different entities, clubs, brands, etc., were listed because they somehow affiliated themselves with, well... red hats.

I spent some time looking over the entry on the linux distribution Red Hat, clarifying for myself, exactly what that was, and then I took a quick look at The Red Hat Society entry. I was tickled purple to see that this group was nothing much more than a bunch of older ladies wearing purple clothing and red hats... with no other real function than to get together and... wear purple clothing and red hats. I didn't think about the group again, until the next day.

That next day (last Saturday) Anna and I were being our opulent selves, walking through the Walker Art gallery and luncheoning at the Asian inspired, California gourmet restaurant 20.21 when, low do I behold, a group of ~50 year old ladies, in purple, wearing red hats! It clicked instantly. This was a group of Red Hatters! I told Anna what I could remember from what I happened to read the night before about the ladies, and we both agreed that it was very strange that I see this after just learning about it. We both spend time contemplating our existence and the function of coincidences like this in life, pay our check, and leave, never to be the same again.

You may have realized by now that I am no longer talking about An Angle at My Table, and I confess that I never intended to go back to the subject again in this post. I did enjoy that film, however, and I'm grateful to Steve to choosing a film I would have not seen on my own. And as much as I want to share my thoughts and hear yours about it, I also wanted to share this story that probably wouldn't be possible with out the Film Club, and seeing Steve's film choice in particular.