January, 1961: a cold, even glacial winter. The heavy snow that had fallen soon after the Christmas festivities did not melt and the streets and pavements were particularly slippery. I was a third-year pupil at the Lycée Michelet in Vanves, in a mixed class, which was a rare phenomenon in such secondary schools, where girls were definitely less numerous than boys and were only accepted in the bottom four classes. In public establishments, mixed classes in the last two years of education were considered to be dangerous. As a general rule, the girls were not allowed to come to school wearing trousers. Only tracksuit bottoms were tolerated, for physical education classes. For the rest of the time skirts or dresses were compulsory. However, one exception could be made: on extremely cold days, trousers were allowed, so long as they were not blue jeans, a garment that was considered to be unsuitable or even subversive.
Despite that tolerance, on one Tuesday morning two sisters, one a pupil in my class, the other in the second-year class, were denied access to the school. They had arrived in trousers and, although these were not jeans, the door-keeper watchdogs decided that their apparel was ‘disgraceful’ (!) and sent them packing. The next day, the affair turned bitter, children’s parents became involved, petitions began to circulate, and so did rumours. Some of the ‘big’ boys in the top and second-to-top classes imagined the trousers in question to be titillating, possibly very tight or adorned with frills and flounces. The younger boys, for their part, found it hard to understand why trousers could create such a stir, especially since both the excluded girls were shy and well-behaved and were also good pupils. Fortunately, the argument did not last and the affair died down. The administration retreated and so did the cold weather. It was only when my classmate returned, one week later, that I learned the real reason for the scandal: the trousers were red.
No red in a lycée of the French Republic! At least, no red clothing. That was the ministerial order of the day for the school-year of 1960–1. To be sure, there was no textual expression of this rule, but the tacit prohibition almost had the force of law. In point of fact, in the lower classes of the school, I cannot remember seeing any of my school-mates wearing red. But in the upper classes I do remember the red scarf of one of our art-teachers, a handsome hunk of a grouch, invariably clad in corduroy so as to look like an inspired artist. The scarf took the place of the tie that he never wore. His son, a young fool of my own age, copied the gear of his father, but, as far as I remember, his scarf was a totally ordinary brown colour.
I do not think that the trousers worn by the girls who were sent home were a violent or aggressive red, such as the red favoured by that artteacher. They were probably a dark, matt, dull red that was widely worn in those days – unless, that is, they were tapering ski-pants, in which case they may have been a brighter, more vermilion ‘winter-sports’ red. But what did the door-keeper and his henchmen – and, higher up, the school administration – really fear would happen if they allowed two children thus dressed to enter the school? What harm would it have done? I hardly think that anyone could have interpreted the colour of the material worn by two pupils aged 11 and 14 as an expression of Communist ideology, a particularly disquieting kind of political and militant red. Even the school administration would not have gone as far as that. Or at least that would not have been their point of view. What obsessed them were not politics, but mores. Any time that a general school supervisor took a child guilty of serious misbehaviour to see the school official in charge of discipline, announcing in ritual fashion that ‘this pupil has committed a very serious mistake’, the disciplinarian, alarmed or even horrified, would ask: ‘Is it a matter of morality?’ When the supervisor hastened to assure him that it was not, he would emit a sigh of relief and the misdemeanour, however serious, would be half-forgiven. In any case, in that winter of 1960–1, no-one – or hardly anyone – in our school was interested in politics, since the danger, for the government, came not from the Communists, but from the OAS [Organisation armée secrète, the terrorist organisation opposed to Algerian independence], which had nothing to do with the colour red.
So the reasons for the rejection of red in educational institutions were more likely to be found in a particular, vague and distant imaginary representation of that colour. Without anyone really being able to explain why, red, in those days – indeed, still today and always – was regarded as a dangerous and transgressive colour. More or less consciously, its everyday symbolism suggested fire and blood, violence and warfare, wrongdoing and sin. Red was too dense, too strong, too attractive, so was set apart from other colours and was hardly granted any place in daily life. For example, it was less present than it is today in the streets (where it is still uncommon). In primary and secondary schools, in note books, hand-outs and exercise books, the only function of red was to correct mistakes, to point something out or to indicate a punishment. It was an unrewarding role for a colour that, elsewhere, was often held to be the most beautiful of all.
THE COLOURS OF OUR MEMORIES
Michel Pastoureau
Translated by Janet Lloyd
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