Great little animated short. Colour! is dialogue-free, but uses colour and music to illustrate the daunting experience of being the odd-one-out from a child’s perspective. It tells a story about race, but strips it back, without dialogue to articulate the historically- and socially-laden topic, to just the way it makes you feel.
The main character is a little pink girl who has moved to a blue town and is starting at a blue school. She starts off happy and cheerful, undaunted by the prospect of meeting new people and making new friends. She understands she is different but doesn’t see that as an issue.
Little by little, her difference is highlighted, stumbled over, rejected and corrected by others. Her difference is framed as a problem by those around her. By the teacher who struggles and fails to pronounce her name correctly. By the kids who are disgusted by the smell of her packed lunch. By the art teacher who criticises her way of painting. Everything she does is expressive of a different viewpoint in life, but given the consensus among everyone from the uniform group, a difference, an outlier, is seen as wrong.
Your heart sinks as you see her try to dull or change her colour. It makes you realise that so often we portray the effects of racism as violent and explosive, when a lot of the time, it can just feel like death by a thousand cuts.
But the story doesn’t end on a sad note, and emphasises the importance of representation, as the wee girl sees her colour reflected back at her in a piece of media, takes courage, and dares to live bravely as herself. And her classmates take a keener interest, valuing her difference as something that enriches their lives too.
Lovely wee film.