Our Shifting Perception of Color, Color Blindness & The TikTok Couch, Explained

The Take Film TV Movie

A recent viral TikTok of a woman who believed her grey couch was actually blue has people yet again thinking about how color plays a huge role in our lives, and how differently we can all see...

Transcript

00:00Across every creative medium, color plays a huge role in our understanding and perception of art

00:06and the world at large. And a recent viral TikTok has people yet again thinking about

00:11how differently we can all see the same thing.

00:18Colorblindness and monochromaticness have long been used symbolically in film and TV as metaphors

00:24for larger ideas. And as we've all become more and more connected to visual mediums,

00:28many people are beginning to realize the impact it can have in their everyday real lives as well.

00:34Blue flower red thorns, blue flower red thorns, blue flower red thorns, this would be so much easier if I wasn't colorblind!

00:39So what's really going on with our perception of color and color vision deficiencies?

00:44And what does it all mean? Let's take a closer look.

00:47Across visual mediums, color is used to elicit feelings and set certain moods.

00:53To instantly give information about a person or setting without having to say a thing.

00:57A blue room could indicate a level of coldness or loneliness.

01:02Red clothing could convey an inner passion or spark, or danger.

01:07Green can recall nature or abundance. And so forth.

01:11On Wednesdays, we wear pink.

01:13In that same vein, a lack of color, or a color palette that is distinctly different from the one we're used to,

01:19is also a big way to tell us about the world we're entering.

01:22Ah! Look at me! I'm pasty!

01:26High saturation could make the colors feel almost unnaturally vibrant, in line with an inner turmoil or zeal.

01:34Low saturation can lead to elements blending together and taking on a more dreamlike quality.

01:39Most of the advent of color, film has continued to enjoy dipping back into that world stylistically,

01:46as an opportunity to really drive home the impact of color itself.

01:50Take Pleasantville, for example,

01:52which finds David and Jennifer getting sucked into the 1950s world of a black and white TV show.

01:57As they begin to shake things up in town, particularly by bringing in knowledge and helping others connect with their own sexualities,

02:06moments of epiphany are signaled with literal bursts of color.

02:10What happened?

02:11One minute, everything's fine.

02:13The next...

02:15What went wrong?

02:17Nothing went wrong. People change.

02:19In The Giver, after an apocalyptic event,

02:22Only the one person who is allowed to have memories of the before times and his protégé are allowed to see in color,

02:30an ability which has been stripped from everyone else.

02:33Here we can see the symbolic importance of color,

02:36as it is directly tied to the community's ability to feel emotions and recall memories.

02:41Color, and our perception of it, is entirely relative.

02:45You'll likely agree that the screen behind me is green,

02:48but you're only agreeing on the word you're using to identify this color.

02:52So we can't say for certain that what you're seeing

02:54is the exact shade and hue that your neighbor is seeing.

02:58Even for those of us who have full color vision,

03:01how we see colors can be totally dependent on a number of factors,

03:05from personal interpretation to lighting differences.

03:08It's the blue wire with the white stripe,

03:11not, I repeat,

03:13not the black wire with the yellow stripe.

03:16Color blindness specifically doesn't pop up quite as often on screen,

03:20and when it does, it's very often used for humor in bomb defusal plots.

03:24Okay, on three, cut the gray wire.

03:27I don't have a gray wire.

03:28I have red, green, and yellow.

03:30That's weird.

03:31I have light gray, medium gray, dark gray.

03:34Though it's not always presented as a negative trait.

03:37This subliminal signal, could color be a factor in it?

03:41Maybe.

03:41I'm red, green, colorblind.

03:42His inability to perceive the color red could render him immune to the psychotropic effects.

03:47Colorblindness isn't an inability to see any colors,

03:50though that does actually happen in very rare cases,

03:53but instead usually just means that you have a more difficult time

03:57differentiating between some different colors.

04:00The analogy I always use is that if you have a pack of 36 colored pencils,

04:05I can only see maybe 12 shades of those colored pencils.

04:10While there are some injuries and eye diseases that can cause colorblindness,

04:14generally it's genetic, and so people are born with it.

04:17There's also evidence of...

04:18I'm not colorblind, am I?

04:21I'm afraid you are.

04:23And because it doesn't usually impact people's lives in a very big way,

04:27outside of a few instances we'll dive into in a moment,

04:29many people aren't even aware that they are colorblind until well into adulthood.

04:34Those shoes are not brown, they're green.

04:36The hell are you talking about, man?

04:37Those shoes are green.

04:38You guys are idiots, right?

04:39They're as brown as money.

04:40What color is Kermit the Frog?

04:42Brown.

04:43There are actually multiple different types of color vision deficiencies.

04:47According to the National Eye Institute,

04:49red-green is the most common type of colorblindness.

04:51This can present as greens looking more red,

04:54reds looking more green,

04:56or a complete inability to tell the difference between the two.

05:00The second and less common type of color vision deficiency is blue-yellow,

05:04where more colors can get muddled.

05:06And third is monochromacy,

05:08or the complete inability to see colors,

05:10which does actually exist, though it's quite rare.

05:13So how does seeing the world differently actually affect people?

05:17Color is such a huge part of how sighted people experience the world.

05:20So finding out that you aren't having the same experience as everyone else,

05:25and are in fact missing out on things,

05:27can be kind of a bummer.

05:29You're wearing a green sweater.

05:31That could be brown, by the way.

05:33I'm wearing a gray sweater.

05:35There you go.

05:36Writing about her experience with color vision deficiency

05:38and wearing corrective N-chroma glasses,

05:41Brooke Swanson wrote for the cut,

05:42I realized that even when I see a color accurately,

05:46I miss the shade and tone of things around it.

05:48The highlights and shadows that create dimension and give life to things.

05:53That's what got to me the most.

05:55It wasn't discovering that green to me looks tan.

05:58What felt like a strike to my heart was realizing that,

06:01by comparison,

06:02my world is very flat.

06:04While colorblindness doesn't have a huge impact on most people's lives,

06:08it can cause problems on occasion.

06:11It can make some everyday tasks more difficult,

06:13like driving due to difficulty differentiating between red and green lights.

06:18Or it can, in a few instances,

06:20stop you from being able to follow the career path you desire.

06:23One of the most memorable moments of Little Miss Sunshine, for example,

06:27comes when Dwayne realizes that he won't be able to become a fighter pilot

06:31because he's colorblind.

06:33What happened?

06:34He's colorblind.

06:35He can't fly.

06:36Mostly, however,

06:37the biggest issue people struggle with is the shock of fully into adulthood,

06:41realizing that they've been seeing the world around them

06:44so differently from everyone else all this time.

06:47Colorblind?

06:48Please tell me, these shoes are brown, right?

06:49No, the shoes are green.

06:50They're definitely green.

06:51Okay, you both are crazy.

06:52Did you text him and tell him to-

06:53Winston!

06:53This has been a big point of conversation recently,

06:56thanks to a woman who made a quick TikTok video to get others' opinions.

07:00When she was attempting to sell what she thought was a blue chair online,

07:03a potential buyer pushed back asking for more and more pictures

07:06because it seemed to be a gray chair.

07:09Eventually, Kristen took to TikTok to see what her friends thought,

07:12panning over to show a very clearly gray chair,

07:15as well as a very gray couch that she was also convinced was dark blue.

07:19The TikTok went viral, both for people laughing along with her

07:23as she continued going around her house realizing that things didn't look the way she thought.

07:27Let me show you some blue.

07:29I swear to God if someone says that this is also gray.

07:32As well as other people who were realizing for the first time that

07:35they too might be colorblind.

07:38The couch conundrum has been of major interest

07:40because the internet always loves to fight over what color some object actually is.

07:44But also because it brings to light something interesting.

07:47Females make up a very small percentage of people known to have colorblindness,

07:51to the point that it's often thought of as a specifically male trait.

07:54And indeed, it is a genetic variation of the X chromosome.

07:58So women need to have a father with it

07:59and a mother who carries the recessive gene for it to appear.

08:03But many of the people now realizing that they're colorblind are also women themselves.

08:07And so realizing that maybe it isn't as rare as was one thought.

08:11While color vision deficiency might lead to some problems here and there,

08:16at the end of the day, it's generally not much of an issue for most people that live with it.

08:20Colorblindness can actually be an advantage in some situations.

08:24Color can actually impede our ability to see patterns and textures and borders.

08:29By cutting right through that, if you're colorblind, you can see the camouflaged object better.

08:33Even the woman from TikTok hasn't really been that affected by it.

08:36It never stopped her from living her life or doing her job.

08:39Colorblindness is sometimes presented as a roadblock to creativity in the arts.

08:44But in fact, plenty of renowned artists have had some level of color vision deficiency

08:48and still created great art.

08:51Claude Monet, for example, began to develop colorblindness with age.

08:55Dr. Howard Markle wrote for PBS News,

08:57By 1918, the artist said that he could no longer perceive colors with the same intensity,

09:02nor could he accurately interpret sunlight, a keystone of the Impressionist school.

09:07The color red, for example, became muddy.

09:09The color pink began to pale.

09:11The intermediate or lower tones, too, escaped him.

09:14But even so, during this period, he was able to paint his iconic water lilies.

09:20Illustrator Lauren Long, upon finding out that he was colorblind as a child,

09:24feared it meant that he'd never get to follow his dream of being an artist.

09:28And he said, it's no big deal unless your son wants to be an electrician or an artist.

09:33But it didn't stop him from going on to become a well-known children's book illustrator.

09:37And she said, Lauren, your art is beautiful.

09:40Don't let anybody ever tell you you can't be an artist.

09:43My mom's reaction in that swift moment saved my life.

09:48There's been a factoid that Van Gogh was colorblind floating around for a long time,

09:52but most researchers now believe that that wasn't the case.

09:55Apparently, he was even specifically tested for colorblindness at one point

09:59and found not to have any visual impairment.

10:01Since their arrival in the 2010s, there have been waves of viral videos

10:05of people with colorblindness seeing quote-unquote normal colors

10:08for the first time with the aid of corrective glasses.

10:10But the truth is that they don't work for every type and degree of colorblindness.

10:15And it's not something that has to be fixed or changed.

10:19Even though she enjoys being able to see in full color with the assistance of her glasses,

10:23Swanson wrote that she wouldn't want to change herself.

10:26I didn't want to permanently correct my color vision.

10:28As an adult, I can appreciate it because I know my perception of the world is different

10:33and there's value in that.

10:35We all see the world through our own lens.

10:38So instead of trying to force ourselves to all see the same thing,

10:42we can instead focus on appreciating our own view.

10:45Even though what you see and what I see might be different,

10:48isn't it powerful to understand that all that's really going on

10:51is just a difference in our interpretations of the same thing.

10:56That's the take.

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