"It’s Not Blood, It’s Red": Color as Category, Color as Sensation in Jean-Luc Godard’s Le Mépris, Pierrot Le Fou, Weekend, and Passion

Document Type

Article

Authors

Colin Gardner, University of California, Santa BarbaraFollow

Abstract

Through a close Deleuzian reading of Le Mépris, Pierrot le Fou, Weekend, and Passion, this essay explores Jean-Luc Godard’s use of color as the vehicle for a nomadic ballade/ballad (trans. excursion or road trip/song and dance), categorized by a weakness of motor-linkages that is capable of releasing huge forces of disintegration. Color thus acts as a powerful form of deterritorialization and re-territorialization, creating new conjunctions between and across genres and images, forming new categories in the interstices between series. The result is a logic of sensation that induces a heteroglossia of potential subjectivities, whereby the body is always its own other, always in search of the next series that will make it manifest as something incommensurable, as pure sensation.

Recommended Citation

Gardner, Colin (2019) ""It’s Not Blood, It’s Red": Color as Category, Color as Sensation in Jean-Luc Godard’s Le Mépris, Pierrot Le Fou, Weekend, and Passion," Criticism: Vol. 61: Iss. 2, Article 6.
Available at: https://digitalcommons.wayne.edu/criticism/vol61/iss2/6