Heavy Metal Madness: The Summer of Red, White, and Blue

Summer always seems like the most patriotic time in America. We start with Memorial Day in May, celebrate Flag Day on June 14, wish America a happy birthday on July 4, and wind it all up on Labor Day. In between, we hold our County and State fairs, where community was built and patriotism expressed, before the Web did that for us. Then every four years, we populate what little down time there is with political conventions and the summer Olympics. It’s times like these that bring out the red, white, and blue in everyone, both literally and figuratively. All sides in the political debate claim rights to America’s three most basic colors, and there won’t be a dry American eye in the stadium when Old Glory climbs proudly up the flagpole in Athens, announcing another gold medal.
So rather than fight it, I’ve decided to embrace the cliché that is red, white, and blue, and report on some of the history that turned these colors into emotions and not just pigments.
Thank You, Brits
We owe the British for so many things — our difficult language, our complicated system of measurements, our darkest perversions, and the three colors that we now celebrate as our own. Even the tune of our national anthem is from an old British drinking song, To Anacreon in Heaven. But like everything else we stole, or adapted for our own use, we are louder, stronger, and more aggressive than the Brits ever were, so we have no issue whatsoever associating the colors red, white, and blue with the deepest of American values.


Figure 1: Nearly every politician plays it safe and adopts red, white, and blue as their color scheme for ephemera. Perhaps if Gene McCarthy had gone along with that trend, he may not have lost the democratic nomination to Hubert Humphrey in 1968.

Despite some stories to the contrary, there is no evidence to suggest that the choice of colors for the American flag had anything to do with the recent history of our country leading up to its adoption (June 14, 1777). The blue doesn’t represent George Washington’s coat, and the red does not signify the blood lost in the Revolution. Rather, it appears our founding fathers decided to stick with what they knew– the British Union Jack. The first Flag Act simply states: “Resolved, that the flag of the United States be made of thirteen stripes, alternate red and white; that the union be thirteen stars, white in a blue field, representing a new Constellation.” There was no direction given as to how the stars should be arranged — thus various versions of the flag from that period exist, some with stars in a circle and some with them in lines.
But a few years later, when adopting the great seal of the United States, Congress did define what each of the three colors represented: “White signifies purity and innocence, Red, hardiness & valor, and Blue, the color of the Chief (the broad band above the stripes) signifies vigilance, perseverance & justice.”
Of course there were not nearly as many choices in dyes back in the 1700’s, so the variety of blues and reds probably wouldn’t fill up a single page in a Pantone Guide today. The exact colors were not defined back then, but more recently they are officially tied to color chips maintained by the Color Association of the United States, Inc. in New York. These are: Cable No. 70180 Old Glory Red, Cable No. 70001 White, and Cable No. 70075 Old Glory Blue.


Figure 2: Based on the official color chips held in New York by the Color Association of the United States, these are the Pantone formulas for Old Glory Red, and Old Glory Blue.

Why Not Blue, Red and White?
Why we always speak the colors of America in the same order is not clear, but it probably dates back again to the Brits where a popular song titled Red, White and Blue was written in 1750 by Thomas A’ Becket (not the Thomas A’Beckett, who was murdered in 1170). The lyrics include:
Britannia, the pride of the ocean,
The home of the brave and the free,
The shrine of the patriot’s devotion,
No land can compare unto thee:
Thy mandates make heroes assemble,
With garlands of glory in view,
Thy banners make tyranny tremble,
When borne by the Red, White and Blue.
Three cheers for the Red, White and Blue,
Three cheers for the Red, White and Blue,
Three cheers for the Army and Navy,
Three cheers for the Red, White and Blue


Figure 3: The order of red, white, and blue had been established for some time when this song was written and adopted as the official march of the Boy Scout of America. Later, the Boy Scouts would adopt “God Bless America” as their official song.

If It’s Good for America, It’s Good for Our Soap
Of course it didn’t take long, despite strong wording against it in the Flag Act, for American businesses to catch on and adopt the flag colors as their own. Throughout our history, not just during wartime, many products have been designed around a red, white, and blue color theme. The subtle message is one of “American-ness” and “official-ness.”


Figure 4: Products old and new have used a red, white, and blue theme to convey a uniquely American perspective. (Unless you count the British and the Australians, but who counts them?)

Figure 5: Not all red, white, and blue product packages are meant to capitalize on patriotism. Here, a can of wax from the Hudson Motorcar Company takes an understated, elegant approach to our nation’s colors.

Figure 6: Is there anything more American than a spinning red, white, and blue top?

The Donkey and the Elephant
Even though they are not always represented in red, white, and blue, this time of year you can’t help but see a host of patriotic donkeys and elephants associated with the Democratic and Republican parties. Each has its own history as an icon, but the popularity of them as political symbols can be tied to one man, cartoonist Thomas Nast.


Figure 7: The original Thomas Nast cartoon from “Harpers Weekly,” 1870, representing the Democratic factions of the day as a donkey, or jackass.

Figure 8: Thomas Nast did many cartoons in which the Republican Party was represented by an elephant, including this cover illustration from Harpers Weekly in 1877.

When Andrew Jackson ran for president in 1828, critics referred to him as a jackass. Rather than let this be a negative image, Jackson adopted the symbol and began putting it on his election posters and other material. The image did not gain wide popularity, though, until 1870 when Nast published a cartoon showing a donkey, representing the Copperhead Papers, kicking Abraham Lincoln’s Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton who was posed as a lion. Nast began using the donkey image more and more to represent not only anti-war factions, but also Democrats in general.


Figure 9: Republicans are known for their animal symbol, the elephant.

Figure 10: Since the late 1870’s the donkey has come to represent the Democratic Party.

And while Nast cannot take first credit for the association between the Republican Party and the elephant, it was once again his cartoons in Harpers that popularized this image. In 1874 Nast published his first cartoon showing various animals running away from a donkey-the elephant was labeled “The Republican Vote.” The image stuck and Nast continued to use it throughout his cartooning career.
Nast is not only famous for the donkey and elephant images we’re seeing this summer, but is credited with giving a distinctly American face to Santa Claus. Nast could not read, but after his wife read him Clement Moore’s poem “‘Twas the Night Before Christmas,” Nast was inspired to do a series of engravings representing Santa Claus. It was Nast who established that Santa lives at the North Pole, that Santa employed elves as helpers, and it was he who put forth the proposition that bad little boys and girls did not make Santa’s “list.” And though there was a tradition of kissing under the mistletoe in some European communities, it was a Nast engraving that popularized this practice in America. Nast also is said to have had a hand in how the character of Uncle Sam looks today. He died in 1902 from Yellow Fever after being appointed as Ambassador to Ecuador.


Figure 11: In addition to his political work, Thomas Nast is famous for giving a modern look to Santa Claus. Here is his most famous Santa engraving.

Uncle Sam Rides a Harley
Today we take our patriotic colors for granted, and we adorn just about everything with them at some point in time. It was particularly irksome to the establishment of the Sixties when the counter-culture took on America by sewing red, white, and blue patches on their dirty jeans, and painting teardrop chopper gas tanks in the colors of the flag.


Figure 12: Everyone gets in on the patriotic thing, even biker chicks, as shown here in a picture from the 2002 North American International Motorcycle Supershow in Toronto. Picture by Harvey Darling.

We know that different colors can evoke different emotions. On a soapbox the colors red, white, and blue don’t mean all that much. But paint them on a smart bomb, drape a casket with them, or display them at a Gay Pride parade, and something pulls at our most inner strings. These colors speak to us like no others.
Read more by Gene Gable.

Gene Gable has spent a lifetime in publishing, editing and the graphic arts and is currently a technology consultant and writer. He has spoken at events around the world and has written extensively on graphic design, intellectual-property rights, and publishing production in books and for magazines such as Print, U&lc, ID, Macworld, Graphic Exchange, AGI, and The Seybold Report. Gene's interest in graphic design history and letterpress printing resulted in his popular columns "Heavy Metal Madness" and "Scanning Around with Gene" here on CreativePro.com.
  • anonymous says:

    If Gene meant to be funny with his blatant anti-British slant on his article about flags/colour etc, I fail to see the humour. (Yes, that’s how you spell it.)

    I am offended particularly by: “Unless you count the British and the Australians, but who counts them?”.

    Perhaps he thought only Americans read creativepro? Even so, lazy racism like this should not be tolerated.

  • GeneGable says:

    Jill is correct–I was sloppy. I love the British and I love the Australians. I was simply trying to emphasize the point that once we Americans take something as our own, we tend to dismiss everything that came before and are, as a culture, pretty unaware of the tremendous history of other countries. Sorry if I offended any readers.

    Gene

  • anonymous says:

    I appreciate your apology, Gene.

    Regards
    Jill

  • anonymous says:

    Gene — Do you collect all this stuff you show? I mean the old political buttons, anti-drug marketing, scuba-divers, easter cards… Where do you get all that stuff? Where do you store it?!

    Your writing is always sharp — the waning of waxing is hilarious, esp to someone with a box of line tape in the closet and visible Xacto scars from two decades ago. (Waxing Nostalgic Over Paste-Up) I’ve had wax stuck in my hair, hanks of which went through a Wax-Tec before I learned how to be cool around hot wax. All of which explains why I rushed out and bought a Mac. This was before they had hard drives, but that was still better than paste-up!

    Your stuff is the best.

    They should change the rating system for you. From laugh long and loud instead of strongly agree at the top, to cool! to neutral, to this man is a trip, to this man is not of this world.

  • anonymous says:

    Just read the other comments for Red, White and Blue…

    On second thought, instead of strongly disagree, maybe the rating point should be, “Gene needs to apologize to _______” with a space to enter the offended party.

    Humor is so dangerous.

  • rubaiyat says:

    I am not going to go as far as Jill as to express outrage at supposed “racist” comments (we are talking nationalities not races here), but I would like to put her reaction in perspective.

    I felt something similar to Jill when I read the comment but dismissed it as just yet another American slight, and we are rather used to those.

    It is very difficult for Americans to put themselves in other people’s shoes for the very reasons evidenced by the original comment in the article. As such it is hard for Americans to understand why many people react to them the way that they do. Oddly enough most Americans I have met have extremely good manners and are very polite, but totally lack any empathy or consideration for anyone outside their own borders.

    This comes from deep down, in the way Americans have an excessive patriotism drilled into them from childhood, to an extent that most other countries find extremely embarassing and a modern form of the Jingoism that afflicted the British when they ruled the world.

    Most of the rest of the world thinks of the World as the World, not their own particular country, and has a much broader contact with the world outside their own country.

    Americans only make up 5% of this planet’s population, a good thing to remember next time you consider yourselves as the ONLY ones in the room.

  • oakdale_road says:

    Most Americans I know are compassionate and very much able to put themselves in other people’s shoes. I think it is a dangerous and broad generalization to say that Americans lack any empathy or consideration for anyone outside their own borders. Most people that I know (no matter what country they come from) are embarassed by excessive patriotism of any nationality.

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