Colors, Costuming, and Symbolism in Once Upon A Time

            The costuming in the popular fantasy drama Once Upon A Time is fantastic. Lavish gowns, suits of black leather, and even fairy wings rule the day in the Enchanted Forest. However, half of this show also takes place in Storybrooke, Maine, a real-world counterpart that results from a curse and wipes memories of the fantastic, dooming fairy tale characters to live out mundane lives. Do these costumes therefore fall under the same curse of mediocrity? Not at all. They’re just a bit more subtle in their statement-making. Through the costuming used in the Storybrooke setting, very specific symbolism is conveyed, especially with regards to one of the most central questions of the show: who is Henry’s mother? In many scenes between Henry, Emma, and Regina, Henry’s two mothers wear red and gray. In Once Upon A Time, gray is used to symbolically mark whether Regina or Emma is accepted as Henry’s mother at any given time.

            For a bit of context, it’s important to know that when Henry was born, Emma, the protagonist of Once Upon A Time, gave him up for adoption. He was adopted by Regina, with whom he lived for 10 years before deciding to seek out his birth mother. Upon finding Emma, he convinced her to stay in Storybrooke for a while; Emma was convinced by both a desire to get to know her son and her (not unfounded) suspicion of Regina. Throughout the series, parental rights are greatly challenged and negotiated, hinging on such factors are who Henry prefers, who has legal rights to him, and public sentiment toward the characters for their various misdeeds.

            All of these factors can be difficult to navigate, which suggests why the producers would chose to delineate motherhood through costuming. However, it is a very subtle choice that seems likely to go unnoticed. Perhaps I’m seeing something that isn’t there – maybe Jennifer Morrison and Lana Parilla just look good in gray and red. From a purely content analysis perspective, that could be so; except for the extreme prevalence of these colors in their costumes. On a certain level, perhaps the creators assume that these symbols will, in fact, go unnoticed. Mittell corroborates this assumption, saying, “Every element of staging is visually accessible to viewers, but typically we ignore how sets, costumes, and lighting are carefully controlled aspects of a television program working to shape the meanings and impacts of all shows.” (Mittell 177). In an age of internet analysis and fandom blogging, where every detail is picked at and assessed, however, this idea seems antiquated.

            Gibbs and Pye’s book about style and meaning in film agrees, adding,

Every decision – made in relation to the multiple patterns being built up across the film – develops the narrative and thematic web (…) every costume decision bears on considerations of character, situation, fashion context, colour design, and more. Much filmmaking seems to encourage us to treat this complex tapestry of decision making as ‘transparent’, so that we are often unaware of the craft and artifice involved. But all this decision making is material and it has material effects on our experience of the film (Gibbs and Pye 10).

Gibbs and Pye suggest, also, that these costume and color decisions shouldn’t be ignored, but rather interrogated for their meaning and contribution to the narrative, most especially because they are seemingly innocuous.

So, if we accept this prevalence of gray and red as significant, we then have to interrogate the symbolism behind it. Metallino’s book about aesthetics states, “In general, the key functions performed by colors are: (a) to communicate and/or to inform, (b) to associate and/or to symbolize, and (c) to excite and/or to dramatize events” (Metallino 251). The use of colors here seems to serve the first two purposes: it communicates to viewers who is Henry’s mother, and creates an association between Henry and his mother, as well as a disassociation between Emma and Regina. This is especially emphasized through Henry’s clothes, which often match his mother’s in a given scene, as well as through the contrast of red (a warm color) and gray (a cold color) between Regina and Emma.

Stepping back a bit, I will give credit where credit is due and confess that the idea behind this comes from a tumblr post comparing parallels between Emma and Regina (“Swan Queen: The List”). That post, however, merely suggests the idea. Here, I show it through the contextualization of examples, most importantly emphasizing the meaning that has been gleaned from this presentation. I must prove definitively that the use of gray and red is meant to delineate motherhood and not some other characteristic that Regina and Emma share.

Let’s look at some examples:

Image courtesy of: http://marynesq.tumblr.com/post/60212418968/considering-fairy-queen-as-an-actual-thing-what

            The picture above depicts Regina and Emma’s first meeting, after Henry seeks Emma out and brings her to Storybrooke. As Emma and Henry have only just met, it is clear that Regina has parental custody of him. She therefore wears gray, while Emma (to her left) wears red. In the final moments of their first meeting, Regina makes a point of communicating to Emma that she is Henry’s mother, and not to interpret this meeting as invitation back into his life (as Henry was given up in a closed adoption). The combination of her verbal assertion and color symbolism cements Regina as Henry’s mother in this scene.

Image courtesy of: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKvl5JFR7fI

            In the scene pictured above, Emma confronts Regina about her immoral actions. During their conflict, Regina fears that this disapproval of her choices will bar her access to Henry. She asserts her right, saying that he’s her son. Emma counters, enraged, “No he’s not! He’s mine!” and Regina is denied visitation privileges. With this she asserts both her custody of Henry and her position of his mother. Therefore, the costuming clearly delineates this, with Emma wearing gray and Regina (to her right) wearing red.

 Image courtesy of: http://once.wikia.com/wiki/File:038_Mary_Margaret_Blanchard,_Henry_Mills,_Emma_Swan.jpg

Image courtesy of: http://www.fanpop.com/clubs/the-evil-queen-regina-mills/images/33160766/title/regina-2x2-photo

            Perhaps the most compelling example that shows that these colors indicate motherhood (and not some other shared characteristic) is illustrated by the two pictures above. In these two pictures, Regina and Emma wear the same gray shirt. It is, in fact, Regina’s shirt that Henry steals out of Regina’s closet, gives to Emma to wear, and later returns to Regina. Through the transference of this gray shirt, Henry transfers the title of mother between Regina and Emma according to his own preference.

Image courtesy of: http://www.tv.com/shows/once-upon-a-time-2011/community/post/once-upon-a-time-quite-a-common-fairy-review-season-3-episode-3-mulora-tinker-bell-138143484014/

            Finally, the picture above depicts Regina and Emma’s joint efforts to rescue Henry from Neverland. Although they are working together and working toward the same goal, still, Emma wears gray and Regina wears red. This delineation is cleared up by the dialogue and personal allegiances of the characters. When asked about the strengths she lends to the rescue party, Emma says, “I’m a mother.” She also describes herself as “a pissed off mother” when questioned about her identity. Emma also enjoys the support of the majority of the rescue party; her own mother, father, and love interest all identify her as Henry’s mother, while Regina is the only person to consider herself Henry’s mother.

            After analyzing these examples, it seems too far-fetched to call all of these occurrences of gray and red coincidences. Furthermore, there seems little doubt that the use of gray and red costumes for Regina and Emma are a conscious choice to symbolize their position as Henry’s mothers. The choice of gray and red particularly, however, remains a mystery. As cool and warm colors, respectively, they convey a sense of opposition. So, too, while the innocuous gray conveys a sense of complacency and security, red conveys passion – perhaps a passion to regain custody over a son. Now, as to the producer’s intentions with regards to subtlety, we can only guess. However, I know one thing. I’ll never have a headache again about who is widely regarded as Henry’s mother. Maybe I can even make some informed predictions about storylines, now that I’ve cracked the code.

Works Cited:

Gibbs, John, and Douglas Pye, eds. Style and Meaning: Studies in the Detailed Analysis of Film.

Manchester: Manchester UP, 2005. Google Books. Web. 23 Oct. 2013.

Kitsis, Edward, and Adam Horowitz. Once Upon A Time. ABC. Los Angeles, CA, n.d.

Television.

Metallinos, Nikos. Television Aesthetics: Perceptual, Cognitive, and Compositional Bases.

Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, 1996. Google Books. Web. 23 Oct. 2013.

Mittell, Jason. "Making Meaning." Television and American Culture. New York, NY:

Oxford UP, 2010. 161-212. Print.

"Swan Queen: The List." Web log post. N.p., n.d. Web. 23 Oct. 2013.

<calculaic.tumblr.com/swanqueen>.