Life Looked Better In Black and White

[happyfilmluvguy]

The World in Black and White
by Steve Vaus


You could hardly see for all the snow,
Spread the rabbit ears as far as they'd go.

Pull a chair up to the TV set,
"Good night David, Good night Chet"

Depending on the channel you tuned
You got Rob and Laura - or Ward and June.

It felt so good, felt so right
Life looked better in black and white.

I Love Lucy, The Real McCoys,
Dennis the Menace, the Cleaver boys

Rawhide, Gunsmoke, Wagon Train,
Superman, Lois Lane,

Father Knows Best, Patty Duke,
Rin Tin Tin and Lassie too.

Donna Reed on Thursday night
Life looked better in black and white.

I wanna go back to black and white
Everything always turned out right.

Simple people, simple sights.
Good guys always won the fights.

Now nothing is the way it seems
In living color or on the screen.

I wanna go back to black and white.....

In God they trusted, in bed they slept
A promise made was a promise kept.

They never cussed or broke their vows
They'd never make the network now.

But if I could I'd rather be
In a TV town in 63.

It felt so good, felt so right
Life looked better in black and white.....

I'd trade all the channels on the satellite
If I could just turn back the clock tonight

To when everybody knew wrong from right
Life was better in black and white......

 

[goldwyn girl]

Fabulous !!!

 

[Fletch]

This comes a little too close to being glurge, IMO.

Glurge (a term which can be used to describe one story or applied to the genre as a whole) is the body of inspirational tales which conceal much darker meanings than the uplifting moral lessons they purport to offer, and which undermine their messages by fabricating and distorting historical fact in the guise of offering "true stories." Glurge often contains such heart-tugging elements as sad-eyed puppies, sweet-faced children, angels, dying mothers, or miraculous rescues brought about by prayer. These stories are meant to be parables for modern times but fall far short of the mark.
—DDEckerslyke, "Glurge," alt.usage.english, August 26, 2003

Classic glurge is much more obvious in its stated and implied meanings, but there's a definite subtext here that we'd all be better off in a world of simple yeses and noes, where no subtlety or specialness is allowed.

Check out Steve Vaus' song titles at the link.

 

[Miss Sis]

I always think black and white photos look much classier than colour.

 

[jph712]

Photos

When my wife and I got married 4 years ago we used a photographer that shot all digital, which gave us the ability to choose between color, b&w and even sepia, or several other effects. The interesting thing is that we got several of the photos in color and b&w, and the black and whites look so much better than their color counterparts. Strange what b&w does to depth in the photos.

JPH712

 

[Doctor Strange]

Ya gotta love b/w!

Black and white is by its very nature an *abstraction*, which immediately makes a b/w photo closer to a work of art than a more "naturalistic" color image.

Real b/w (that is, the old-school photochemical process vs. grayscaling a digital image) is also always constrained by the kind of film, paper, chemistry, enlarger, etc., used into an unique look. For example, real film grain clumps in a random way that is not easily recreated on a computer, and the contrast limitations - or the particular-to-one-photo manually bending them with dodging/burning when making the print - inherent in a b/w photo based on the exposure/film/chemistry are very different from the look of both color film or digital imaging.

B/w also often "cuts through" to the core of an image - forms and shapes, the interplay of light and dark - far better than color. I have seen this myself: I have shot the same thing, such as a waterfall, at the same time with two cameras: the color image is, well, a pretty waterfall; but the b/w image is *magical*, an intensified representation that heightens and magnifies the scene.

That b/w often also evokes nostalgia for an earlier era is also part of the equation, though there's also a very timeless quality to b/w...

 

[Cousin Hepcat]

This comes a little too close to being glurge, IMO.

...Glurge often contains such
heart-tugging elements as sad-eyed puppies, sweet-faced children, angels,
dying mothers, or miraculous rescues brought about by prayer.

i like puppies

(reminds me of a recent visit to a casual friend's house: when asked my favorite classic movies, I started with "It's a Wonderful Life"; he said "Oh, you liked that movie? Oh... I see." lol at that point I was having fun, and didn't tell him my next 2 faves, Ernest Hemingway's "The Killers" and Orson Welles' "The Third Man"...)


Black & White: (As I think Dr. Strange was indicating,) B&W looks so much better because, since they didn't have color, they had to concentrate so much more on dramatic / spot lighting, just so you could clearly see what was going on. And that in itself created a certain artistry that seems to have been lost over time with color film, which we all seem to appreciate.

- C H

 

[Fletch]

i like puppies

i myself prefer kitties...you seldom see glurge about kitties...

 

[LadyStardust]

I like cats better too, but I have a counter for your statement :

 

[HadleyH]

I like puppies and kitties and everything!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I like B/W and sepia and faded color too....:eusa_clap

 

[LizzieMaine]

I like pandas myself --

Black and white at its best!

 

[LadyStardust]

Pandas are wonderful! Also fitting the bill are penguins! Because really, who can resist them?

 

[Chanfan]

Certainly not killer whales.

(Sorry, work has made me grumpy today!)

 

[happyfilmluvguy]

teddy bear!

life looks better for him/her in black, white and grey.

 

[Cousin Hepcat]

I like cats better too, but I have a counter for your statement :

I had 2 cats growing up (both strays - also a stray dog - strays seemed to gravitate towards me, maybe it's because while other kids threw rocks, i threw food ) , both tabbys & very friendly, but one would go to sleep on your lap, have nightmares, and tear out of the room, claws & all... also, both would wander off for long periods, and eventually not come back (being strays), unlike my dog, which tempered my feelings towards cats.

Though , if I could train a cat to be as cool as this one, I might change my mind: lol

- C H

 

[Quigley Brown]

Sepia...

[/IMG]

 

[GHT]

My clothes, namely my Aloha shirts and my baggy trousers, have had many a compliment. In fact you have all praised my wife's work to the point that most of you refer to her simply as Tina. A lady that you have never met, yet know so well.
Rather than start a new thread I found this little gem. Here's my lady's photo taken in 2017 at a heritage railway.

Given her style of dress I couldn't resist using black & white sepia film.

She will kill me if the public finds out the next part of her journey. Here she is
fifty years earlier, shown in a doctored photo. The original showed her with
the lustful eyed General Manager, she hated the man so I had a photographer
doctor the shot. Now she holds a bouquet instead of shaking hands with a
lustful eyed creep.

 

[AbbaDatDeHat]

My clothes, namely my Aloha shirts and my baggy trousers, have had many a compliment. In fact you have all praised my wife's work to the point that most of you refer to her simply as Tina. A lady that you have never met, yet know so well.
Rather than start a new thread I found this little gem. Here's my lady's photo taken in 2017 at a heritage railway.
View attachment 433062
Given her style of dress I couldn't resist using black & white sepia film.

She will kill me if the public finds out the next part of her journey. Here she is
fifty years earlier, shown in a doctored photo. The original showed her with
the lustful eyed General Manager, she hated the man so I had a photographer
doctor the shot. Now she holds a bouquet instead of shaking hands with a
lustful eyed creep.
View attachment 433061

Your secret is safe here Robert.
But color makes your lovely Bride Tina come to life.
Bowen