Blue Monday: Elliot Tuttle Discusses His Transgressive Blue Film
Blue, as it pertains to the material and sociopolitical histories of cinema, is a color associated with legend, conjecture, and etymological ambiguity. During the heightened moral panic and puritanical tyranny of Hays Code–era Hollywood, blue grease pencils were used by censors to mark film stock for sequences considered obscene or ethically dubious, undermining artistic integrity and forcing directors into eleventh-hour cuts and re-shoots. Concurrently, the lápis azul was used by the Estado Novo dictatorship in Portugal to omit words or entire passages from texts that were deemed politically subversive, as well as to censor international films before they reached Portuguese […]
by Kerosene Jones on May 4, 2026
