Lessons in Chromatics

Banana

Black is a colour. So the Gap would like me to know in their latest advertisements -- which seem to be everywhere. A flaxen-haired Jena Malone, black-jeaned and-shoed, reclines alongside this declaration; slouched in a pose reminiscent of many evenings I've spent post-too-much supper wondering whether it would really be so bad if I simply never buttoned my jeans again.

This is confusing to me, because I am sure that I was always told that black is not a colour. One of those clever tricks that technicians played on we more semantic creatures: "Ah ha, but technically black isn't a colour -- it's all the colours mixed together." Except that any time I tried this theory for myself, I produced a miry mess of paint in a shade no right-minded soul would ever think to apply to a pair of jeans (or shoes).

Well, oh great and powerful Gap, let me tell you, black is in fact an absence of colour.