| Ancient Brittanic warrior, presumably prior to being woaded |
Brief notes on blue people context in contemporary culture and history.
Dr Manhattan (Watchmen, Alan Moore, 1986-87), is far from being a fully disinterested observer. He uses his simultaneous-being to analyse the universal clockwork, in which he too is enmeshed, and as the only witness to totality judges Homo sapiens, sentencing them to extinction.
In Avatar (James Cameron, 2009) a blue-bodied hominid species attempts coexistence with and then fights for survival against an invading force of humans. During intense, brief conflict Pandorans - all species combining forces - prevail over Homo sapiens and prevent completion of genocidal planetary degradation.
Avatar is an inverted blue man tale, figuring Homo sapiens subjects who are non-homogenous, at least in ideation, witnessing Pandorans’ distress (having first caused it)
Ancient Britons' camouflage, using a gray-blue woad suspension as a disguise, was much like contemporary military camouflage paint, allowing its users to remain only partially observable, whether perceived. As described by Manda Scott in her Boudicca adventure novels, woad-dressed men and women played the war game of seeing without being seen, both witnessing and attacking from shadows and environmental cover. It is not written that Iceni or other Brittanic warriors disguised themselves in tribute to, or as inspired by, non-human blue people known to be witnesses to turbid emotions and altered states.
It would be impertinent to interpolate opinion on woad as body paint, using only Julius Caesar's text as a source. Similarly, it is presumptuous to assume homogeneity, origins or intent of blue men.
But we may speculate. Perhaps blue men emerge briefly, camouflauged as blue men, to mime, empathically, sympathetically or sarcastically, our psychically loud, resonant emotional responses to distress.
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