Today I present to you a book and a game that make us see life in pink. Welcome to book games!
A new book by Michel Pastoureau, medievalist historian, will not go unnoticed! especially if he talks to us about pink. This week I present to you his book on a color which does not leave you indifferent just like the cover of the game Farm club, because from pink to pig there is only one step and it is not Michel Pastoureau who will contradict me.
Rose, story of a color
Michel Pastoureau, historian recognized for his study of colors, continues his exploration of chromatic nuances. After writing about blue, black, green, red, yellow and white, he published “Rose, story of a color” published by Seuil. In this book, he examines pink, a complex color often admired and despised in European culture.
From the age of 13, an aversion to a “not-quite-navy” navy blazer revealed his heightened sensitivity to color, a trait his family described as “chromatic whims.” »
He made this heightened sensitivity his subject of study.
“I belong to a generation of historians where the researcher had to comply with duties towards society. Having fun with your study subjects was not really an option. »
Pink: a real color?
The question of whether pink is a “real” color comes up frequently. For physics, pink does not exist in the solar spectrum and is simply a shade of red. However, for Pastoureau, pink is indeed a color: “What defines a color is what society makes of it. »
In ancient Rome, pink appeared in tiles and mosaics, but it had no name. In the Middle Ages, it was admired in nature and used in painting, but it was not until the 18th century that its name was stabilized, notably thanks to the importation of Brazilwood from India and South America.
“Things change when we massively import from India a dye that we already knew, but which we use in a new way: Brazil wood (…) It will also give its name to the country, because we finds exotic woods in the north of South America that are even more efficient from the point of view dye than Asian woods. »
In the 1770s, pink dominated decor and fashion, and in the 19th century, romanticism associated it with romantic feelings. This association was popularized by Goethe's novel, “The Sorrows of Young Werther”. In the 1960s, Barbie doll reinforced this connection with her iconic pink.
Pink then becomes linked to femininity, although this gendering is recent.
“Like our television serials today, the novel launches clothing fashions (…) Goethe describes Werther's outfit, blue with yellow breeches, and Charlotte's dress, which is white with pink ribbons. And for two or three generations, all the fashionable young people of Europe will dress like this. Pink will become very common in women's clothing and the association between pink and young girls will continue, whereas previously, it was not a gendered color, as they say. »
From pink to pig there is only one step…
In an interview given on France Inter we learn that Michel Pastoureau was French chess champion in high school, that he practiced discus throwing at university and that the pig is his favorite animal because as a child, he “scratched the pigs’ backs” from the neighboring farm in Lower Normandy.
Michel Pastoureau talks about his affection for pigs in his book Story of an unloved cousin (Gallimard). He traces the history of the wild pig, domesticated as early as 7000 BC, up to modern pigsties. He also analyzes the religious and symbolic taboos surrounding this animal, while emphasizing its biological proximity to man.
“There are biological and physiological relationships between the pig and us (…) it is our closest cousin (…) Medicine borrows enormously from the pig. From Greek Antiquity through Arab medicine to today, it is not the great apes that we borrow for skin grafts, organ transplants, etc..”
Pastoureau also highlights the ambivalence of the pig, a symbol of courage (wild boar), prosperity (piggy bank), but also of vice (smut). Today, pigs are dehumanized, reduced to consumer products. The historian deplores the forgetting of their history, their symbolism and their once central role in peasant life.
Who has the courage to remember that before being a consumer product, the pig was a living, intelligent, sensitive animal, anatomically and physiologically a very close cousin of the human being? ?
This double reflection on colors and animals reveals Pastoureau's ability to shed light on our past to better understand our relationship to the world.
Farm Club
When the game came out I was fascinated by this pink box with a pig's head!! don't you? In Farm Club, the animals have taken power and will organize themselves to replace the farmer. In order to show their effectiveness, they will have to position themselves wisely to be able to produce the best harvests.
You will therefore have to choose and organize the farm animals wisely in order to achieve the different objectives collected during the 9 rounds of the game. In turn, each player chooses from the available lots (animal + objective).
Place the objective in front of you and the animal pawn on 1 of the 8 squares of your board in an empty space. You can collect bird tokens by putting the correct animal in its favorite enclosure. The recovered objective card can be placed in front of you for points at the end of the game or discarded to be able to move an animal token around the farm.
At the start of your turn you can discard a bird token to renew the river of objective cards or the associated animal tokens. Electing a leader can only be done once in the game. We then take an available leader animal and a clan card which we place next to its board. The clan card is an objective card like the others. The leader is installed in the farmer's house and no longer moves.
End of game
After 9 rounds, when all players have filled their “firm” board, the game ends. Each player counts their points according to the objectives accomplished and adds bonus points from unused bird tokens.
I like Farm Club for its simplicity and accessibility. It remains relaxed and at the same time quite tactical with a lot of subtleties to optimize as much as possible and be less dependent on the chance of the draw.
The edition is great: Isn't Napoleon the pig beautiful?
Farm Club by Alexandros Kapidakis, illustrated by Jeanne Landart and Gaétan Noir at Blam
