Chapter 10 3. From horizontal stripes to vertical stripes and curved stripes (16th-19th century)-4

Lines and penalties Romantic stripes (on the basis of which revolutionary stripes suddenly arose) marked a decisive stage in the history of stripes and striped fabrics.From then on, not only the stripes of the fabric can be both vertical stripes and horizontal stripes, but also can and mainly be understood from the good side.Unlike in the Middle Ages, people who wear striped clothing are not necessarily social outcasts or God-forsaken people. This new quality survived after the end of the romantic period, and has continued through the decades to the present day.Bad streaks won't go away with this, though.On the contrary, today is characterized by the simultaneous existence of two opposing value systems based on the same superficial structure.Since the end of the 18th century, stripes have been used in either positive, negative or both positive and negative senses.In short, it was never neutral.It is these two value systems that will be discussed in the final sections of this book.In order not to interrupt the long thread, we first return to the bad stripes, the familiar stripes used to represent villains or characters from feudal times.

In our modern imagination, a person wearing striped clothing may be associated with various occupations or social identities.But the first thing that comes to mind is the identity of the prisoner, especially if it is a wide stripe of contrasting colours.Of course no prisoner in any Western country wears such ludicrous costumes [59], but we still have such a strong impression of such costumes that we still regard it as a sign or even a model.It is not for nothing that comic strips—picture stories expressed in codes and hypercodes—almost invariably dress the habitual offenders, convicts, and exiles they portray in striped gowns or shirts.For French-speaking readers, the best-known example is The Adventures of Lucky Luke, in which, from 1950 onwards, the Dalton brothers, both terrifying and comical, wear yellow and black striped shirts throughout.Such a garment is enough to show that they are outlaws who have escaped from prison or convict prison.Advertisements similar to the comic strip's code also continued to depict such characters, perpetuating the stereotype of the striped-clad prisoner or convict that no longer matched reality.

However, the true history of the striped clothing worn by prisoners and convicts is difficult to trace [60].Still appears to have originated in Africa, with the first appearance of the garment in reformatory schools in the New World (Maryland, Pennsylvania) around 1760.In short, it cannot be that the colonies who rebelled against the British crown (and later the French revolutionaries) deliberately turned it into a symbolic garment of freedom-seeking rebels.Over the next few decades, such garments could be seen in various convict prisons in Australia, Siberia, and even the Turkish Empire.On the contrary, the convict prisons in France never use this kind of clothing, they prefer to wear red coats to convicts instead of striped long coats [61].In both cases, however, the intention is the same: that, as in the Middle Ages, a distinction is made in order to emphasize that those who wear such clothes are outlaws and socially outlawed.

The functional equivalence of red single-color and two-color stripes is interesting for more than one reason.From a sociological point of view, the timing is clear: such an equivalence could not have occurred in the Middle Ages, or even in the 16th century, because too many people wore red to constitute a distinction [62].On the contrary, from a semiotic point of view, it embodies the almost absolute eternal connection between red and stripes and variegated colors.They are all "striking," dazzling, even active.The red coat of French convicts was often paired with ocher or brown trousers, sometimes with a green bonnet (for prisoners serving life sentences), and the long yellow sleeves on the coat could be used to distinguish habitual offenders[63] .All prisoners can be seen from a distance, they are distinct from their guards, they belong to a group, and they are easy to be spotted when escaping from prison or concentration camp.Stripes and mottled fit these requirements exactly, so they are equivalent.Again we have found this equivalence many times in reference to the indicative role of the stripes of clothing in the Middle Ages.I admit, however, that no concrete clues - material or institutional - can be found linking the attire of modern convicts and exiles to that of exiles in medieval society.There is no doubt that this connection exists in the realm of thought, feeling, imagination, and representational systems.In practice, though, how did the modern West gradually turn striped clothing into prisoner clothing?This has yet to be studied in detail [64].

I think these modern stripes have an aspect that the mid-century stripes don't have or barely have.The stripes of convicts and exiles were more than a social marker, a mark of exclusion or special status.There is something terribly pejorative about the striped pattern on poor-quality material, which seems to deprive the wearer of all dignity and all hope of salvation.Also, in combination with anxiety-provoking, vulgar or dirty colors, stripes seem to have some kind of ominous power.Not only does it imply display and exclusion, but it is also a symbol of demeaning, distorting and bringing bad luck.The most eloquent and poignant examples of such stripes are the clothes that the Nazi concentration camp regime forced prisoners of the death camps to wear.Striped clothing never hurt so deeply.

Going back a little further, madness and incarceration may be the domain to find some continuity between medieval and modern prisoners' dress codes.From the clown to the lunatic, and from the irrational to the madman, there is no break in the middle, but instead, there is a tragically consistent continuation, possibly a continuation of the streak.Important moments in this regard were the incarceration of the madman from the 16th century onwards (first in England and then on the Continent) and later on in the second half of the 17th century, when deprivation of liberty gradually replaced the previous corporal punishment [ 65].There is a clear connection between the horizontal stripes on the prisoner's clothing and the vertical stripes on the fence, both geometrically and metaphorically.The criss-crossing stripes and bars appear to form a net, a fence, or even a cage, increasingly isolating the prisoner from the outside world.Here the streak is not just a sign, it is a hindrance.Also, we see the same striped barriers today, most commonly red and white, at level crossings, border posts and everywhere you have to stop.

One final area that also helps emphasize the connection between stripes and punishment, exclusion, or deprivation: vocabulary.In Modern French the verb "to strike out" has the double meaning of striking a line and deleting, canceling, excluding.To draw a line through a name on a list is to draw a line through that name and to deprive the person of that name of the list.This is often a punishment.The verb "to correct" has the same meaning, and it means both to mark and to punish, and the second sense gives rise to the phrase "reform institution for juvenile delinquents."In this penitentiary, there are iron bars on the windows, and the inmates sometimes wear striped clothing.The verb "to slash" is often synonymous with "to draw a line," emphasizing exactly why bars and stripes, stripes and fences mean the same thing.

Similar kinship exists in German.In German the verbs streifen (to draw a line) and strafen (to punish) presumably (whatever the etymological dictionary says) share a common etymology.They belong to a family of words of the same root,[66] into which the noun strahl (line) and perhaps the noun strasse (street) can be placed.In the final analysis, the street is nothing but a special line [67].In English, the word stripe refers to the stripes of fabric, and it should be synonymous with the verb strip, which has the double meaning of undressing and deprivation (or even punishment), and with the verb meaning to cross out, cross out, strike out from a list Strike off is a synonym [68].

Latin is no exception, and it also uses words that emphasize the connection between underlining and punishment.Words such as stria (line, streak), striga (row, line, furrow), strigilis (rake, scraper) belong to the same large word family as the verb stringere, which includes, among the various meanings of stringere, grasping, marking out, and The meaning of deprivation, especially from which comes the verb constringere, whose original meaning is to imprison. Whether Latin, English, German, or French, all these words formed around the root "stri-" emphasize the close kinship of Latin and Germanic languages ​​in these fields.There is no doubt that they all originate from the common Indo-European language family [69].

So it seems undeniable that for a long time Western culture associated the meaning of stripes with the meaning of deterrence, prohibition and punishment.To draw a line is to exclude, and for a long period of time, people who wear stripes are socially excluded.It is also possible, however, that such exclusion is sometimes not for the purpose of deprivation of rights and freedoms but of protection.The striped clothing worn by medieval society to the mad and insane was indeed a sign of disability, a sign of exclusion, but it could also have been a barrier, a fence, or even a filter, protecting them from bad guys and devils intrusion.Here we have striated disorder again, but striated disorder here is not just negative.The frail and defenseless lunatic is more likely to be captured by the devil than anyone else.In order not to obsess the demented man, it is better, if it is not too late, to wear him with a protective suit, a garment that acts as a filter or barrier, a striped garment.It is also conceivable that nostalgia for the protective effect of such clothing stripes still exists more or less today.Aren't our pajamas striped?The purpose is to protect us from nightmares and demons when we fall asleep at night and become weak and small[70].Aren't our striped pajamas, striped sheets, striped mattresses fences, cages?Didn't Freud and his followers ever think of this?