Day, light, and good are often linked together, in opposition to night, darkness, and evil. These contrasting metaphors may go back as far as human history, and appear in many cultures, including both the ancient Chinese and the ancient Persians. The philosophy ofneoplatonism is strongly imbued with the metaphor of goodness as light.[1]
The Bible associates light with God, truth, and virtue; darkness is associated with sin and the Devil. Painters such asRembrandt portrayed divine light illuminating an otherwise dark world.[1]
White often represents purity or innocence in Western culture,[2] particularly as white clothing or objects, can be stained easily. In most Western countries white is the color worn by brides at weddings.Angels are typically depicted as clothed in white robes.
Melodrama villains are dressed in black and heroines in white dresses.
This can be reversed as a deliberate play on conventions, by having the evil character dress in white, as a symbol of their hypocrisy or arrogance. For example,Don Fanucci inThe Godfather, Part II is an evil character, but wears an expensive all-white suit as a sign of his esteem, power and prestige. Sometimes protagonists can wear black too, as inReturn of the Jedi, whereinLuke Skywalker wears black during the final battle. This may symbolize the danger of Luke turning to the dark side, but once he has prevailed (in the scene where he removesDarth Vader's helmet), his jacket has opened up to reveal that it has a lighter color in the inside, as if to indicate that Luke "on the inside" was always good. Darth Vader himself, while still in the grip of the dark side, dresses all in black and may be regarded as a science-fiction version of ablack knight. The chief antagonist of theStar Wars franchise, the evil EmperorPalpatine, wears a black cloak.
Incomputer security, ablack hat is an attacker with evil intentions, while awhite hat bears no such ill will (this is derived from the Western movie convention).
The space-opera franchiseStar Wars also depicts Light and Dark aspects in the form of the fictional energy field calledThe Force where there are two sides,light side anddark side wherein the protagonists, theJedi, practice and propagate the use of the former, and the antagonists, theSith, use the latter.
George Orwell makes a bitterly ironic use of the "light and darkness" topos in hisNineteen Eighty Four. In the early part of the book the protagonist gets a promise that "We will meet in the place where there is no darkness" – which he interprets as referring to a place where the oppressive totalitarian state does not rule. But the man who made the promise was in fact an agent of theThought Police – and they eventually meet as prisoner and interrogator where there is indeed no darkness, in detention cells where the light remains on permanently, day and night, as an additional means of torturing detainees.
The Dark Crystal explains the two split halves of a balanced whole, reflecting the impossibility of acknowledging any metaphorical divine balance without the combination of both the light (the Mystics) and the dark (the Skesis).
Black–white binary has often been conflated with the binary of good and evil.
Freemasonry has a black-and-whitecheckerboard as a central symbol within the lodge and all rituals occur on or around this checkerboard. Also known as a Mosaic Pavement, it represents the floor of King Solomon's Temple and according toShakespeare, represents man's natural duality.
In software policy, lists of items either allowed or disallowed are sometimes referred to as 'whitelists' and 'blacklists' respectively. This practice is sometimes criticised for invoking supposed racial connotations, despite the origins of black and white dualism being entirely separate from race, and 'allowlists' and 'blocklists/denylists' are used instead.
Armin Lange, Eric M. Meyers (eds.),Light Against Darkness: Dualism in Ancient Mediterranean Religion and the Contemporary World, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht (2011).
Fontaine, Petrus Franciscus Maria,The Light and the Dark: A Cultural History of Dualism, 21 volumes (1986).
