“颜色的故事”一书黑色一章里说到，1691年，英国教授William Salmon写下了人造木乃伊色的配方：拿一付青年人的骨架（有些人说得要红头发的），这人不能是死于疾病的，须是被人谋害的；让他在清水和洁净的空气下放置24小时：把上面的肉切成小片，加入药粉和一点芦荟，放在酒精和松节油的溶液里再浸泡24小时……

有点惊悚小说的味道不是？

这很让人联想到法国某改编自小说的电影：香水，一个谋杀者的故事。为了制作世上最一流的香水，香水师专门谋杀红头发的年轻貌美的少女，然后把衣服除尽，剃下红红的头发，包裹上厚厚的动物脂肪，形如木乃伊，等待少女的体香慢慢被脂肪吸收，然后刮下，蒸馏……

OK，让我们看看这两个故事中三点相似的地方：
1、年轻人，只不过一个男青年，一个是少女
2、红头发
3、须是被谋害的

思考题来了，三点中，重点是红头发，与西方文化似乎是有某种关联的，到底意味着什么？

英文WIKI中 "RED HAIR" 词条下的Culture部分隐约显示有我们要寻找的答案（注意红字部分）：

Culture

In various times and cultures, red hair has been prized, feared, and ridiculed.

Beliefs about temperament

A common idea about redheads is that they have fiery tempers and sharp tongues. In Anne of Green Gables, a character says of Anne Shirley, the redheaded heroine, that "her temper matches her hair", while in The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield remarks that "People with red hair are supposed to get mad very easily, but Allie [his dead brother] never did, and he had very red hair."

During the early stages of modern medicine, red hair was thought to be a sign of a sanguine temperament.^[40] In the Indian medicinal practice of Ayurveda, redheads are seen as most likely to have a Pitta temperament.

Another belief is that redheads are highly sexed; for example, Jonathan Swift satirizes redhead stereotypes in part four of Gulliver's Travels, "A Voyage to the Country of the Houyhnhnms," when he writes that: "It is observed that the red-haired of both sexes are more libidinous and mischievous than the rest, whom yet they much exceed in strength and activity." Swift goes on to write that: "...neither was the hair of this brute [a Yahoo] of a red colour (which might have been some excuse for an appetite a little irregular) but black as a sloe..."^[41] In the novel and film Red-Headed Woman, the titular protagonist is a sexually aggressive home-wrecker who frequently throws violent temper tantrums.

Fashion and art

Queen Elizabeth I of England was a redhead, and during the Elizabethan era in England, red hair was fashionable for women. In modern times, red hair is subject to fashion trends; celebrities such as Lindsay Lohan, Alyson Hannigan, Marcia Cross and Geri Halliwell can boost sales of red hair dye.^[42]

Sometimes, red hair darkens as people get older, becoming a more brownish colour or losing some of its vividness. This leads some to associate red hair with youthfulness, a quality that is generally considered desirable. In several countries such as India, Iran, and Pakistan, henna and saffron are used on hair to give it a bright red appearance.^[43]

Many painters have exhibited a fascination with red hair. The colour "titian" takes its name from Titian, who often painted women with red hair. Early Renaissance artist Sandro Botticelli's famous painting The Birth of Venus depicts the mythological goddess Venus as a redhead. Other painters notable for their redheads include the Pre-Raphaelites,^[44] Edmund Leighton, Modigliani,^[45] Gustav Klimt.^[46]

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's story The Red-Headed League involves a man who is asked to become a member of a mysterious group of red–headed people. The 1943 film DuBarry Was a Lady garishly featured red–heads Lucille Ball and Red Skelton in gaudy Technicolor. In the novel Perfume, the protagonist exhibits a weird way to relate red–haired woman to a popular perfume.

Gingerism (prejudice/discrimination towards redheads)

Red hair was thought to be a mark of a beastly sexual desire and moral degeneration. A savage red-haired man is portrayed in the fable by Grimm brothers (Der Eisenhans) as the spirit of the forest of iron. Theophilus Presbyter describes how the blood of a red-haired young man is necessary to create gold from copper, in a mixture with the ashes of a basilisk.^[47]

Montague Summers, in his translation of the Malleus Maleficarum,^[48] notes that red hair and green eyes were thought to be the sign of a witch, a werewolf or a vampire during the Middle Ages;

Those whose hair is red, of a certain peculiar shade, are unmistakably vampires. It is significant that in ancient Egypt, as Manetho tells us, human sacrifices were offered at the grave of Osiris, and the victims were red-haired men who were burned, their ashes being scattered far and wide by winnowing-fans. It is held by some authorities that this was done to fertilize the fields and produce a bounteous harvest, red-hair symbolizing the golden wealth of the corn. But these men were called Typhonians, and were representatives not of Osiris but of his evil rival Typhon, whose hair was red.

In modern-day UK, the words "ginger" or "ginga" are sometimes derogatorily used to describe red-headed people, with terms such as "gingerphobia" (fear of redheads)^[49] or "gingerism" (prejudice against redheads) ^[50] used by the media. Some have speculated that the dislike of red-hair may derive from the historical English sentiment that people of Irish or Celtic background, with a greater prevalence of red hair, were ethnically inferior. ^[50] Redheads are also sometimes referred to disparagingly as "carrot tops" and "carrot heads". "Gingerism" has been compared to racism, although this is widely disputed, and bodies such as the UK Commission for Racial Equality do not monitor cases of discrimination and hate crimes against redheads.^[50] A UK woman recently won an award from a tribunal after being sexually harassed and receiving abuse because of her red hair;^[51] a family in Newcastle upon Tyne, England, was forced to move twice after being targeted for abuse and hate crime on account of their red hair;^[52] and in 2003, a 20 year old was stabbed in the back for "being ginger."^[53] In May 2009, a British schoolboy committed suicide after being bullied for having red hair.^[54]

This prejudice has been satirised on a number of TV shows. The British comedian Catherine Tate (herself a redhead) appeared as a red haired character in a running sketch of her series The Catherine Tate Show. The sketch saw fictional character Sandra Kemp, who was forced to seek solace in a refuge for ginger people because they had been ostracised from society.^[55] The British comedy Bo' Selecta! (starring redhead, Leigh Francis) featured a spoof documentary which involved a caricature of red-haired "Simply Red" singer Mick Hucknall presenting a show in which celebrities (played by themselves) dyed their hair red for a day and went about daily life being insulted by people. In real life, Hucknall has commented that derogatory references to his red hair are a form of bigotry.^[56]

The pejorative use of the word "ginger" and related discrimination was used to illustrate a point about racism and prejudice in the "Ginger Kids", "Le Petit Tourette" and "Fatbeard" episodes of South Park.

Films and television programmes often portray school bullies as having red hair;^[57] for example, Scut Farkus from A Christmas Story or the O'Doyle family in the movie Billy Madison. The bully character Caruso in Everybody Hates Chris is a redhead. However, children with red hair are often themselves targeted by bullies; "Somebody with ginger hair will stand out from the crowd," says anti-bullying expert Louise Burfitt-Dons.^[58]

Religious and mythological traditions

Red is the preferred dyeing colour in Islam. It is reported that the Prophet Muhammad used to dye his hair red using Henna.^[59] Henna or Hina is a flowering plant which traditionally has been used to dye hair red. There are no side effects to this. Al-Bukhari related in his Sahih, from ‘Uthman b. ‘Abd-Allah b. Mawhab: We went to Umm Salma, and she brought out for us some of the hair of the Messenger of Allah, and lo, it was dyed with henna and indigo.” (Bukhari, Libas, 66) And in the four sunan, from the Prophet, it is related that he said, ‘The best you can use for changing the colour of white hair are henna and katam.’ (Tirmidhi, Libas, 20). In the two books of the Sahih, from Anas, it is quoted that Abu Bakr used hair dye of both henna and katam. (Muslim, Fada’il, 100)” (Ibn Qayyim; 259) (Katam is a plant from Yemen which produces a reddish-black dye).

Esau's entire body is supposed to have been covered with red hair. King David is also known for having red hair, based on the description of his physical appearance as "admoni", the Biblical Hebrew word normally interpreted to mean 'ruddy' and/or 'red-haired' (1 Samuel 16-17).

Early artistic representations of Mary Magdalene usually depict her as having long flowing red hair, although a description of her hair colour was never mentioned in the Bible, and it is possible the colour is an effect caused by pigment degradation in the ancient paint. This tradition is used as a plot device in the book and movie The Da Vinci Code. Thor, of Norse mythology, was generally portrayed as having red hair. Ancient Egyptians associated both red-haired humans and red-coloured animals with the god Set, considering them to be favored by the powerful and temperamental deity.

There is a tradition amongst astrologers that the planet Mars ("the red planet") is more likely to be rising above the eastern horizon (on or near the astrological Ascendant, which supposedly influences a person's appearance) at the time of the birth of a red haired person than for the population in general.^[60]

The name Rhys may have been derived from the local word for red hair.

Achilles, the central character of Homer's Iliad, is described as having red hair, possibly contributing to the original myths of temperament.

那，红发与谋杀，又有何关系？并且是年轻的红发男女？


再议。