Red Carpets for Movie Premieres
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From Far Out Magazine - Why do movie premieres use red carpets?
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Why do movie premieres use red carpets?
It’s part and parcel of the entertainment industry, and the phrase ‘rolling out the red carpet’ has long since entered the cultural lexicon whenever something hoity-toity is unfolding, but the symbol of the rouge rug dates back thousands of years, long before the bright lights of Hollywood shone.
In Aeschylus’ play Agamemnon – written in 458 BC – the title character makes a triumphant return home from Troy, where his wife Clytemnestra laid one out to celebrate his arrival. In Ancient Greek society, the colour was seen as one of warmth and welcome before evolving to reflect royalty, wealth, or status.
A red carpet welcomed President James Monroe to South Carolina in 1821, and a rail service that operated between New York and Chicago in 1902 used the red carpet to lead first-class passengers onto their carriage, but it was a long time before Hollywood adopted the practice.
That being said, by the 1920s, the red carpet had become a fixture of any occasion where the great and good of Tinseltown were mingling in numbers, with Douglas Fairbanks’ 1922 spin on Robin Hood signalling the arrival of the crimson floorwear as an adopted industry practice. And yet, the Oscars still took a while to catch up.
The 33rd edition of the Academy Awards in 1961 marked the first time the ceremony had a red carpet of its own, not that anybody would notice at home, considering the ceremony was screened in black-and-white. The organisers claimed it wasn’t a deliberate move to highlight the A-list status of the attendees but rather a means of instructing them which way to go to find the auditorium and take their seats.
That’s a sentiment it’s hard to buy into, though, considering historians have always viewed the red carpet as a status symbol. It’s been used that way for millennia, and considering red carpet premieres regularly involve some of the most famous, powerful, and wealthy people on the planet, having them pounding the pavement like a regular schmuck is simply uncouth.
At the end of the day, then, the red carpet is what it is because that’s the way it’s always been. In Ancient Greece, it was used to welcome warriors back to home soil and guests into their homes for fancy soirees, and thousands of years later, it’s a place where the cream of the Hollywood crop can mingle, pose for photographs, and pat each other on the back for a job well done.
Why is there no longer a red carpet at the Oscars?
Upending tradition and leaving the purists with no other choice but to desperately clutch at their pearls, the 2023 Oscars desecrated over 60 years of history by forsaking a red carpet in favour of a champagne-coloured number, a first-world problem, if ever there was one.
However, it was a one-time thing, and the red carpet made its triumphant return in 2024, but creative consultants Lisa Love and Raúl Àvila were nonetheless compelled to explain themselves. "We chose this beautiful sienna, saffron colour that evokes the sunset because this is the sunset before the golden hour," Love offered. "Somebody’s always got a way to find something wrong with something. This is just a lightness and hopefully people like it. It doesn’t mean that it’s always going to be a champagne-coloured carpet."
True to her word, the absolute heathens reverted to formula the following year to reintroduce the red carpet, potentially to avoid Hollywood’s elite group of nominated professionals from running around like headless chickens unable to find their seats because they’d never seen a champagne spin before.