Heroes in black and white = book or old movies

Cafe Society
1

I am a huge John Mayer fan. I love his song Speak For Me.

A line from this song goes like this: “You can tell that something isn’t right / When all your heroes are in black and white.”

I’ve tried to figure out if the lyric is referencing ‘black and white’ as in a book or as in an old black and white movies.

I have thought it’s a reference to characters in books, speaking for us, being our heroes, etc. That in itself gives me ideas for story lines, but besides that it also is true of me, perhaps many others too, when flesh and blood people are not heroes to us, the fictional ones can be.

It’s like aspiring to be a fan of someone that good or that strong, etc. Another reason why ‘special powers’ are so intriguing in our fictional characters. Way beyond what we have available to us in this physical space.

Would you say fictional book characters or old movie characters are more your type of heroes?

2

It’s a metaphor, talking about when heroes were always virtuous and villains always evil.

It actually fits the line better: he’s saying that you can’t look at people that way.