White by Richard Dyer

Dyer takes on  challenging subject: how whiteness is represented in mainstream film. He discusses Simba in particular, and my thoughts on this will be discussed with commentary on the film.

Dyer starts by pointing out that 'images of' studies tend to look at groups that are 'defined as oppressed, marginal, or subordinate.' Moreover, this tendency has the effect of highlighting and reproducing that the groups are the exception to the norm; "meanwhile", he continues,  "the norm has carried on as if it is the natural, inevitable, ordinary way of being human".

Shades here of Barthes' natural order of things: the myth of white being the natural state.

At its most basic level, Dyer argues, white is 'all colours'; it is the result of merging the three primary colours of red, blue and green. Black, on the other hand, absorbs light and is an absence of colour. By dint of the mere physics, therefore, there is a synthetic, almost superior status of white over black.

Dyer argues that 'whiteness' is everything and nothing, which encapsulates its 'representational power' (think White House in Washington, would Black House work?). White people therefore cannot 'see' whiteness: "...The subject seems to fall apart in your hands as soon as you begin." White representation is actually about something other then whiteness per se. Dyer does make the link, but this point is true of Simba,  which is really a tale about colonialism, emphasised by the 'blackness' (such as the clandestine meeting of the Mau Mau in darkness).

The discourse now moves to three films, of which we are asked to watch Simba, the subject of the next post.