White
by Richard Dyer
Routledge, 1997
I had picked this book for last year’s reading challenge because of its one-word title. I read it then, but was too busy to write a review, so I’m going to do it now… the caveat being the book challenge is over.
(I finally realized why I’ve been doing so poorly at these challenges. I balk at reading assigned books because it feels like homework, even if I pick the books myself. That takes all the pleasure out of for me.)
White was a groundbreaker in its time (1997) because it was the first sociological nonfiction book about the media representation of white people, by white people, in Western culture, mainly movies. (Yes I know White as a race is an abstract only and doesn’t really exist in a scientific sense. You could make the argument, too, that it doesn’t exist outside of Western civilization either. But as nebulous as the concept is the idea of being “White” is still hanging around today, in 2026, in America at least where it is being laudified by certain right-wing groups. ) Though published almost 30 years ago the book is still relevant today, especially so considering how some politicians and tech-bros are trying to persuade (white) women to have more (white) babies to prevent the (white) “race” from dying out. Which is, according to Dyer, nothing new. It ties into ideas about dirt and cleanliness, colonialism, and Catholicism. It’s thoughtful college thesis stuff with some ugly truths, more of an academic work than a pop science one.
The first section serves as an introduction while the second and third examines how the idea of whiteness is handled in visual media, first paintings, then photography and movies. There’s a lot of fascinating stuff in the former chapter about how lighting and makeup was developed to make white faces “pop” off the screen and seem to glow. One could imagine how different the techniques would be if Nollywood, not Hollywood, rose to prominence first, necessitating techniques to highlight black faces. The White face glows in the light, the Black one absorbs; but what if the position and quality of lighting had been invented for the latter?
There’s also a wonderful chapter on 1950s and 1960s sword n’ sandal movies and how they relation to facism, colonialism, and the working class, which strays from the concept of whiteness quite a bit but is interesting nonetheless, and a last chapter analyzing race in the British series The Jewel in the Crown which I can’t help but feel was filler.
Overall the book was not an easy read but it is a rewarding one.
