White: Essays on Race and Culture [Paperback]

Richard Dyer (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0415095379 | ISBN-13: 978-0415095372 | Publication Date: August 7, 1997

White people are not literally or symbolically white; nor are they uniquely virtuous and pure. Racial imagery and racial representation are central to the organisation of the contemporary world but, while there are many studies of images of black and Asian people, whiteness is an invisible racial position. At the level of racial representation, whites are not of a certain race. They are just the human race, a 'colour' against which other ethnicities are always examined.
In White, Richard Dyer looks beyond the apparent unremarkability of whiteness and argues for the importance of analysing images of white people. Dyer traces the representation of whiteness by whites in Western visual culture, focusing on the mass media of photography, advertising, fine art, cinema and television.
Dyer examines the representation of whiteness and the white body in the contexts of Christianity, 'race' and colonialism. In a series of absorbing case studies, he discusses the representations of whiteness in muscle-man action cinema, from Italian 'peplum' movies to the Tarzan and Rambo series; shows the construction of whiteness in photography and cinema in the lighting of white and black faces, and analyses the representation of white women in end-of-empire fictions such as The Jewel in the Crown, and traces the disturbing association of whiteness with death, in vampire narratives and dystopian films such as Blade Runner and the Aliens trilogy.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Written with clarity and elegance impressively and eclectically sourced with notes and bibliographies, and lavishly illustrated on exceptional stock with scores fo black-and-white plates and 18 color plates of paintings... White is a feast for both the mind and the eye. An excellent companion to bell hooks's... and an indispensable addition to undergraduate and graduate collections in cultural studies and film.
–Choice, April 1998 Vol. 35 No. 8

White comes highly recommended as a textual site which attempts to bring greater humanity to the worls through an act of critical scholarship and honest self-deconstruction.
–Tribune, 2/99

White [is a] terrifically intelligent examination of how the visual media, from painting to photography to film, represents whiteness as the esthetic ideal of the West.
–The New York Times, 3/99

Politically sensitive and culturally savvy. [A]n excellent study..
–Shannon Steen, Theatre Journal

This book overflows with... perceptive and provocative arguments.
–In These Times

About the Author

Richard Dyer is Professor of Film Studies at the University of Warwick. He is the author of many books, including Now You See It (1990), Only Entertainment (1992) and The Matter of Images (1993), all available from Routledge.

Product Details

• Paperback: 284 pages
• Publisher: Routledge (August 7, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0415095379
• ISBN-13: 978-0415095372
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #189,888 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars excellent discussion of race--and simple color--in film, December 25, 2006

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Prosopopeia "prosopopeia" (Champaign, IL United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: White: Essays on Race and Culture (Paperback)

An often fascinating read in extremely intellgible English, Dyer shows how the idea of whiteness underpins more of Western visual culture than one might have thought. Ranging from fascinating discussions of how the actual chemical composition of film stock was engineered to maximize the representation of caucasian skin on celluloid to race in cheesy Italian sword-and-sandals films of the 1950s, this is a real triumph for academic writing--a work that's actually compelling for a non-specialist, but an important intervention in the field at the same time. The last chapter or two were a little less energetic than the predecessors, I thought, but overall, one of the best I've read of this kind.

3 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An important addition to modern film criticism., July 6, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: White: Essays on Race and Culture (Hardcover)

Dyer is one of the most important film critics in the west. His exploration of what race and politics have to do with entertainment is absolutely crucial to understanding movies better. They are not only entertainment but a key to the way modern politics work in everyone's imagination. The only other popular culture critic as astute on this subject is the American writer Armond White and Dyer's latest work makes a welcome pair with White's The Resistance. To challenge film viewers to analyze their own relationship to the ideas and images on screen is among the most significant work a contemporary critic can undertake. Dyer's chapters on Jewel in the Crown and his analysis of western art and the influence of its ideas on popular culture will be important for as longa s there are movies.

6 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Often intelligent but has many limitations and blind spots, September 4, 2000

By A Customer

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: White: Essays on Race and Culture (Paperback)

Dyer's study is extremely fascinating, and his reading of "Night of the Living Dead" alone makes the study worth reading. He repeatedly shows how race introduces itself where we least expect it, and his attentiveness to detail in film representations is careful and illuminating.

The study does have its blind spots, particularly with regard to politics. There is a vehemently progressive bent (as scornful of liberalism as of right-wing Thatcherism) that separates the texts Dyer reads occasionally into "good texts" but---and this is far more often the case--into "bad texts" which he proceeds at times to pathologize more than analyze. His distaste for the middleclass popularity of "The Jewel in the Crown," for example, seems to prompt him to unleash real vituperation against it, and to read it very shortsightedly (he almost entirely neglects to mention, for example, that the serial is adapted from a series of novels by Paul Scott which address many of the points he believes the serial omits). This is a smart book, but it's often lacking in critical distance.