ideas about race and ethnicity are constructed and circulated in ways that tend to keep white privilege and power in place. Yet surveying representations of whiteness in American film raises fundamental questions about the very nature of race and/or ethnicity. Although it may surprise generations of the twenty‐first century, some people who are now commonly considered to be white were not considered so in the past. The most common designation of whiteness in the United States is the term WASP, which stands for White Anglo‐Saxon Protestant. People of non‐Anglo‐Saxon European ancestry have historically had to negotiate their relation to whiteness. If American culture had different ideas about who was considered white at different times over the past centuries, then claims about race and ethnicity as absolute markers of identity become highly problematic.
This chapter explores the differing socio‐historical and cinematic constructions of whiteness throughout the history of American film. It examines the representations of several (but not all) of the communities that were not originally welcomed into American society as white, but which have been more recently assumed to belong to this racial category. The following discussion examines how these groups were represented with certain stereotypes, how these communities developed strategies for acceptance by white society, and how cinema functioned as part of this cultural negotiation. But first, the chapter begins with a discussion of how film works within dominant hegemonic culture to subtly – and almost invisibly – speak about the centrality of whiteness.
Seeing White
One of the hardest aspects of discussing how white people are represented in American cinema (and in Western culture‐at‐large) is the effort it takes for individuals even to see that racial/ethnic issues are involved with white characters or stories. By and large, the average moviegoer thinks about issues of race only when seeing a movie about a racial or ethnic minority group. For example, most romantic comedies find humor in how male and female characters each try to hold the upper hand in a relationship. Yet Just Wright (2010) starring two African American actors (Queen Latifah and Common), is regarded by some Americans as a “black” romantic comedy, whereas the popular Bridget Jones films (2001, 2004, 2016) starring two white actors (Renée Zellweger and Colin Firth), would tend to be regarded as simply romantic comedies, and not as “white” films. Similarly, it was a cultural event when Black Panther (2018) became one of the first blockbuster films about a “black” superhero, whereas Deadpool (2016) was simply a film about a snarky superhero – period. The fact that Black Panther was not received as just another superhero film tells us that race does still matter to filmgoers (of all races and ethnicities), and that it was a much‐needed corrective to the overall general unremarked‐upon assumption of whiteness within the genre. These examples also underscore the Hollywood assumption that all viewers, whatever their racial identification, should be able to identify with white characters, but that the reverse is seldom true. (Perhaps the tremendous financial success of Black Panther is evidence that contemporary white filmgoers are more able to relate to black characters than in the past.) Still, even today many white viewers choose not to see films starring non‐white actors or films set in minority or ethnic environments, allegedly because they feel they cannot identify with the characters. Because of that fact, Hollywood tends to spend more money on white stars in white movies, and far less money on non‐white actors in overtly racial or ethnic properties. Hollywood is always concerned when a film might be perceived as “too black,” or “too Hispanic,” knowing that such a perception will most likely cost revenue at the box office, should the film fail to crossover to white audiences.
Furthermore, the very structure of classical Hollywood narrative form encourages all spectators, regardless of their actual color, to identify with white protagonists. This may result in highly conflicted viewing positions, as when Native American spectators are encouraged by Hollywood Westerns to root for white cowboys battling evil Indians. This situation was especially prevalent in previous decades, when non‐white actors were rarely permitted to play leading roles in Hollywood films, and when racialized stereotypes in movies were more obvious and prevalent. However, in an acknowledgement of our population’s diversity, over the last several decades an ever‐increasing number of non‐white characters have been appearing in Hollywood movies. More and more films each year now feature non‐white leads, and even more regularly, non‐white actors in supporting roles. Sometimes this practice is referred to as tokenism – the placing of a non‐white character into a film in order to deflate any potential charge of racism. Token characters can often be found in small supporting roles that are peripheral to the white leads and their stories. For example, in science fiction movies featuring mixed‐race battalions fighting aliens, minor black and Hispanic characters frequently get killed off as the film progresses, leaving a white hero to save the day. This is especially egregious in a film like Battle Los Angeles (2011) which begins with a Hispanic Marine (Ramon Rodriguez) leading the attack on aliens, until he suffers a compete nervous breakdown, leaving the world to be saved by his stalwart white replacement (Aaron Eckhart). This phenomenon has become so prevalent that some audience members consider it a racist cliché. For many others, however, the phenomenon goes unnoticed, and the dominance of whiteness remains unquestioned.
Film scholar Richard Dyer’s work on how cinema represents whiteness ties this unthinking (or unremarked‐upon) white centrism to larger ideological issues of race. As pointed out in Chapter 1, a society’s dominant ideology functions optimally when individuals are so imbued with its concepts that they do not realize that a social construct has been formed or is being reinforced. The relative cultural invisibility of whiteness within the United States serves as a perfect example of this idea: the white power base maintains its dominant position precisely by being consistently overlooked, or at least unexamined in most mainstream texts. Unless whiteness is somehow pointed out or overemphasized, its dominance is taken for granted. A rare Hollywood film such as Pleasantville (1998) calls attention to whiteness, even down to its black‐and‐white visual design, in which characters are literally devoid of color. (The film is a satire of 1950s nostalgia as represented by that era’s all‐white television sitcoms.) More regularly, however, Hollywood films continue to use the token approach to casting non‐white actors. Jurassic World (2015) featured a mostly all‐white cast except for Irrfan Khan (as one of the villains who meets his justified end part way through the film), while Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018) followed the same formula by casting Justice Smith as a cowardly nerd, whose frightened antics sadly look back to the African American stereotypes of the 1940s. (Both films also feature Asian American actor B.D. Wong in a few scenes, yet as the brainy amoral scientist, how far away from a stereotype is he truly?) Such tokenism, combined with narratives that frame non‐white people as marginal (at best) and villainous (at worst), while maintaining the centrality of white heroics and white romance, work to naturalize whiteness as a universal state of being.
Whiteness – as a complex and often unconscious structural ideology – can also effect people of color in seemingly contradictory ways. For example, in some communities of color, being born with a lighter shade of skin is itself a form of privilege. This phenomenon of favoring light skin, even within communities of color, is called colorism. It exists in African American cultures, as explored by filmmakers like Spike Lee (in films such as School Daze [1998] and Jungle Fever [1991]) and Chris Rock in his docu‐comedy Good Hair (2009). The title of Rock’s film refers to a black term for having long straight un‐curly hair, and the film shows to what great lengths many African American women (and some men) will go to achieve that goal, including harsh chemical hair relaxers and expensive weaves (somewhat paradoxically coming from dark‐skinned Indian women). Colorism also can be found within the Latinx community and within India and its diasporic population. Colorism is deeply enmeshed in the American fashion and beauty industries, which have traditionally promoted European ideals of feminine beauty (light skin, long straight blond hair, smaller facial features) to people all around the globe. Some people in developing
