Explore the issues relating to whiteness as an ethnic category.
How does the construction of whiteness assert the idea of a ‘normative in natural state of existence?’
Support your essay with textual analysis.
In this essay I am going to be addressing whiteness as an ethnic category and how the construction of whiteness asserts the idea of a normative and natural state of existence, the text I am going to use will be a picture of Marilyn Monroe.
Whiteness is considered natural, it is classified as normal thus classifying it outside of race. The term ‘whiteness’ is a construction. Even though a western ideology whiteness is outside of race and it is given special status and due to this whiteness becomes invisible.
The history of whiteness links back to Greek origins, the whiteness of the Greek statues is where the term whiteness comes from, even within Greek statues the women would be paler signifying a more angelic figure. ‘in classical Greek art, female figures are paler than male, as benefits those whose proper place is in the home, a notion taken to angelic extremes in Victorial domestic ideology and imagery’ (1993:151) this is evidence that the gender is then marked by the whiteness.
In the construction of whiteness, Geek history was looked upon to form a primordial essential whiteness. In the construction of whiteness, whiteness has three fictions; an ideological, a political and a legal fiction. An ideological fiction on whiteness was the essentialist links to biology that carried a construction of history and held the original identity. The political fiction was a system of control over what can be shown, revealed and portrayed in terms of a colony, which is known as colonial discourse, and the political fiction established a binary between colonised and coloniser, which in this sense was the slave and the slave owner. Whiteness is a hierarchical racial identity and whiteness is a socially constructed race. Whiteness is also seen as a legal fiction, whiteness was used as a social tool which gained advantage in regards to the distribution of health and power.
Whiteness cannot be explained without the relation to what is known as ‘the other’, the other is what is described as the other to the dominant. Whiteness needs the binary opposition of the other as it has not yet been defined in cinema. Woodward argues that ‘identities are forged through the marking of difference. This marking of differences takes place both through the symbolic systems of representation and through forms of social exclusion. Identity, then is not the opposite of, but depends on difference,’ (1997:29) this supplements the notion of needing the binary opposition in order to create a classification, identity relies on the other to bring meaning and form a category.
There are two ways in which to look at whiteness, ideologically and technically. Dyer argues ‘en-lightment and post-en-lightment philosophy stressed the intrinsic transcendence superiority of the colour white, notions that were grasped onto nineteenth centaury biological accounts of racial difference. The celebration of women in paintings during the same period etherealized the body drawing upon the translucent imagery of Madonna’s, angels, nyphs and spirits’ (1993:151) This is symbolically how whiteness is seen, whiteness is seen as something outside of the body, whiteness and light have a strong connection as dyer agrees ‘such treatment is the cumilation of a history of light that has many strands. The association of whiteness and light - of whiteness - with moral goes far back,’ (1993:151) this is made evident in the text, Marilyn Monroe was the epitome of femininity, she was known as ‘the body’ and also granted a Goddess. ‘white women are constructed as the apotheosis of desirability, all that a man could want, yet nothing can be had, nor anything that a woman can be. But as I have argued, white representation in general has thus everything-and-nothing quality’ (Dyer; 1993: 164)
This is evident in the image of Marilyn Monroe as she is physically desirable. There is white light coming from behind her which symbolises heaven, an angelic woman with the lights of heaven behind her, the white light is like a radiance and a glow that signifies a halo thus making her an angel, beyond attainment as being beyond the living, this cements the idea that whiteness is seen as beyond living, whiteness has conventions with the dead. Dyer stated ‘three point lighting, soft light gauzes and focus could all be employed to create the haloes and glows of feminine portiere,’ (1993:152) and this is evident in the image as the white light behind her is making her look like an angel. Her white skin is translucent signifying a non-living create, beyond life. With the white light behind her making appear like a Goddess, God-like. It is similar to the representations of God and Angels within Christianity, ‘in relation to white women, to endow them with a glow and radiance that has correspondences with the transcended rhetoric of popular Christianity,’ (Dyer; 1993:145) this is evident in the text that it is adapting the Christian imagery, Dyer stated ‘Christian art has a long emphasised the radiance of the pure white codes of Christ, the virgin, the saints and angels,’ (1993: 151) which supplements the ideological significance of the text, as she appears as an angel. Dyer studied the link between whiteness and death, as white racial identity symbolically suggests no colour, thus no body which suggests an ideological and symbolical link between death and whiteness, as through the ideology of western the idea of death is the transcendence of spirit to beyond life.
To conclude, there is many issues within signifying white as an ethnic category due to white not been seen as a colour and there for having no content which would then make whiteness invisible. Whiteness is what’s constructed of normal as it is the dominant neutral state of existence, and thus whiteness is what is considered ordinary.
Dyer R (1993), the matter of images, London: Routledge.
Woodward K (1997), identity and difference, London: Sage publications.
Image - www.google.com
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