The Matter of lmages
Essays on representations
Richard Dyer
fqq3
HI London and New York Chapter 13 140 The Matter of lmages
of the exercise of liberalism and understanding remained uppermost. White One of liberalism's cardinal virtue{ is tolerance, and it is not one that much of the left has a good track recort on. There is a difference however between tolerance based on a complacent assumption that we're all the same anyilay and tolerance that acknowledges the stubborn core of differ- ences betweln peoples. The first form of tolerance imposes the liberal's own sense of how piople are in her/his own world on to other parts of the world (including otheiclasses, minorities, even the opposite sex) - it is this self-satisfied libiral tolerance that assumes western Marxism is entirely appropriate to the situations of the Third world, or that women or blacks oi'guyr in political parties do not inhabit specific and different situations ."q:oirirg ai least some of the time separate organization. The other kind of just enter and understand differ- Thisisanarticleaboutasubjectthat,muchofthetimeasl,vebeenwritingthe tolerancE acknowledges that one cannot ,ot ,o be there as a subject at all' Trying to think about judgement or the interference oJ 'understand- t,:;;t film is ence, and withdraws from ;p;;"ai.n or y.Uf"*ss as an gthnic category in mainstream *t The film A Passage to India invites us to take up the forher tolerance, dominance by seeming not ing'. difficult, partly because white power secures its an-d this matters. It ii not a wrangle over protecting a 'great author's' when whiteness qua \thite' ,, to be anything in particular Uut also because' is not worrying about a story set in the dim and distant past. In emptiness, absence' vision, it does come into focus, it is often revealed as r,l Britain, in a world still entangled in imperi- ness multi-cultural contemp&ary a kind of death' real tolerance denial or even alisms of many kinds, we need more than ever to foster the --iiir, to try to make some headway with grasping I uff the same, important of real difference. 'Images of' studies havc rl whiteness a, a cutturaliy constructld category' h subordinate.- women' i";k; at groups deflnei as oppressed, marginal or I Marxism Today (APril 1985)- lesbiaLt gay menr class, ethnic ana oiner minorities (e'g'' Td I ;;;.k#g for such work lies in the sense l'. disabled people, tfre elderly)' The impulse is part of the process of thoir li,r FURTHER READING that how rrr"t grorir*u'J""p'"t"nied range and fertility of tf,. oi subordination' The the whale" it Imaginary flomeland. London: -urli.tuflrutiot' E, Rushdie, Salman (1992) 'Outside "ppr"r.i.r, Books, 125-38. suchworkhasputtt'"'"g'o"psthemselvescentre-Stageinbothanalytical H Penguin/Granta issue of representation as p and campaigning activitv] u"a highlighted the ,,.J long recognizcd in politics. It has, to*"u"i, had on"e drawback' 'J'io"t such passion and single' 1I debates about women', Looking' with 't"di"*' the effect of reproducing the mindedness, ut ,tor-do..tinant groups has had of these.groups, the sense of the oddness, differentness, exceptionality Meanwhile the norm httt* feeling that they u." i"puttt"gs frol the norm' way of being humun' carried on as if it is the iratural, inevitable, ordinary Someeffortsarenowbeingmadetorectifythis,tosee.thatthenormttlei has anything approaching tr is constructed, although onlf with masculinity here+ bcfore proliferation ot t"*t.Lgo"' e"tnupt it. is worth signalling two convolutions "pr."""Ji"g, two of ,t pitt"ut in the path,of such work' " masculinity guilt and mc' that especiatty ct ara"ilii ze malewriting about - here as a. white person about too-ism. Let me t,ui" ittut, while writ-ing the expiation o.f my guilt about whiteness, I do not *"un to display ", (trccause it is un nor to fti"itttut"itt it is also awful to be white I U"iig-*tli" inadequate,limitingdeliniti
146 The Matter of lmages Whits l4l basis for the shifts and anxieties in the representation of whiteness sugges- ted by Simba, Jezebel and Night. The three fllms relate to situations in which whites hold power in society, but are materially dependent upon black people. All three films suggest an awareness of this dependency - weakly in Simba, strongly but still impli- citly in Jezebel, inescapably in Night. It is this actual dependency of white on black in a context of continued white power and privilege that throws the legitimacy of white domination into question. What is called for is a demonstration of the virtues of whiteness that would justify continuecl domination, but this is a problem if whiteness is also invisible, everything and nothing. It is from this that the films'fascinations derive. I shall discuss them here in the order in which they most clearly attempt to hang on to some justiflcation of whiteness, starting, then, with Simba and ending with Night.
SIMBA
Simba is a characteristic product of the British cinema between about 1945 and 1965 - an entertainment fllm 'dealing with' a serious issue (Hill 1986). It is a colonial adventure film, offering the standard narrative pleasures of adventure with a tale of personal growth. The hero, Alan (Bogarde), arrives in Kenya from England to visit his brother on his farm, finds he has been killed by the Mau-Mau and stays to sort things out (keep the farm going, find out who killed his brother, quell the Mau-Mau). Because the Figure 13.1 Orderly rows, full light, debate the white meeting in Simba Mau-Mau were a real administrative and ideological problem for British - imperialism at the time of the film's making, Simba also has to construct a serious discursive context for these pleasures (essentially a moral one, to mise-en-scdne. A sequence of two succeeding scenes illustratcs lltis clcirt'ly do with the proper way to treat native peoples, toughness versus niceness). - a meeting of the white settlers to discuss the emergency, lirllowctl by rr It does this partly through debates and discussions, partly through charac- meeting of the Mau-Mau. The whites' meeting (figure l3.l) takcs ;rlrret' irr ters clearly representing what the film takes to be the range of possible early evening, in a fully lit room; characters who speak lro shol willr angles on the subject (the bigoted whites, the liberal whites, the British- standard high-key lighting so that they are fully visiblc; cvoryonc sils irt educated black man, the despotic black chief) but above all through the rows and although there is disagreement, some of it lrot-torlpct't'rl iutrl figure of the hero, whose adventures and personal growth are occasioned, emotional, it is expressed in grammatical discourse in it litttgtutgc llrt' even made possible, through the process of engaging with the late colonial British viewer can understand; moreover, the meeting consists ol nolltittll situation. The way this situation is structured by the film and the way but speech. The black meeting, on the other hand, tak<;s placc itl tle;ttl ol Alan/Bogarde rises to the occasion display the qualities of whiteness. night, out of doors, with all characters in shadow; cvon tltc Mittt'Mrttt Simba is founded on the 'Manicheism delirium' identifidd by Fanon as leader is lit with extreme sub-expressionist lighting that clrirnirlizcs irrrrl characteristic of the colonialist sensibility (1986: 1); it takes what Paul distorts his face; grouping is in the form of a brokcn, urlcvcn circ:lc:; wltitl Gilroy refers to as an 'absolutist view of black and white cultures, as fixed, speech there is is ritualized, not reasonccl, ancl rcnritit.ts untriurslit(erl (iurrl mutually impermeable expressions of racial and national identity, [which] probably in no authcntic language anyway), irtttl ntosl vocitl sotttttls ittt' is a ubiquitous theme in racial "common sense"'(1987:6). The film is whooping, gabhling irrrtl shrickingt tlrc hourt rll'thc: tttcc:lirrg is irr rny crsc organized around a rigid hinarism, with white standing lor moclornity, not spccclr, llrrl tlirrrbirrp, willr bklotl irrrtl crtllitils iurtl scru rirtg llrc lrtuly.'l'lrt' reason, orclor, stability, ancl blirck slirnrling lirr backwarclncss, irrationirlily, rotunl lo wlrilr'rrt'ss rrllt'r'llris ri('(lucncc is ortr'c irllirin ir tt'lutn lo tlrryliglrl. rr chaos irnrl violcncc:.'l'his llirrlrrisrrr is lcprotlrrccrl in ovcry tlctlril ol'tlrc lilrrr's rlissolvc to tlrr'slrrrililrl lilrt's ol l',ut.opcitlt l't'ttt'ittg lttttl vt';1t'lltlrlt'plols. 150 The Matter of lmages White 15'l in one of which a plane's shadow is seen, and ending with shots of white their civilizing mission ('I couldn't stop the wind from blowing'); it is settlement and then the plane coming to land. Here is another aspect of the endlessly repeated by the nice whites in The Jewel in the Crown ('There's film's binarism. The credit sequence uses the dynamics of editing following nothing I can do!') and symbolized in the lace shawl with butterflies 'caught the more settled feel of the pre-credit long take; it uses aerial shots moving in the net' that keeps being brought out by the characters. I have already through space, rather than pans with their fixed vantage point; it empha- suggested the ways in which liberalism is marginalized and shown to fail in sizes the view from above, not that from the ground, and the modernity of Simba. More than this, the hero also fails to realize the generically pro- air travel after the primitivism of the machete. It also brings the hero to mised adventure experiences: he is unable to keep his late brother's farm Africa (as we realize when we see Bogarde step off in the first post-credit going, nor does he succeed in fighting off a man stealing guns from his shot), brings the solution to the problems of deceptive, unflxed appear- house; he fails to catch the fleeing leader of the Mau-Mau, and is unable to ances set up by the pre-credit sequence. prevent them from destroying his house and shooting Peter. The film ends Simba's binarism both establishes the differences between bfack and with his property in flames and - a touch common to British social white and creates the conditions for the film's narrative pleasufes - the conscience films - with a shot of a young black boy who symbolizes the only disturbance of the equilibrium of clear-cut binarism, the resultant conflict possible htrpe for the future. that the hero has to resolve. His ability to resolve it is part of his whiteness, The repeated failure of narrative achievement goes along with a sense of just as whiteness is identified in the dynamism of the credit sequence white helplessness in the face of the Mau-Mau (the true black threat), most (which in turn relates to the generic expectations of adventure) and in the notably in the transition between the two meeting scenes discussed above. narrative of personal growth that any colonial text with pretensions also Alan has left the meeting in anger because one of the settlers has criticized has. The empire provided a narrative space for the realization of manhood, the way his brother had dealt with the Africans (too soft); Mary joins him, as both action and maturation (Hall 1981). The colonial landscape is to comfort him. At the end of their conversation, there is a two-shot of expansive, enabling the hero to roam and giving us the entertainment of them, with Mary saying of the situation, 'it's like a flood, we're caught in action; it is unexplored, giving him the task of discovery and us the it'. This is accompanied by the sound of drums and is immediately followed pleasures of mystery; it is uncivilized, needing taming, providing the by a slow dissolve to black people walking through the night towards the spectacle of power; it is difficult and dangerous, testing his machismo, Mau-Mau meeting. The drums and the dissolve enact Mary's words, the providing us with suspense. In other words, the colonial landscape pro- whites 'caught' in the encroachment of blackness. vides the occasion for the realization of white male virtues, which are not Simba is, then, an endorsement of the moral superiority of white values qualities of being but of doing - acting, discovering, taming, conquering. of reason, order and boundedness, yet suggests a loss of belief in their At the same time, colonialism, as a social, political and economic system, efficacy. This is a familiar trope of conservatism. At moments, though, even in fictions, also carries with it challenges of responsibility, of the there are glimpees of something else, achieved inadvertently perhaps establishment and maintenance of order, of the application of reason and through the casting of Dirk Bogarde. It becomes explicit in the scene authority to situations. These, too, are qualities of white manhood that are between Mary and Alan just mentioned, when Alan says to Mury, 'I was realized in the process of the colonial text, and very explicitly in Simba. suddenly afraid of what I was feeling', referring to the anger and hatred When Alan arrives at Nairobi, he is met by Mary, a woman to whom he that the whole situation is bringing out in him and, as Mary says, everyone had proposed when she was visiting England; she had turned him down, else. The implication is that the situation evokes in whites the kind of telling him, as he recalls on the drive to his brother's farm, that he had'no irrational violence supposedly specific to blacks. Of course, being white sense of responsibility'. Now he realizes that she was right; in the cours4of means being able to repress it and this is what we seem to see in Alan the film he will learn to be responsible in the process of dealing with the throughout the film. Such repression constitutes the stoic glory of the Mau-Mau, and this display of growth will win him Mary. imperial hero, but there is something about Bogarde in the part that makes But this is a late colonial text, characterized by a recognition that the it seem less than admirable or desirable. Whether this is suggested by his empire is at an end, and not unaware of some kinds of liberal critique of acting style, still and controlled, yet with fiercely grinding jaws, rigidly colonialism. So Simba takes a turn that is far more fully explored by, say, clenched hands and very occasional sudden outbursts of shouting, or by the Black Narcissus (1947) or the Granada television adaptation of The Jewel way Rank was grooming him against the grain of his earlier, sexier image in the Crown (7982). Here, maturity involves the melancholy recognition (including its gay overtones) (Medhurst l9tt6), it suggests a notion of of failure. This is explicitly stated, by Sister Clodagh in Black Narcissus, to whiteness as repression that lcads us neatly on to ,lezehttl, be built into the geographical conditions in which the nuns seek to establish 152 The Matter of lmages White 153
JEZEBEL Llke Simba, Jezebel depicts a white society characterized by order and rigidity, here expressed principally through codes of behaviour and rules of conduct embodied in set piece receptions, dinner parties and balls..This does contrast with the bare glimpses we get of black life in the film, but Jezebel also explores the ways in which whiteness is related to blackness, materially and emotionally dependent on it yet still holding sway over it. Compositionally, lezebel frequently foregrounds black people - scenes often open with the camera moving from a black person (a woman selling flowers in New Orleans (figure 13.3), a servant€arying juleps, a boy pulling on a rope to operate a ceiling fan) across or towards white characters; black people often intrude into the frame while white characters talk. This is particularly noticeable during a dinner-table discussion of the future of slavery; when one of the characters, Pres (Henry Fonda), says that the South will be defeated by machines triumphing over 'unskilled slave labour', the chiefblack character, Cato (Lou Payton), leans across our field of vision to pour Pres's wine, literally embodying the fact of slave labour. The film's insistence upon the presence of black people is important in its perception and construction of the white South. As Jim Pines puts it, 'black characters do not occupy a significant dramatic function in the film, but their social role nevertheless plays an explicit and relevant part in the conflict that arises between the principal white characters' (Pines 7975: 59). Jezebel is distantly related, through the sympathies of its stars, director Figure 13.3 A marginal but foregrounded black figure in Jezebel and production studio, to progressive ideas on race, making it, as Pines says, 'within the plantation movie tradition . . . undoubtedly the mbst liberal-inclined'(ibid.: 55;cf. Cripps7977:299,304). Theseideas have to do Sirk's Imitation of Life. Erhel Mannin's statemcnt nttty bc litkt'rr rts with the belief or suspicion that black people have in some sense more 'life' emblematic: ' than whites. This idea, and its ambivalences, have a very long history which cannot detain us here. It springs from ideas of the closeness of non- It is of course that feeling for life which is thc sccrr:l ol'llre Nt'11t.o European (and even non-metropolitan) peoples to nature, ideas which were people, as surely as it is the lack of it, and slow atrophy ol'lhc cltp:rt'ily lo endemic to those processes of European expansion variously termed ex- live emotionally, which will be the ultimate clccittlcncc ol llrt' wlrilt' ploration, nation building and colonialism (Robinson 1983). Expansion into civilised people. placed humans as part fauna other lands the encountered there of the of ( lr).10: l5 / ) those lands. to be construed eithcr as thc forces of nature that had to be subjugated or, for liberals, the model of sweet natural Man uncontaminated by civilization. At the same time, ideas of nature have become central to 'Life'here tends to mcan thc b & 154 The Matter of lmages White 155 femininity. It is a clear instance of Molly Haskell's characterization of one of the available models for strong women's roles in classic Hollyrvood movies, the 'superfemale', who is 'too ambitious and intelligent for the docile role society has decreed she play' but remains 'exceedingly "femi- nine" and flirtatious' and 'within traditional society', turning her energies on those around her, 'with demonic results' (1974: 214). Davif s character, Julie, is strong, deflant of convention (for example, striding into the bank, a place that women do not enter), refusing to behave in the genteel way her fianc6, Pres, requires of her. The trajectory of the narrative is her punish- ment and moral growth, in two stages. She learns to conceal her defiance and energy beneath an assumption of femininity, but this is still not enough, since it is still there in the malignant form irTdicated by Haskell; it is only by literally sacrificing herself (accompanyin/ Pres, who has caught yellow jack fever, to Red Island, where fever victims are isolated) that the film is able to reach a satisfactory, transcendentally punisf,ing climax. All of this is entirely understandable within a gender frame of reference; but the film also relales Julie's energies to blackness, suggesting that her trajectory is a specifically white, as well as female, one. The most famous scene in the film is the Olympus Ball, at which all the unmarried women wear white. Julie, to embarrass Pres and to cock a snook at out-dated convention ('This is 1852, not the Dark Ages - girls don't have to simper about in white just 'cos they're not married'), decides to wear a red dress (figure 13.4). The immediate scandal is not just the Figure 13.4 Jezebel: the red (dark) dress at the white ball refusal to conform and uphold the celebration of virginity that the white dress code represents but the sexual connotations of the dress itself, satin in which Julie is getting ready for the Pres at house party and red, connotations made explicit in a scene at the dressmaker's ('Saucy, arrival of a at hcr aunt's plantation. In her room she moves restlessly about, isn't it?', says Julie; 'And vulgar', says her aunt, with which Julie enthusias- with Zctte hanging her as tically concurs). This is the dress of Julie's that her black maid Zette on to she tries to undo Julie's dress at the back; Zotte's movements are entirely determined by Zette (Theresa Harris) most covets, and after the ball Julie gives it to her. It is Julie's bfi is attencling to the basic clothing while Julie is just fussing about. precisely its colourfulness that, stereotyping informs us, draws Zette - the When Julie thinks sho hcurs acarriage coming, she sends Zetteto check; Zette runs from the room, dress is 'marked' as coloured, a deflnite, bold colour heightened by a flashy Snd the film cuts to the huge hallway, showing us all of Zette's rapid closcont ol' fabric, just as black representation is. Thus what appears to be symbolism (white for virginity, colour for sex) within a universally applicable com- the stairs and run to the door, before cutting again to show her callirrg out man munication circuit becomes ethnically specific. The primary association of to the and boy in livery waiting for carriages at the gatc. This apparently unnecessarily white with chastity is inextricably tied to not being dark and colourful, not elongated sequence not only helps whip up cx- and Pres's gives being non-white, and the defiance and vitality narratively associated with citement anticipation at arrival, but also Julie time to takc off one dress and put on another, a potentially sight Julie's wearing of the dress is associated with the qualities embodied by titillating that would shown black women, qualities that Julie as a white woman must not display, or not be in this kind of film in this period. But using a scquoncc is even have. Of course, the red dress looks merely dark in this black and centred on a black woman not only a device to heighten suspcnso ancl white film. bypass a taboo image - it works as seamlessly well as it docs becausc it is also appropriate to show a black woman here. Wearing the dress causes a rift between Julie and Pres; shortly after, he By this stagc in tho has lcarncd bchaviour u leaves for the North on business. By the time he returns, Julie has learned film, Julic tlrc appropriate to white woman in hcr position, Earlicr in lilnr shc oponly cxprcssccl hcr to behave as a white woman should. Once again, the specific whiteness of thc passion and dcliancu; nowi uwuiting Pros, shc hus lcurnccl bclrirvo us slro this is revealed through the figurc of Zette. There is, for instance, a scene lo 156 The Matter of lmages Whltr 167 should. She no longer expresses feeling - she 'lives' through Zette. zette she is to be adored and precisely, as Inve tried to arguo, because Bhe do€i has to express excited anticipation, not in speech but in physical action, not conform to notions of white womanhood running the length of a long stair and spacious hallway. It is Zette's excited body in action that we see, instead of Julie's body disrobed and enrobed. NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD When Julie hears the servants at the gate call out, 'Carriage is coming!', then must whites she sends Zette to the window to see if it is Pres. The excitement mounts as If blacks have more 'life' than whites, it follow that have the carriage draws near. There is a rapid montage of black people: Zette more 'death' than blacks. This thought has seldom been explored so shot from below at a dynamic angle looking for the carriage, the servants at devastatingly as in the living dead films directed by George Romero - the gate no longer still but the man movingTabout, the boy leaping in Night of the Living Dead (1969), Dawn of the Dead (1978) and Day of the anticipation, anJ crowds of hitherto unseen !{ack children running to the Dead (1985). still, only The Dead films are unusual among horror films for the explicitness of gate, Jumping and cavorting. Meanwhile Julie remains perfectly Ler eyes,-in characteristic Davis fashion, darting and dilating with sus- their political allegory and unique for having as their heroes 'positive'black p".rr"; perfectly, luminously lit, she says nothing, expresses nothing with men.'In general, the latter have been applauded merely as an instance of a man in a part which could Ler body - it is black people who bodily express her desire' afflrmative action, casting colour blind black This use of black piopt" to express, io 'live', the physical dimension of equally well have gone to a white actor. As Robin Wood notes, however, Ben's Julie,s life is found throughout the film, most notably after her manipu- 'it is not true that [their] colour is arbitrary and without meaning'; lations have gone awry to the point that one of her old flames, Buck blackness in Night is used 'to signify his difference from the other charac- (George Brent), is about to duel with Pres's brother. The black plantation ters, to set him apart from their norms' (1986a: 116), while Peter's in Dawn workeis have gathered at the house to entertain the white guests ('a quaint again indicates 'his separation from the norms of white-dominated society old custom down here', says Julie to Pres's new, and Northern, wife, and his partial exemption from its constraints'(ibid.: 120). In all three just A-y). As they arrive they sing a song about marrying, heard over shots of films, it is significant that the hero is a black man, and not because this makes him but because it makes it possible to see that whites are Julie, a bittefly ironic counterpoint. She shushes the chorus and tells them 'different' to start singing, 'Gonna Raise a Ruckus To-night', then goes to the edge of the living dead. I shall confine detailed discussion here to the first film of the verandih and sits down, beckoning the black children to gather close the trilogy. round her, before joining in with the singing. The song is a jolly one and All the dead in Night are whites. In a number of places, the film shows them in happy-go-lucky Sambo style, that living whites are like, or can be mistaken for, the dead. The radio the shots of the black singers show oordinary but the last shot of the sequence closes on Julie, near to tears against the states that the zombies are looking people', and the first one we guy sound of this cheerful singing. The power of the sequence does not come see in the film does look in the distance like some ordinary old white from this ironic counterpoint alone but also from the way that Julie, by wandering about the cemetery, somehow menacing, yet not obviously in sequence, recalls pretending merging as nearly as possible with the singers and joining in the song, is abnormal. John, the brother the opening to when they visited graveyard as ablelo express her pent-up feelings of frustration, anger, jealousy and fear, be something scary to frighten Barb the feelings for which there is no white mode of expression, which can only be children; he imitates the famous zombie voice of Boris Karloff to scare her lived through blacks. now. Halfway through the film, Barb becomes catatonic, like a dead The point of Jezebel is not that whites are different from blacks but that person. The other developed white characters emerge from where they Towards the end the fllm, there whites live Uy different rules. Unlike the two women with whom she is have been hiding, 'buried' in the cellar. of the compared, her aunt and Amy, Julie cannot be 'white'. It is her aunt and is an aerial shot from the point of view of a helicopter involved in Amy who confirm that whites are calm, controlled, rational; Julie trans- destruction of the zombies; it looks down on a straggling line of people gr"ri"r, but in the process reveals white calm as an imposition, a form of moving forward uncertainly but inexorably, in exactly the same formation iepression of life. The film's ambivalence lies in its being a vehicle for as earlier shots of the zombies. It is only with a cut to a ground level shot Divis. She/Julie is a 'Jezebel', a byword for female wickedness, but none that we realize this is a line of vigilantes, not zombies. zombies' sole the less a star with a huge female following and shot here with the kind of Living and dead whites are indistinguishable, and the radiance and glow Hollywood reserved for its favoured women stars. raison d'6tre, to attack and eat the living, has resonances with the behav- There is no doubt that what Julie does is wicked and that her punishment iour of the living whites. Tlre vigilantes shoot and destroy the zombies with is to be understood as richly deserved; but there is also no doubt that equanimity ('Beat 'em or hurn 'em - they go up prctty good', says their 158 The Matter of lmages White 159 leader, Chief Mclelland), finally including the living - the hero, Ben he is intrlduced into the film. Barb wanders out of the house into the glare (Duane Jones) - in their single-minded operations. Brother John torments of a car's headlights, out of which Ben seems to emerge; a shot of the lights Barb while living, and consumes her when he is dead. Helen and Harry glaring into the camera is followed by another with Ben moving into the Cooper bicker and snipe constantly, until their dead daughter Carrie first frame, his white shirt first, then his black face fllling the frame in front of destroys, then eats them. The young couple, Tom and Judy, destined the light, in a reversal of the good/bad, white/black, light/darkness an- generically to settle down at the end of the film, instead go up in flames tinomies of western culture. through Tom's stupidity and Judy's paralysed response to danger. The film ends with the white vigilantes (indistinguishable from the If whiteness and death are equated, both are further associated with the zombies, remember) killing Ben, the representative of life in the film, USA. That the film can be taken as a metaphor for the United States is Much of the imagery of Night carries over into Dawn, despite their many established right at the start of the film. It opens on a car driving through differences (most notably the latter's strong vein of humour), The opening apparently unpopulated back roads suggesting the road tradition of 1950s sequ€nce has white militia gleefully destroying living blacks and Hispanics and 1960s US culture, the novel On the Road (1957) and the film Easy who refuse to leave their tenement homes during the zombie emergencyi Rider (1969) with its idea of the 'search for America'. When the car reaches asin Night, the black hero, Peter (Ken Foree), emerges from the light (this the graveyard (the USA?), a Stars and Stripes flag flutters in the fore- time from behind a white sheet with strong, bright light flooded unnatural- ground. The house in which the characters take shelter is archetypally istically behind it); it is his practical skills that enable him to survive, skills middle, backwoods North American - a white wooden structure, with lace that only the white woman, Fran (Gaylen Ross), is ultimately able to curtains, cut-glass ornaments, chintz armchairs. It, too, is immediately emulate. Zombieness is still linked with whiteness, even though some of associated with death, in a series of shock cuts from Barb, exploring the the dead are black or Hispanic - a black zombie who attacks a living black house, to stuffed animal heads hung on the walls. Casting further heightens man in the tenement is whited up, the colour contrast between the twc) the all-Americanness of these zombie-like living whites. Barb is ultra- emphasized in a shot of the whitened black zombie biting the living black blonde and pale, and her name surely suggests the USA's best-selling doll; man's neck; in the shopping mall, an overt symbol of the US way of lit'c, John is a preppy type, clean cut with straight fair hair, a white shirt with editing rhymes the zombies with the shop mannequins, all of whom are pens in the pocket, straight out of a Brooks Brothers advertisement. Judy white. too is dazzingly blonde, though Tom and the Coopers are more non- Day extends the critique of US values to the military-industrial complex, descript whites. with its underpinnings in masculine supremacy. As Robin Wood (1986b) What finally forces home the specifically white dimension of these argues, the white men and the zombies alike are characterized by 'the zombie-US links are the ways in which the zombies can be destroyed. The conditioned reflex', the application to human affairs of relentless retion. flrst recalls the liberal critique of whites as ruled by their heads; as the radio ality; the scientist, Logan, teaches one of the zombies to be human agaln, announcer says, 'Kill the brain and you kill the ghoul' since, it seems, which in practice means killing the military leader, Rhodes, out of atavlctlc zombies/whites are nothing but their brains. The film diverges from earlier loyalty to Logan. When Logan earlier tells Rhodes that what he is teaching representations of the black/white, life/death opposition by representing the zombies is 'civility', to make them like the living, there, is a sudden cut Ben's 'life' quality in terms of practical skill, rather than innate qualities of to a sequence of the men gleefully, sadistically corralling the zombies to tro 'being'. Particularly striking is a scene in which Ben talks about what they specimens for Logan's crazed experiments. The whiteness of all thig li need to do as he dismantles a table to make boards for the windows, while pointed, as before, by the presence of a black character, John (Terry Barb takes the lace cloth from it, folds and cradles it, hanging on uselessly Alexander), who is even more dissociated from both zombies and whlte to this token of white gentility while Ben tries to ensure their survival. male values than were Ben and Peter in the earlier fllms. He is not only The alternative way of destroying the zombies is burning. Some of the black but West Indian, and he offers the idea of finding an island a$ thc t imagery, particularly the molotov cocktails going up around empty cars, only hope for the two white characters (a WASP woman, Sarah, and sn seems to recall, in its grainy black-and-white texture, newspaper coverage Irish man, Billy) not irrevocably implicated in white male values, He and ! of the ghetto uprisings of the late 1960s, and the 'flre', as an image of Black Billy are not only socially marginal but also live separately from the i Power's threat to white people, had wide currency (most notably in the soldiers and scientists, having set up a mock home together in the outer i title of James Baldwin's 1963 novel The Fire Next Time). The zombies are reaches of the underground bunker they all share. All the other living scared of light as well as fire, and Ben is associated with both, not only characters are rctlnock malcs, ancl although thcro is a power struggle because of his skill in warding off the zombies with torches, but in the way between them, they ure hoth more like each othcr and like the zombicr Whlto 161 160 The Matter of lmages time as'the Body'. I've argued elsewhere that her image is At the end of one scene' where the press at the than they are like John, Sarah or Billy' white one(19j6 42-5); in many of her fllms is a flnaf shot of u, ii"."upuuly and necessarily Rhodes Las established his authority over Logan, there glamour lighting to make her his mouth this combines with the conventions of who has looked on saying nothing; he rubs the corner of is the-case with John, disappear as flesh and blood even more thoroughly than then r-it"t sweetly at Rhodes, an expression of (1955), for wittr iris finger ironically, stars. Her first appearance in The Seven Year ltch of the white boys' games otn#*o-"n ineffably insolent refusal instance of wotnan as spectaclecaught in a,shot from and there is a danger, as instance, is a classic The bead. films are of course horror movies opens on Richard (Tom Ewell), on and tn" *ur. protagonist,s point of view. It pete Boss has pointed out, that the kind of political readings that I bottom sticking his hands and knees on ttre floor looking for something, them may not be easy'to integrate ' the fantasies in others have givin ' ' Yilh between his legs the male body shown' as is routine characteristic of the contempor- ,rf, a mift bottle - oipt yri"af iegradation and vulnerability' l,re hears the door-bell and opens Dead rJ* *ln"Ai"s, as ludicrously grotesquei mri L8). However, the use of 'body horror' inthe he looks and ury trlrrot IfOSO: to his flat; as the do6r opens light floods in on him; not simply symbolism, making use of what the door nt-. ,o ,"pr".".rt whiteness is doorway, wheie the curvy shape of a woman is contrary' body horror iir"rl L a cut to the hall frupp""t to the genre's current conventions' On the woman's shape is placed exactly inverted ,l.iUi" through the frosted gtass' ttre horror of whiteness and the films' gory pleasures are like an end-of the hall, is thi within the fralme of the door i,indo*, the doorway is at the images of whiteness that are touched on in Simba and reprise of the exactlyinthecentreoftheframe;asetofenclosingrectanglescreatea J ezebel . in their different ways they strongsenseofperspective,andemphasizethedirectionofRichard,s/our ihe point about Ben, Peter and John is that is pinky-white and light emanates from survive' know $ze."The colouringof the screen all have control over their bodies, are able to use them to is' All we see of her is her sil- of behind the doorway where the woman how to do things with them. The white characters (with the exception back in the houette,deflningherproportions,butshealsolookstranslucent.Thefilm Fran, Sarah u.rO nruy; lose that control while alive, and come in stellar light. Later in cuts back to Richard, hisla* open in awe, bathed form of zombiness. The hysterical boundedness to monstrously uncontriled the Monroe character's tomato P]ant-- crashes on as whites/zombies gouge out the film, when of the white body is grotesquely transgressed her from Richard's point of view' white Ri"tura', patio, we have another shot of white ur*r, pil out orgins, munch at oriflces' The spectre of her balcony' iving toot, up, and there is a cut to Monroe looking down from uy ttre way the zombies stumble and dribble in i" loss of control is evoked the wall behind her is dark' as is the vegetation on the often with intestines spilling out or uppur"ntty'nude; their inexorable quest for blood, and shoulders stand out as white. Such moments in the brain is mercilessly u'ui"o.ry, so her face severed limbs dangling. white over-investment aura' the conflate unreal angel-glow with sexual undermined as brains- spatter agains the wall and zombies flop to innumerable gags and The Seven Year ttci isa very smart film. Through .The onels own body, of how one controls it and relates to gi.""a. fear of it lets on thai it knows about male fantasy and its remote not being able to control bodies, cross_referencqs, ii 1986: 8) and the fear of -other part of the Monroe industry, peddling an ter.ptrv economy, relation to reality. Yet it is also those btdies whose exploitation is so fundamental to capitalist more impossibledream,offeringanotherspecificallywhiteidealasifitembodies both at the hearf of whiteness. Never has this horror been image that dissolves are all heterosexual male y"ur"rri.rg, offering another white evoked than in these films of the Dead' deliriously in the light of its denial of its own specificity' all that a White women are constructed as ihe apotheosis of desirability, Becausemyaimhasbeentoopenupanareaofinvestigation,Ishallnot that can be had' nor anything that a woman me start off again on man could want, yet nothing even attempt a rounded conciusion. Instead, let representation in general has this colour can be. But, as I have argied, white another tack, suggested by the passing references to light and on the everything-and-nothing qualitY' above. I suspect thut th"r" i, ,o-" ,"ry interesting work to be done in relation invention of photography and the development of lighting codes Screen,29 (4) (1988) to the white face, which results in the technicist ideology that one some- pgop-l:' Be that times hears of it being'more difficult' to photograph black in Hollywood as it may, it is the cise that the codes of glamout lighting to white women, to endow them with a glow NOTES were developed in relation Mcrccr tbr rhetoric of Dowmunt, Maris Clark, Rooney Martin and Kobcna and radiance that has correspondences with the transcendental 1 Made by Tony AlbanY Video, London, popular ChristianitY. cthnicity in Carby 1982' by 2 See also thc argumcnts ubout fcminism and Of no woman star was this more true than Marilyn Monroe, known Whlte 161 160 The Matter of lmages that her image is than they are like John, Sarah or Billy. At the end of one scene' where the press at the time as 'the Body', I've argued elsewhere many of her films Rhodes has established his authority over Logan, there is a final shot of an inescapably and necessafily white one (1986: a2-5); in make her John, who has looked on saying nothing; he rubs the corner of his mouth this combines with the convcntions of glamour lighting to than is the case with with his finger ironically, then smiles sweetly at Rhodes, an expression of disappear as flesh and blood even more thoroughly Year ltch (1955),fot ineffably insolent refusal of the white boys' games. oth#women stars. Her first appearance in The Seven in a shot from The Dead films are of course horror movies and there is a danger, as instance, is a classic instance of woman as spectacle caught (Tom Ewell), on Pete Boss has pointed out, that the kind of political readings that I and the male protagonist's point of view. lt opens on Richard bottom sticking others have given them may not be easy 'to integrate . . . with the fantasies his handJ and knees on the floor looking for something, as is routine in of physical degradation and vulnerability' characteristic of the contempor- up, a milk bottle between his legs - the male body shown, door-bell and opens a.y horrot film (1986: 18). However, the use of 'body horrgr' inthe Dead sex cqmedies, as ludicrously grotesque; he hears the in on him; he looks and films to represent whiteness is not simply symbolism, making use of what the door to his flat; as the door opens light floods shape of a woman is happens to the genre's current conventions. On the contrary, body horror there is a cut to the hall doorway, where the curvy shape is placed exactly is the horror of whiteness and the fllms' gory pleasures are like an inverted visitrle through the frosted glass. The woman's of the hall, reprise of the images of whiteness that are touched on in Simba and within the frame of the door window, the doorway is at the end centre of the frame; a set of enclosing rectangles create a J ezebel . exactly in the Richard's/our The point about Ben, Peter and John is that in their different ways they strong sense of perspective, and emphasize the direction of light emanates from all have control over their bodies, are able to use them to survive, know gaze. The colouring of the screen is pinky-white and her is her sil- how to do things with them. The white characters (with the exception of behind the doorway where the woman is. All we see of looks translucent. The film Fran, Sarah and Billy) lose that control while alive, and come back in the houette, defining her proportions, but she also in stellar light. Later in monstrously uncontrolled form of zombiness. The hysterical boundedness cuts back to Richard, his iaw open in awe, bathed plant crashes on to of the white body is grotesquely transgressed as whites/zombies gouge out the film, when the Monroe character's tomato point of view. living white arms, pull out organs, munch at orifices. The spectre of white Richard's patio, we have another shot of her from Richard's looking down from her balcony, loss of control is evoked by the way the zombies stumble and dribble in He looks up, and there is a cut to Monroe on the their inexorable quest for blood, often with intestines spilling out or apparently nude; the wall behind her is dark, as is the veg,etation as Such moments severed limbs dangling. White over-investment in the brain is mercilessly biicony, so her face and shoulders stand out white. undermined as brains spatter agains the wall and zombies flop to the conflate unreal angel-glow with sexual aura. gags and ground. 'The fear of one's own body, of how one controls it and relates to The Seven Year ltch is a very smart film. Through innumerable fantasy and its remote it' (Brophy 1986: 8) and the fear of not being able to control other bodies, cross-references, it lets on that it knows about male industry, peddling an those bodies whose exploitation is so fundamental to capitalist economy, relation to reality. Yet it is also part of the Monroe as if it embodies are both at the heart of whiteness. Never has this horror been more impossible dream, offering another specifically white ideal that dissolves deliriously evoked than in these films of the Dead. all heterosexual male yearning, offering another white image in the light of its denial of its own specificity. of desirability, all that a Because my aim has been to open up an area of investigation, I shall not white women are constructed as the apotheosis that a woman even attempt a rounded conclusion. Instead, let me start off again on man could want, yet nothing that can be had, nor anything general has this another tack, suggested by the passing references to light and colour can be. But, as I have argued, white representation in above. I suspect that there is some very interesting work to be done on the everything-and-nothing quality. invention of photography and the development of lighting codes in relation (4) (1988) to the white face, which results in the technicist ideology that one some- Screen,29 times hears of it being 'more difflcult' to photograph black people. Be that as it may, it is the case that the codes of glamour lighting in Hollywood were developed in relation to white women, to endow them with a glow NOTES and radiance that has correspondences with the transcendental rhetoric of 1 Made by Tony Dowmunt, Maris clark, Rooney Martin and Kobena Mercer for popular Christianity. Albany Video, London, Of no woman star was this more true than Marilyn Monroe, known by 2 See alio thc urgumcnts ahout tbminism and cthnicity in Ctrrhy 1982' Whlto 103 lmages tlilli; 162 The Matter of q ery t' t Robinson, cedric I ! :! .y "i ::,::l:1, l''illilillx i;x"ni among others' Hall r cr t' s, r."" has been disputed by' ii;;? r"'" ,ffllliil,'1i11-,',nr tr i ir t i. n' deflnition of racism ffl',u'.?.ffo,6;,ti3);rt;t!:,it':r,:Hillll;jt,tl:iil; ;;i '|() 'l'his restrictive 3;T#i1'J-""1 " 3 Htt"Uiii"5:?0: "r3tr'f.1,1?6] ('.lttrttlti. 1980. Ncw Yrrk: . ., V ict num t. Rtugun, H ollywttorl J'n tm *j#.'douin t r sseu \ 'l'he Day o'l' thc University Press..- . .-. ra,^*.,6,c Niohrmarc: Masculinity in REFERENCES w;i:'t;i"'[rosoul'rhe woman's Nightmart " "bf,oi'-, 6: 45-9 ' a n d C o I oni ar ii"e'Action! IflI"!?il; v pe 4tr;6{#1'"",1?H:" - "'l i ll15l Um';"il ;rri'. Scre11-24. (6): 16-10' l)iscourse' . e' . Screen 27 (l\: 14-25. o r F i I m s READING People to i a H ror FURTHER Aboriginal l::l U ; ft;; ; ;p;' ry The First Response of I ;'; s:,lmT,ff iH The White Men: #iii: t.l l.rt It Blackburn, Julia (1979) (l):2 73' the Boundaries of icreen2T Listen! Black Feminism and ('allrv, ( 1982) 'White Woman (ed') The Empire Hazel to'tilit'npotut^f c'ri*ti siudies -*f Sistcrhood'. tt"iii #i*ftg,"**',T'*';,t",1'r#'!ii'i'i;:i1';""$:'iii*li'ilil; i n g : '" in e a r n i t.l.^,-,.r *' ;i;:'^:;:#,1'l'1'?)i""ri,s'Berkerev:Universi'lvor g;i;'H.to[],, n c yl, : ,,,ill*i,#i,*;tffi ,.il; [l,l ! ll ;g-.* "t'ffi .Y """iori.-C)nder and Culrural Politics'-Lond"i'' ' too*t' Race and of whiteness ' ["';j; ii' 't"lq;zl"':Representations - B an k d on : so u t h ;ifi;,'fr1,5ikl::,rx,r,;ri;i*H,*i:ti,*,"_niversi'ivPressChapter 3 above' i ; ; ;:,:, ;;; :: ; o o, o n, - Lo n ( iht noft of Slereoypes" - ; I, l';l:li.lltli. i 13,il?,i li l )vcr. Richard 1992) -" Malbert, Roger and t-< ;,':ii, rs U n iv e rsi'[v "sff; * Centre. ss" Voice Literary Supplement' i fJfi x' :;#,[: ii 'Heart of Whitene i ilrl. 1 i f n ";" Scott L' (1991) ill}, York: Malcolmson, l)rcss. the White Mind' New (1972) The Black Image in Sour s of lrrcclrickstrn, George "*l'fl s s nn ( 1e88 )'rhe il:,1,i,T.'Jl,'.*l -x liriih* Poputat'[]l",li'].;,1,:' I litrDct' & Row' '""'i'if,)io',u1, and the Bodl: E2s1t|s^on er r t h ac N Y : C orn g 2' ;y p *n ce. I a, l L:''iru {"r:"i;if,ii" l, m l i :tT li,* ^'r'"3 I lrlivcrsilY Prcss' lJnion'lack' London: Hutchinson' There Ain't No Black in the ( iillrrv, l'rrtrl (l9tt7) * ' **'"'i,?.?t1ffi rri;iwr"ii;li;'i'::";ii;':':r:'x;r"'' t u a rt *l'JJ' t r i r r r, i r,'*",' "i"r "i ^ "9 :,+;):*,:,i,;*i US;l;""gL6f ..', Verso. ""fiNi;Ii'd *xiotogtcatrh,,'Ji:iffJrlHf.,::';'6..iel e'iase^s and Rosalind 2 8-5 2" n a w i sh"a rt' ;';",;: Lt n oo n' r-u*i' & ' "' li, ;tll"i :'u l l'f ,)),; ;;" n'iptlNl*" Voit<: Hott' Rinehart llrrskcll. Molly ( 19141 Frim Reverence '' Winsttln' llill,John(1986)Sex'ClassandRealisminBritishCinema'London:BritishFilm Pe n gui n' a rm on dsworth : ;, h rop t I e6e ) Ivlr is. T:hirstv : Sociology ,,,''lllll'l s: lr- ?Y.: :: ". nur"ar*^'^' !;r (ed') The r .irwre.ncc. Error t rydii "iilr[r-,"rr"]oorC'r**r studies puttror"Jv"'i"",'t Eentre rrncl Black H"l:hil::"#-,1!?oru,.New"1gt"itlift't1tv timpire sti*" siti'L;;d"f i York: Knopf' h**?t"k'',',",','d;r,"*,yi,:ij:rf#1i}:,"}r,18::irruYl.,l1vDbran d av s' t,'9'l; i'-]i ;'; i a rr o u r Y e s'l e r M:itt':*UI {'l3ii 3Wi! :i;[ri;l "ri Ilritish,Film l nstlttltc ' ')+(r''T' 3213: 33-8' Ltrnclon: ,' . S< t.,t litlucutittn o xrord $:Ihtil ll;;fl;n'*'ff [il*"]lilY'il1;*- .,ii r,r,"ii"r r>i*"i"i"" ""ili")"'ii n'i':u'lf,iff):,.'.lullu,''* i1 Micrririt,..|.rrctt' Philip ( srcrc.tvpcs'. Cutturul l)orkins,'1" li' w,'riiJi'-.r-l tt"1""''"ruri"rr unl (.trr'igirn. n,,,,.1,11''ia,,r,,;'r,,:f :i;,i", llclttl' 1 35' 59' l'rutlit't"l't'rrttori:-('rrxrttt ir'"' l't'trtk'tt: Sttrtlio Vistit' l'iners, .littr t Uzsf iit')tt'i"'i