This short clip from a popular children’s television show entitled The Teletubbies illustrates British film scholar Richard Dyer's thinking on “whiteness”. The opening sequence with this particular baby in the sun begins and ends every episode of the program. Keep in mind that the producers of The Teletubbies made every effort to maintain diversity in all other areas of this television show but not in this opening sequence. For example, the Teletubbies themselves are "racially" diverse, showing different shades in their skin color and body color. Also the Teletubbies have little television screens that show short movies about real children; these movies once again portray racial and ethnic diversity. Richard Dyer’s book White (1997) explains this blind spot in the thinking of the producers of The Teletubbies; the "white" race of the baby overlaps with all sorts of meanings connected to the color white. In other words, this blind spot in the show - why it has to be that baby and no other - plays into ideologies and mythologies of “whiteness” as a race and its connection to the symbolism of the color white (in this case, whiteness as light).
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