The Whiteness of the Teletubbies' Sun

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).

Psycho

Norman Bates is not external to American life but is part of the regular patterns and behaviors that typify it. With Psycho the events of horror and the existence of monsters is now a product of the American way of life. Compare Norman to the monsters of the classic horror films who were different from us, not only in their “abnormality”, but also in their foreignness. We are frightened by the classic monsters not only for their perversity and malformation, but also for their difference. With their foreign accents and connections to faraway lands, the classic horror film monsters are really outsiders bent on disrupting our way of life. (We need only think of Dracula). The narratives of these classic horror films frequently end with the vanquishing of the exotic monster and the ideologically strengthening of the borders of normality within our nation and our psyches. With Norman Bates the monstrous comes from the institution that is closest to home and at the heart of American life; the family.

Elvis and fan