Film Analysis: The Fact Of Blackness

2. According to Fanon, blackness is an apparent visual identity that is seen before one is seen as a person, whereas whiteness secures its dominance by seeming not to be anything in particular. Moreover, when whiteness qua whiteness does come into focus, it is often revealed as emptiness, absence, denial or even a kind of death, as discussed by Dyer.
In The Fact of Blackness, Fanon narrates his own personal experience derived from an absolutist view of black and white cultures, as fixed, mutually impermeable expressions of racial and national identity, especially in the context of colonialism. What he wanted was to be a man, nothing but a man. However, it was always the Negro teacher, the Negro doctor. No exception was made for his refined
The colorless multi-coloredness of whiteness secures white power by making it hard, especially for white people and their media, to see whiteness. Instead of thinking about white people in movies, the audience identifies the characters by gender, age, nationality, and social class. People only notice whiteness when put in contrast with blackness, as if only non-whiteness can give whiteness any substance. All the three films Dyer has mentioned in his essay associate whiteness with order, rationality, rigidity, qualities brought out by the contrast with black disorder, irrationality, and looseness. The presence of black people allows one to see whiteness as whiteness, and relates to the existential psychology that is at the origins of the interest in otherness as an explanatory concept in the representation of
In Double Indemnity, the opening scene that introduces Phyllis to both Neff and the audience features her white body wrapped in a towel, having just taken a sun bath, accessorized by her artificially blonde hair. The ample lighting on her blinds the audience and emphasizes her blinding blondeness. Her whiteness is prevalent in this scene, but the light itself is tainted. She, along with her whiteness, hereby represents an irresponsible, unreliable, desperate, manipulative temptress. Her whiteness exhibits a light that does not allow the audience to see beyond her. Another example is the way the only illumination lights up her face when she smokes creates a dark, wicked, evil shadow with the circling cigarette smoke. We cannot see her beyond the clouds around her and her blonde hair, and consequently, she tricks people and makes others not see her evil interiority. In the movie genre of Double Indemnity, film noir, female images are either trustworthy, dependable, and beautiful, or beautiful but also seductive, duplicitous, and mysterious. In the case of Phyllis, the portrayal of her whiteness stands for the latter, along with the emptiness of her doll life. She is this beautiful white creature, but her life is empty and hollow. She uses her whiteness to manipulate people to get what she wants but at the end of the day she is the