This unsettling whitness

As I read through Dryer's chapter on white representation in the media and Lott's chapter on white cross-dressing in America, I could not help feeling attacked because I was the demographic in question. For the other readings regarding people of other races, I sat back and analyzed their representation in the media. Because race is a subject I am not comfortable with, I took more of a back seat approach than with gender. However, when my skin color was being analyzed, I suddenly felt like a bug under a microscope. Is this how people of other races feel when they go to the movies? I hated the feeling and often found myself offended on the minute details. Reading the article was like being stung by bees - the first two pinched a little, but then it became overwhelming.

Many times it was difficult to completely understand what Dryer was talking about since I have not seen any of the films he referenced. However, I ran into some arguments about negative stereotypes of white people in my research for my race paper on Pocahontas. On critic described the Native Americans as beautiful people while Disney portrayed the white settlers as grotesque, slothful creatures with disproportional physical features. I observed this myself throughout the cartoon, but for some reason a cartoon seemed more innocent than the portrayals described by Dryer. (Or this could be the assumed 'innocence' of any Disney production). Regardless of the mask of cartoons, white representation is glaringly present in the media, but in a more subtle and at times a more complex depth.