写了个自我感觉不错的post存个档

In "The Light of the World", Dyer examines how the color white has been used as a symbol of purity, innocence, and goodness in Western culture, and therefore how it has been considered the standard of human faces in media, art, and films, which constructs power, dominance, and privilege in whiteness. Specifically, in films, since whiteness is assumed to be the aesthetic norm, lighting technologies have been developed to ensure the visibility of white faces, thereby making photographing non-white people a problem. Films fail to light non-white actors and white actors equally, which further privileges and constructs the idea of whiteness.

In contrast to Dyer's historical and cultural assessment of whiteness, Mirzoeff considers whiteness in a contemporary, sociopolitical context, defining it as "the fear of being 'replaced' ". Mirzoeff examines how this crisis is manifesting in visual politics, particularly in the racial disparity revealed during the pandemics, the rise of white nationalist movements, the use of social media to spread racist and xenophobic ideologies, the refusal to wear masks that covers their whiteness, the statues of colonial figures, the transition from white to blue (police), etc.

Only Lovers Left Alive is a perfect example that demonstrates how whiteness is technologically mediated through lighting and expressed through the fear of replacement. First, every scene in this film happens at night, which already privileges white actors' visibility due to the lighting technology that favors whiteness. Except in scenes where actors of color are equally lit with the help of indoor lighting, non-white actors in other scenes are either in shadows or meant to serve as a background. The privileged lighting technology is particularly significant in Adam's and Eve's houses, where the setting is hardly lit and the furniture is in dark colors. Adam's and Eve's brightly lit faces barely emerge from the dark, creating a theatrical spotlight effect that resembles the aesthetics of baroque paintings, which mainly portray white subjects. Especially when they lie on their beds, their naked bodies are as white as marble-made Greco-Roman sculptures, which, again, primarily focus on whiteness. Even when they walk on streets, they walk under street lights while non-white characters stay in the shadows. The film seems to constantly highlight the whiteness of those vampires, emphasizing the purity of their longing and melancholy that differentiates them from humans, or "zombies", who are mostly played by non-white actors.

In terms of the film's connection to "the fear of replacement in the white cultural unconscious" in Mirzoeff's reading, whiteness is represented as vampires' constant fear of being contaminated by humans/zombies. Specifically, Adam as the most pessimistic character frequently experiences an existential crisis. He fears that humans will contaminate vampires' blood to an extent that he will commit suicide to avoid that happening. He risks exposing his identity just to obtain the purest human blood that guarantees his purity, or in the context of reading, whiteness. He even explicitly calls them "zombies" to classify them as inferior species, which further unveils his deep anxiety about being replaced by contaminated humans and thereby losing his whiteness. At the end of the film, Adam and Eve seem to have accepted the fact that their blood is contaminated by humans who drink contaminated water, but their agreement to convert human lovers to vampires illustrates their denial of being replaced and their action to restore purity/whiteness through violence, in a way resembling how white nationalists during the pandemics were trying to regain their supremacy through verbal and physical violence.