The Invisible Ideology of White Light.
Abstract
This article explores the role of white light in film history. It argues that, though we live
our lives immersed in ‘white’ daylight, the historical hegemony of white light within
moving images has been far from inevitable. The article elaborates this claim by focusing
on how and why Technicolor Inc. predicated its infamous but influential ‘law of
emphasis’ on white balanced lighting, and by foregrounding ways in which subsequent
uses of and discourses about colour in film have assumed the presence of full-spectrum
light. Having drawn attention to this imperceptible – and so, until now, unnoticed – visual
ideology, the article then explores cinematic challenges to the hegemony of white light in
films including South Pacific, Querelle, and Chunkging Express.