This article studies two movies, The Great Wall (2016) and Doctor Strange (2016), which indicate that the idea of white supremacy is still perpetuated by Hollywood through white savior complex and whitewashing depictions. The films are studied as texts using cinema studies approach that looks at both narrative and cinematographic aspects of a film (Boggs & Petrie, 2008). Structural semiotics theory postulated by Roland Barthes is used to read the signs that appear throughout the films. Text structure and the narrative strategies employed in both films reveal the assertion of white dominance through narrative and cinematographic elements. The narrative logic is built through important events in the texts that show the superiority of white characters in the films. Characterizations are articulated in the texts through the construction of white characters who dominate the series of events and interactions with other characters. The settings in both texts are also more than the backgrounds that complement the films' narrative; they are also the ideological setting that highlights the predominance of the white characters. Moreover, there are symbols and objects in the texts that signify white supremacy - an ideology identified within the texts of The Great Wall and Doctor Strange.
展开▼
