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Traveling Through the Iris: Re-producing Whiteness in Stargate SG-1

This study analyses how Stargate SG-1 perpetuates dominant representations of whiteness, and how whiteness is used as a marker of racial identity in American popular culture. The popular science fiction television show Stargate SG-1 continually uses the nonwhite alien to juxtapose the seeming superiority of the white human, with white Americans acting as trusted gatekeepers for the entire planet. Whiteness becomes almost invisible and normative as the alien “other” requires assistance or containment enacted through SG-1’s adventures “off-world”. I also examine the representation of superior white aliens as an extension of these dominant white discourses.

It is through the study of the constructed nature of “race” that whiteness is made visible. As represented in Stargate SG-1 whiteness discourses contribute to and reflect “common sense” constructions of race within U.S. society. This examination of Stargate SG-1 illuminates how negotiations of whiteness are constructed within United States dominant cultural discourses as a means to exclude the “other”.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:canterbury.ac.nz/oai:ir.canterbury.ac.nz:10092/3913
Date January 2010
CreatorsParrent, Kim Louise
PublisherUniversity of Canterbury. School of Humanities
Source SetsUniversity of Canterbury
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeElectronic thesis or dissertation, Text
RightsCopyright Kim Louise Parrent, http://library.canterbury.ac.nz/thesis/etheses_copyright.shtml
RelationNZCU

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