Tall, Dark (?) and Handsome
Added 2024-08-27 12:21:53 +0000 UTCAlright, close your eyes and think of the following phrases: “olive-skinned,” “dark features,” and “tall, dark, and handsome.” Hold in your mind's eyes what that looks like ...
[Also any titles suggestions would be great lol]
Sources| Works Cited
*Painter, Nell Irvin. The History of White People. W. W. Norton & Company, 2010.
*Roediger, David. Working Towards Whiteness. Working Toward Whiteness: How America's Immigrants Became White: The Strange Journey from Ellis Island to the Suburbs. Basic Books; Reprint edition 2018.
*Rioux, Anne Boyd. Meg, Jo, Beth, Amy: The Story of Little Women and Why It Still Matters. W. W. Norton & Company, 2018
*Cain, Mary Cathryn. “The Art and Politics of Looking White: Beauty Practice among White Women in Antebellum America.” Winterthur Portfolio, vol. 42, no. 1, 2008, pp. 27–50. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.1086/528904. Accessed 26 Aug. 2024.
*Lorenzo DiTommaso. “History and Historical Effect in Frank Herbert’s ‘Dune.’” Science Fiction Studies, vol. 19, no. 3, 1992, pp. 311–25. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/4240179. Accessed 26 Aug. 2024.
*Ellen Feehan. “Frank Herbert and the Making of Myths: Irish History, Celtic Mythology, and IRA Ideology in ‘The White Plague’ (Frank Herbert et La Création Mythique: Histoire Irlandaise, Mythologie Celtique, et Idéologie de l’Armée de Libération Irlandaise).” Science Fiction Studies, vol. 19, no. 3, 1992, pp. 289–310. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/4240178. Accessed 26 Aug. 2024.
*Rudolph Valentino: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudolph_Valentino
*Yhara zayd's 'The Day Rue "Became" Black'
*Florian
Comments
Princess. This was so timely. Literally new discourse is happening with the wuthering heights remake and the casting of Jacob elordi.
Cassandra J.
2024-09-25 18:16:30 +0000 UTCHoly shit! Im not done with this video yet but I had to comment. My sisters and I are all half sisters to each other, but I am the only one who is mixed race and the "dark" one. I look significantly different from my family, which always made me feel like the outsider. I feel like I have gone through a similar journey of accepting myself. I love my family, but it wasn't always easy.
Kristen
2024-09-01 17:39:14 +0000 UTCThat us also a part of the dynamic as well with dark haired men being more "sexual"
Princess Weekes
2024-08-29 15:27:48 +0000 UTCI have seen that episode! Did they find that both her parents have some amount of Black/African ancestry?
Princess Weekes
2024-08-29 15:26:59 +0000 UTCOmg swarthy. A weird I properly learned from Bob's Burgers
Princess Weekes
2024-08-29 15:25:55 +0000 UTCI really appreciate that perspective. I think the Spanish reading is interesting--I've seen some people tie the bull to Theseus and the Minotaur alluding to the Greek side, but I think that Spanish view of it also makes sense since, yes Spanish and Portuguese people are also in a weird state of whiteness in Europe.
Princess Weekes
2024-08-29 15:25:34 +0000 UTCYour experience is completely valid, that goes first and foremost. I would qualify my original comment by saying that there absolutely are Black, Latinx, Romani Spaniards whose existence often gets erased in these conversations. I think I did it myself in my original comment. In that context, within Spain, it is absolutely correct to talk about a White majority of Spaniards. However, because I am also using the "race as a social construct" viewpoint, I would argue that the "whiteness" of the majority of Spanish people (as well as other Mediterranean people) is denied by many other Europeans. Put it like this, a white Spaniard that is white in Spain, may not be considered/treated as white in the UK, Germany or Netherlands (the PIIGS nickname I think speaks for itself). Maybe it is not right to say they aren't white, but they are at the blurry edge of whiteness (if I understood the video, this could be considered colorism). Obviously because Whiteness is privilege, a lot of white Spaniards are not chuffed about this, but equally do not want to deal with the historical responsibility of Spanish colonialism. Hence the moving of goal posts, which I totally agree happens. From an American perspective though (Herbert's?), because of historical facts, the Whiteness of white Spaniards comes back into play in a way that (from what I have seen) separates them in these discussions from other Mediterranean people like Italians and Greeks. I don't know where the Portuguese (equally important colonisers at the same time as Spain) fall into this. Anyway, all this to say, watching this video made me perceive another potential layer of meaning in the bullfighter imagery associated with House Atreides. Added to the history of Spanish colonialism in the north of África, the point I wanted to make is that I disagree with the video and maybe Herbert did mean for the Atreides to be read as "exotic white", and that Paul doesn't need to be "white white" in order to be a White Saviour and coloniser
Ines Alvarez Rodrigo
2024-08-28 17:38:37 +0000 UTCI'd like to politely disagree. Without getting into the weeds, Spaniards on social media (in MY experience and as someone from a Spanish colonized region) tend to move the goal post for "whiteness" cuando les conviene. Spain has a rich history of different ethnic migrations, invasions, and expulsions. I'm not taking away from any of that. However, in the context of this video, "whiteness" is not based on blood quantum. It is a more contemporary social construct that was, in part, put in place by Spain (as well as other colonizing nations of the "Age of Exploration"). So for people from a country that helped invent the modern definition of "race" and "whiteness" to now say they aren't "totally white" is perplexing.
Jazz R
2024-08-28 16:33:53 +0000 UTCRe: Paul's whiteness - the links between Spain and Leto are there and I think it is on purpose. Spanish history is marked by being colonisers. Almost seen as the definition of colonisers. This makes us Schrodinger's whites, because our history is that of white colonialism of other people. However we are Mediterranean. Not only that, a lot of Spanish people will have ancestors from Al Andalus (Berber, Arab and Jewish) and so much of stereotypical Spanish culture is owed to the links with the Spanish Romani population. So to a lot of white Europeans, we are not White-white. We are PIIGS (Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece, Spain). This is something a USA PoV tends to ignore because from that lens Spain is purely a historical White colonial power. So if we read Paul as Spanish, and the Fremen as North African, it perfectly squares the circle of Paul ad a non-White white saviour.
Ines Alvarez Rodrigo
2024-08-28 09:56:02 +0000 UTCOnly a minute in and I'd like to add "swarthy" as a descriptor often used in historical romance that gives me pause when I read it. I'm looking at you, Lisa Kleypas....
Samantha Bonaparte
2024-08-27 21:59:11 +0000 UTCTo me ‘olive skin’ came from ‘tez/piel aceitunada’ meaning skin with the yellow undertone of olive oil that also tans with little burning. This tone is generally ascribed to the lands surrounding the Mediterranean. Regions that incorporated local olive oil in their skincare many millennia ago. This extended to other regions during colonial expansion at times to the flattening of other colorations (because WS). Don’t look at English Wikipedia because their reference image is not right and smacks of whitewashing. Can’t wait to watch this video tonight!
Kalkail
2024-08-27 20:34:43 +0000 UTCTitle Suggestion: Tall, Dark, and Racially Ambiguous.
Chewie Cheshire
2024-08-27 19:22:29 +0000 UTCGreat video per usual! Side note: You would watch the "Finding Your Roots" season 7 (2021) on Rosanne Cash.
Shannon of House Lee
2024-08-27 19:10:06 +0000 UTCthe first time i heard "olive skinned" was my mom describing my dad (who is greek) and i remember reading books where i heard "olive skinned" and my mind's association was always like "oh they're greek or italian" (because my world was full of greeks and italians). and i would always think of actual olives and olive oil and be like "ok yeah this is all coming together, cuz greek food and italian food: whole lot of olive oil". when i first read dune, i definitely pictured Duke Leto *as* my dad (but leaner). and i pictured the Harkonnens as being extremely Russian because the Baron's first name is Vladamir.
sirathena
2024-08-27 18:02:29 +0000 UTCAbsolutely spot on. The olive skin debate is some thing that I as a creative writer find ridiculous and stupid. Olive can only refer to the actual olives (which are black, brown, or green) or the juice/oil therein (which is tan/green). As a skin tone in a political sense, I came to understand it as meaning a Mediterranean or, to be honest, Middle Eastern look. North Africa, west Asia, Middle East, East of Italian peninsula. Not. White. The fact that people are trying to push white skin as olive… is abandoning not only the true use of this term as a descriptor (forcing readers to do mental gymnastics to make an olive color somehow mean white) but also the clear political use of it as a descriptor to the middle eastern Mediterranean association with “olive.” “Olive” people are decidedly not white people (not Celtic, not blonde or light brunette; not that look.) Silliness like this makes conveying descriptors for writers even harder. **side, side note: It reminds me of how a northern European look has been superimposed onto the Middle East, onto North Africa, onto native Americans in media depictions….
Snobeespurewonder
2024-08-27 15:17:16 +0000 UTCCan't wait to watch after work. But yeah, every time I heard tall, dark and handsome I thought Idris Elba, Rahul Kohli etc. Shocked when I learned it meant slightly tanned.
Mandy
2024-08-27 14:28:03 +0000 UTCVERY silly in retrospect but growing up it seems like the only times I came across the phrase “tall, dark and handsome” when reading was always in reference to characters that were clearly meant to be some kind of bad boy, so I somehow got the idea that the ‘dark’ was meant to refer to their demeanour or vibes, and only realised years later that they were talking about someone’s physical features.
fissionado
2024-08-27 14:09:34 +0000 UTCTeam Gale (not in the romantic sense) rise! My boy has been done so dirty by the fandom... and yes Healthcliff my beloved, i'm so afraid what Emerald will do with him. I didn't like the class depictions in Saltburn don't know if she can grasp it in Wuthering Heights, but we shall see!
anna
2024-08-27 13:39:53 +0000 UTCooh girl let me make my popcorn
m zayd
2024-08-27 13:09:32 +0000 UTCI have never been at all clear on what "olive" means. In any other context, I would picture a shade of green.
Lindsey Mercer
2024-08-27 12:39:18 +0000 UTC
