Get Out of La La Land! Naturalizing the Colour Line with “Colour-Blind" Cinema

This thesis is grounded in semiotics, discourse, and critical race theory to identify and analyze contemporary racial representations in Hollywood cinema during the "post-race" era. This ideology minimizes the impact of historical racisms and uses racial "colour-blindness" to construct a false sense of racial harmony. In the United States, Hollywood has been an important vehicle of discursive formation and narrative control and contributes to the cementing of America's "post-race" la la land. In this thesis, I conclude that Hollywood films continue to placate concerns of race relations for the dominant ingroup through cinematic escapism, glamour and romance. In refining its art of "naturalizing" an ideological racial status quo, Hollywood has evolved from its blatant racial cinematic representations of the past. Now, mainstream cinema employs racial "colour-blindness" to maintain the colour line, further embedding racism into the fabric of American society.