Nostalgia, hauntings and feminine icons: Locating whiteness in television series about French cinema

Following critiques of French cinema's whiteness, this article explores the roles of race and gender in the television series Dix pour cent (2015–2020) and Irma Vep (2022). Both series express nostalgia towards French cinema's female icons and ethos. Dix pour cent 's playful nostalgia looks to the hegemonic French femininity of renowned actresses to embody cinematic ideals. It weaves the racialised aspiring actress Sofia into these storylines in ways that reinforce French cinema's universalist self-image. Irma Vep , Olivier Assayas’ mise en abyme remake of Les Vampires , expresses melancholic nostalgia for the 1915 serial. It satirises industry debates over representation and revisits Assayas’ 1996 film of the same name, weighing the stakes of recasting Maggie Cheung with Alicia Vikander. The article locates whiteness in tensions in both series between reflecting on representation and absorbing critique in defence of a status quo in which representational politics are seen to threaten transgressive aestheticism.