Funny. Culture is almost everything. If we like it or not, if it's high or low culture, that's a huge discussion. But for sure the TV series is culture.
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Cool link! True, the association with light is strong, universally.
Actually, there was also the social class factor in any culture where tanning is highly visible: aristocrats vs everyone else, who had to work outside. No tan = upper class.
Fair enough, point taken.
I should have phrased it better.
Let's put it this way: Tolkien was an intellectual and a Linguistic Professor, his works have cultural relevance, he was trying to write the new British mythology from the POV of a scholar, he wasn't thinking about writing a best seller to get rich.
Conversely, I love the Terminator, but Terminator has no cultural relevance, it is popular culture or pop culture, it lives among us, yes, but the reason why it exists is entertaining people that go to the movies.
But Disney is not making culture, they are making entertainment for making money.
Tolkien is culture, Amazon's rings of power is not.
EDIT: sorry, misread your comment, no, not only in European cultures, it's consistent across the cultures throughout history.
White is the light, first men loved light and hated dark, in darkness lure grave dangers.
For example in African mythologies fairies are white too, pearl white to be precise.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yumboes