Feminist film theory wikifema, the female encyclopedia. The book combines classic texts with six newly commissioned pieces. Black female spectators, bell hooks argues that there is power and agency in what she terms the oppositional gaze. Hooks primarily aims at critical discussion of the black female spectator and her relation to black and white representation on film. This concept exists as the reciprocal of the normative white spectator gaze. Black female spectators, bell hooks coins the term oppositional gaze to analyze the treatment of black women in film theory. From her interpretation of mulveys essay visual pleasure and narrative cinema 1975, hooks said that from a standpoint that acknowledges race, one sees clearly why black women spectators, not duped by mainstream cinema, would develop an oppositional gaze to the male gaze. She believes this traumatic relationship to the gaze effected black spectatorship. For the black male spectator, it was easier to be interpellated into the white male gaze scenario provided by the cinematic apparatus context. Critical black female spectatorship emerges as a site of resistance only when individual black women actively resist the imposition of dominant ways of knowing and looking. In the oppositional gaze, black female spectators bell hooks states that when representation of black woman were present in film, they bodies and beings were present to maintain white womanhood.
It explores how issues of race, class, nationality and sexuality, enter into debates about feminism, and includes work by feminist critics, artists and activists. Black female spectators, she argues that black women are empowered by adopting an oppositional gaze, specifically in relation to cinema. The only way to avoid these messages hooks says that woman should not identity with any of the characters and. White slaveowners denied slaves their right to gaze, and slaves were punished for looking. In the critical essays collected in black looks, bell hooks interrogates old narratives and argues for alternative ways to look at blackness, black subjectivity, and whiteness. Her focus is on spectatorshipin particular, the way blackness and black people are experienced in literature, music, television, and especially filmand her aim is to create a radical intervention into the way we.
Black female spectators in the article, bell hooks takes a historical look at black females as media spectators. For hooks, this gaze is practiced by black female spectators exercising their power in looking through the contestation and confrontation of dominant images. Beginning with the look of black female spectators that are the dangerous, oppositional gaze, hooks creates an argument centered on the power relations embedded in the media. The oppositional gaze black female spectators hen thinking about black female spectators, 1 remember being punished as a child for staring, for those hard intense direct looks children would gi ve grownups, looks that were seen as confrontational, as gestures of resistance, challenges authority. Black female spectators, hooks gives the rubric that black woman are not only underrepresented in film, but they are also not allowed to look either.
The inference is that she includes female spectators in that, identifying with the male observer rather than the female object of the gaze. Looking implores a sense of power that is removed from the black female body, to play the role of object in direct relation to white female existence. Challenging the notion of feminism as a unified discourse, this book assembles writings that address art, film, architecture, popular culture, new media, and other visual fields from a feminist perspective. Black female spectators, bell hooks 1992 presented the idea of the opposit ional gaze as a way for pe ople in subordinate pos itions to resist the. Summarythe oppositional gaze by bell hooks is the rejection of laura mulveys paper. When considering the range of audience for film and television it. Black female spectators 1992, bell hooks discusses the stakes of looking in a racially segregated united states. Black female spectatorship, bell hooks counters laura mulveys notion of the male gaze by introducing the oppositional gaze of black women.
Heather amador art of 20 th 21 st centuries 11142017 reading response to the oppositional gaze black female spectators undeniably, discrimination is found in history and is documented in many forms of media but in particular film and television have provided much for the spectator to look through and confirm white supremacy. Remote work advice from the largest allremote company. When thinking about black female spectators, i remember being. In my life for example i related to this because being a female, it is a confrontational gesture and a gesture of resistance. It is not just about the male gaze, but there are many different gazes from many different points of view. Black female spectators, bell hooks 1992 presented the. What is her argument about the representations of black women in cinema, and how does she revise mulveys thesis of a male gaze to include issues of race, and what does the notion of being oppositional have to do with how she disagrees with mulvey on the issue of pleasure. Bell hooks article talks about the black female gaze. This paper is specifically about black female spectators. The collection also discusses black sexuality on screen, and the role of black women in independent cinema and as spectators.
Black women s relationship with cinema and other medias has always been highly vexed. How does hooks notion of an oppositional gaze complicate things. Bell hooks article summary essaysthe oppositional gaze. They had to face a representation of themselves where black women were. Black female spectators, hooks gives the rubric that black. Black female spectators traces the history of the black female experience as viewers in cinema from the slave fields of the south toward a modern representation of what it means for a black woman to look. According to hooks, the oppositional gaze exists as a mechanism for black female spectators to interrogate film without identifying with either the male gaze, permeated with notions of possession and patriarchal order, or white womanhood. As i began reading hooks piece i initially thought of the power that must come with the position of spectator. According to hooks it produced in them an overwhelming longing to look, a rebellious desire, an oppositional gaze. In the oppositional gaze, bell hooks brings up a very interesting point about the black female as spectator. Bringing together key writings on art, film, architecture, popular culture, new media and other visual fields, this key reader combines classic texts by leading feminist thinkers with six previously unpublished polemical new pieces. When thinking about black female spectators, i remember being punished as a child for staring, for those hard intense direct looks children would give grownups, looks that were seen as confrontational, as gestures of resistance, challenges to authority. Pdf the oppositional gaze and the erasure of african american.
Bell hooks is a black feminist who calls attention to the negative aspects of white supremacy and capitalist patriarchy. Oppositional gaze so african american females can avoid being hurt by the absence of a black female presence in cinema look past race and gender for aspects of content, form, language white womanhood, occupies the place of stardom in reading mulvey, african american females are outside the power dynamicthe pleasure in looking. W hen thinking about black female spectators, i remember being punished as a child for staring. Articles are grouped into thematic sections, each introduced by the editor. The oppositional gaze, first coined by feminist, scholar and social activist bell hooks in her. Barbara kruger untitled 1986 one multiple from a series of. Black female spectators, who refused to identify with white womanhood, who would not take on the phallocentric gaze of desire and possession, created a critical space where the binary opposition mulvey posits of woman as image, man as bearer of the look was continually deconstructed. Black female spectators, in thornham, s 1999 feminist film theory. The oppositional gaze black female spectators when thinking about black female spectators, i remember being punished as a child for staring, for those hard intense direct looks children would give grownups, looks that were seen as confronta tional, as gestures of resistance, challenges to authority. Routledge 2010 abstract this article has no associated abstract. Black female spectators by bell hooks bell hooks essay, the oppositional gaze.
Summary the oppositional gaze by bell hooks is the rejection of laura mulveys paper. She continues, we black women can both interrogate the gaze of the other but also look back, and at one another, naming what we see p. Major earlv black male independent filmmakers represented black women in their films as objects of a male gaze whether looking through the camera or as spectators wzatching films, whether mainstream cinema or race movies such as those made by oscar micheaux, the black male gaze had a different scope from that of the black female. Though black females are not the powerful white other spoken of by hooks, we watch. So african american females can avoid being hurt by the absence of a black female presence in cinema look past race and gender for aspects of content, form, language white womanhood, occupies the place of stardom in reading mulvey, african american females are outside the power dynamicthe pleasure in looking. In response to this violence to the image, hooks created the oppositional gaze hooks 97.
The oppositional black culture that emerged in the context of. Pdf the oppositional gaze and the erasure of african. Black female spectators, bell hooks coins the term oppositional gaze to analyze the. This experience was different for the black female spectators. Chapter 14 bell hooks the oppositional gaze black female spectators hen thinking about black female spectators, 1 remember being punished as a child for staring, for those hard intense direct looks children would gi ve grownups, looks that were seen as confrontational, as gestures of resistance, challenges authority. Black female spectators, bell hooks 1992 presented the idea of the. Regarding representation, bell hooks underlines the absence of black women in television and cinema in the oppositional gaze, stating that black female spectators have had to develop looking relations within a cinematic context that constructs our presence as absence bell hooks 118. The title of her first solo commercial gallery exhibition, can the spectator speak. The oppositional gaze and the erasure of african american women in the films foxy brown and kill bill v1.
Oppositional summarize the the oppositional gaze by bell. The feminism and visual culture reader edited by amelia. Ruby rich argues that women s relationships with film is instead dialectical, consciously filtering the images and messages they receive through cinema, and reprocessing them to elicit their own. Merely through this sentence, bell hooks delivers her entire argument in the oppositional gaze of black looks. The oppositional gaze is the power of looking in contrast to the male gaze in general.
Black female spectators bell hooks posits the existence of an oppositional gaze possessed by black women in the realm of film theory. By lyndsey maloney, andrew miller, shay nix and ben osborn main argument and thesis. The oppositional gaze 1992 i n her essay the oppositional gaze. Bottom line, griers popularity is probably best evaluated in view of what bell hooks has termed an oppositional gaze. There is power in looking, as bell hooks proposes in her 1992 essay, the oppositional gaze. The oppositional gaze, 123 the oppositional gaze is a technique used to preserve individual. Bell hooks the oppositional gaze black female spectators pdf there is power in looking, as bell hooks proposes in her essay, the oppositional gaze. When black women position themselves as spectators and gazers.
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