The oppositional gaze black female spectators pdf download

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 confrontational, as gestures of resistance, challenges to authority. White slaveowners denied slaves their right to gaze, and slaves were punished for looking. They had to face a representation of themselves where black women were. Bell hooks herself is black, and she introduces the topic to us by sharing. Black female spectatorship, is slowly being put to. Why is feminist film theory a bad example for feminist film theory. The oppositional gaze 1992 in her essay the oppositional gaze. Race and representation, entitled the oppositional gaze.

Beyond conclusions are there any other variables that maybe feminist theory has ignored. The oppositional black culture that emerged in the context of. Black women filmmakers not only deserve an audience, gwendolyn audrey foster asserts, but it is also imperative that their voices be heard as. Pdf the oppositional gaze and the erasure of african american. Black female spectators, she argues that black women are empowered by adopting an oppositional gaze, specifically in relation to cinema. Bell hooks is a black feminist who calls attention to the negative aspects of white supremacy and capitalist patriarchy. She states even when representations of black women were present in film, our bodies and being were there to serve to enhance and maintain white womanhood as object of. The absence and presence of whiteness in the face of the black manifesto. The oppositional gaze and the erasure of african american women in the films foxy brown and kill bill v1. When considering the range of audience for film and television it. Black female spectators, bell hooks argues that there is power and agency in what she terms the oppositional gaze. Bracha ettinger criticized the male gaze with the matrixial gaze, which is inoperative when the male gaze is opposite to the female gaze, wherein both perspectives constitute each other from a lack, which is the lacanian definition of the gaze. 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. What counts is what the heroine provokes, or rather what she represents.

This paper is specifically about black female spectators. Bell hooks article summary essaysthe oppositional gaze. Sorry, we are unable to provide the full text but you may find it at the following locations. Remote work advice from the largest allremote company. 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. 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. 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.

Pdf the oppositional gaze and the erasure of african. Black female spectators bell hooks by jennifer proctor hooks influential essay on a critical, oppositional gaze employed by black female spectators when viewing oppressive images and narratives of themselves. 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. Oppositional summarize the the oppositional gaze by bell.

Sapphires black female image was not the body of desire. 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. Summary the oppositional gaze by bell hooks is the rejection of laura mulveys paper. It is not just about the male gaze, but there are many different gazes from many different points of view. 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 bell hooks hooks influential essay on a critical, oppositional gaze employed by black female spectators when viewing oppressive images and narratives of themselves. The material culture of tampons and napkins show all authors. 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.

She believes this traumatic relationship to the gaze effected black spectatorship. In her 1992 essay the oppositional gaze, bell hooks examines classical cinemas negation of the black female subject 686, arguing that intersections of racial and gender oppression set the black female spectator s experience apart from the black male spectator, who can assume the phallocentric gaze and within the context of the theater resist a system of white. Feminist film theory wikifema, the female encyclopedia. As i began reading hooks piece i initially thought of the power that must come with the position of spectator.

In considering the way that films are put together, many feminist film critics have pointed to what they argue is the male gaze that predominates in classical hollywood filmmaking. Black female spectators, bell hooks coins the term oppositional gaze to analyze the treatment of black women in film theory, hooks conceives of the oppositional gaze as a site of raced and gendered resistance that allows black women to critically assess the cinemas. This concept exists as the reciprocal of the normative white spectator gaze. Black female spectators, bell hooks 1992 presented the. A critical reading response of bell hooks, the oppositional gaze. In the oppositional gaze, bell hooks examines another gaze, similar to the gaze that mulvey writes about. The matrixial gaze does not concern a subject and its object existing or lacking, but concerns transsubjectivity and. Black womens relationship with cinema and other medias has always been highly vexed. Merely through this sentence, bell hooks delivers her entire argument in the oppositional gaze of black looks. She has done her best to keep her family from the effects of colonialization and its contagious influences. Black female spectators 1992, bell hooks discusses.

It explores how issues of race, class, nationality and sexuality, enter into debates about feminism, and includes work by feminist critics, artists and activists. The oppositional gaze confronts, questions, and subverts the phallocentric gaze. This oppositional gaze, which is further explained by bell hooks in the oppositional gaze. 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. Black female spectators, in brand, peggy zeglin and carolyn korsmeyer, eds. The male gaze, the oppositional gaze, and my gaze post 2. The gaze the hooks discusses is the oppositional gaze, which pertains to race, and how it is portrayed in the media. For the black male spectator, it was easier to be interpellated into the white male gaze scenario provided by the cinematic apparatus context. According to hooks it produced in them an overwhelming longing to look, a rebellious desire, an oppositional gaze.

Bottom line, griers popularity is probably best evaluated in view of what bell hooks has termed an oppositional gaze. View or download all content the institution has subscribed to. Bell hooks article talks about the black female gaze. It is only through the juxtaposition of race and gender that a different gaze, an oppositional gaze, is formed. The oppositional gaze, first coined by feminist, scholar and social activist bell hooks in her. Black female spectators, in thornham, s 1999 feminist film theory.

In daughters of the dustthe character nana represents the black matriarch that emphasizes to her family to never forget where they came from. W hen thinking about black female spectators, i remember being punished as a child for staring, for those hard intense direct looks children would give. Black female spectators, hooks gives the rubric that black woman are not only. The only way to avoid these messages hooks says that woman should not identity with any of the characters and to. In the oppositional gaze, bell hooks brings up a very interesting point about the black female as spectator. Black female spectators in the article, bell hooks takes a historical look at black females as media spectators. By lyndsey maloney, andrew miller, shay nix and ben osborn main argument and thesis. Black female spectatorship, bell hooks counters laura mulveys notion of the male gaze by introducing the oppositional gaze of black women. In terms of cinema, the oppositional gaze is rendered when black females take control of their image and representation on screen. In response to this violence to the image, hooks created the oppositional gaze hooks 97. 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. The oppositional gaze and the erasure of african american women in the films. It also entails being aware of the role of spectator in the bidirectional process of looking. If the inline pdf is not rendering correctly, you can download the pdf file here.