Week 7 - The Oppositional Gaze

This week’s reading gave me a different perspective on how black females are represented on film and what they feel when they are watching a film in a world that is dominated by white males. The essay is written by Bell Hooks, she begins talking about the terror she felt when she was a child and told not to stare. Historically, white slave owners punished black people for looking. They were denied their rights to gaze and to look. Hooks goes on to talk about the conflict she felt inside when her mother told her to look at her when she is talking to her and how she was afraid to look. There is much power in looking.
I can attest to that statement. When I was a child growing up in a small rural town in Georgia, I remember other children getting really mad at me for staring at them. The town I grew up in was predominately black so it would always be another black classmate I was looking at. But I was not looking at them because of race. I did not care about skin color. I looked because I may have liked their hairstyle or the cool shoes they were wearing. But I would always get a defensive backlash, something like, “What you looking at?” I would get embarrassed quickly look away and say I was sorry. After reading this essay, I could see why anyone would feel uneasy when a random person is gazing at them. But as a child, you don’t think about those things. You see something interesting and you just look out of curiosity and enjoyment. 
Hollywood film is designed to bring one’s gaze in. Hooks talks about a black person’s perspective of watching mainstream television. She says that they watch it fully aware that what is represented on tv “was a system of knowledge and power reproducing and maintaining white supremacy.” In fact, you can chart racial equality and its progress by reviewing the history of what was playing on American television.  I never thought about that very true fact until reading this essay. Being a white girl, mixed with Asian blood, I never thought about representation because it did not affect me. However, when I went to Korea to visit my mother’s side of the family, it was so exciting to see American actors on Korean TV shows. I felt excited, pleasure and I wanted to see more. I can imagine that is what a black person must have felt when they first recognized their race being represented on mainstream media. 
The only caveat is how they were being represented. For instance, Hooks writes about a black woman actress by the name of Lena Horne, most white viewers did not know they were looking at a black female. In fact, Tallulah Bankhead even complimented her on her features, such as the paleness of her skin color. Not a realistic representation of black females. It was a way to compromise and give the white viewer something they wanted to see. Hooks goes on to talk about the negation of black female representation in cinema. They were visually constructed as annoying nags. Characters like this are not someone that black females could respond to as it was not an accurate description of what black women are like. Thus, they develop an oppositional gaze when looking at a television screen. They looked the other way as it had no importance to their lives. Any black female spectator that did enjoy the stories of cinema had to forget racism/ sexism all together, and assume the position of subordination. Another problem was with the feminist movement, the movement did not acknowledge race or radicalized sexual difference. Feminist film critics talked about women’s identity, how women were being represented on the main screen. However feminist film critics remained silent on the subject of blackness and the representation of black womanhood. The painting I chose is by a contemporary black female artist named Delita Martin. Many of works are dedicated to black females and focuses on their gaze to the onset viewer. She includes African tribal patterns, mixed media of prints and paint. She is an amazing artist and unapologetically black (my hero artist). 

Constellation - Delita Martin

Bookhardt, D. Eric. Delita Martin at Stella Jones. Accessed October 8, 2021. http://www.insidenola.org/2017/09/delita-martin-at-stella-jones.html.

 Hooks Bell,  in Black Looks: Race and Representation <Boston:  south End  Press, 1992>,            115-3