In her article The Oppositional Gaze
Bell Hooks introduces to her readers that a certain sort of look, the “oppositional gaze” has been responsible for many children being punished by their parents because this gaze was see as “confrontational, as gestures of resistance, challenges to authority” (Hooks, 115). Her paper “The Oppositional Gaze” is about many different gazes, the power each is perceived to have, and how a minority group, black female spectators, deals with this issue. Her overall point deals with the marginalization of black women not just in the society but also in the entertainment industry. The larger context in relation to the class is that this case provides an anecdotal narrative to the overarching discussion. (Part, 1)
I found most intriguing Hooks’ personal experiences as a black woman. She shares her own experiences with the oppositional gaze. Her parents punished as a child for staring; she believes because these drawn-out looks presented a challenge to authority. She gives historical accounts of how blacks were punished by their white owners just for looking. But by making looking against the rules, it only results in more looking since Bell believes that these attempts turned the gaze into the rebellious fueled oppositional gaze it became when it was not allowed. She was amazing to learning this. Bell writes, “Amazed the first time I read in history classes that white slave owners punished black people for looking” (Bell, 115). (Part, 1).
Hooks is saying that blacks were not allowed to stare at whites. White television became the first time that they could look at white people without a problem. White television was quite political though, in its racial stereotyped portrayal of black people, or in not portraying them at all. Bell believes that even black men were able to go into a music theatre and saw themselves portrayed, even if negative, but black women spectators in the mass cultures only say themselves and their race negated. Bell writes, “To experience pleasure, Miss Pauline sitting in the dark must imagine herself transformed, turned into a white woman portrayed on the screen” (Bell, 121). (Part, 2).
This passage explains how movies are an escape from their life, but Bell believes that there must be something symbolically relatable about the protagonist in order for a person to escape or relate through them. Black women must imagine themselves white women in order to have any takeaway from a movie theatre. But then “We come home to ourselves. When the choice is between consistently identifying with the others, many black, female spectators choose no identification at all. Bell believes that “Most of the women I talked with felt that they consciously resisted identification with film—that this tension made movie-going less than pleasurable; at times it caused pain” (Bell, 121). (Part, 3).
Black women are aware that the culture at large has decided not to care about black female spectatorship. Bell feels that this is a struggle for subjectivity. Humans are subjective in their value systems. The mass culture presents value systems, but often time it only presents the values of the dominant culture. In the case of black female spectators, they are aware that the movie creators are ignoring them. Bell’s point is that when she was young she was punished for looked at white people. Now, as an adult, it is torturous for her to watch white people on TV. She is not upset because white people are on TV, but she is upset because on TV and in the movies that are all a person sees. There is no representation of the culture that she inhabits, and Bell is acutely aware that once she was punished for looking, and now she is saddened by watching.
Questions that pertain to this reading:
- Do you think that Hooks is so close to the situation that it is difficult for her to have an objective perspective?
- Has the situation that Hooks is related changed since the time of her writing of the piece?
- Is the fact that there are few back women in the movies an indicator of a larger problem within the society? If so, what is that problem which it is a symptom of?
Works Cited
Hooks, Bell The Oppositional Gaze. South End Press. Boston. 1992. Print.
