Transcript The Oppositional Gaze: Black Female Spectators

The Oppositional Gaze:
Black Female Spectators
A look at the article by bell hooks
Presentation by Russell Brun
Purpose
To gain a critical look at black
spectatorship and more specifically the
“gaze” of the black woman.
To explore the absence and presence of
black women in cinema.
To discuss the political, sexual, and
cultural implications of these two topics.
Outline
Presentation (15 min)
Review (5 min)
Questions (5 min)
Just to get you thinking…
Think of black
characters in these
movies?
If any of them are
women, how are
they portrayed?
What is the “Gaze”
It starts in childhood, when the child is being
scolded. The child is told to look at the
parent, but is afraid and yet fascinated at the
same time. In fascination, the child’s
thoughts change to: “Not only will I stare. I
want my look to change reality.”
Slaveholders in the South never allowed their
slaves to look at them.
Hooks concludes:
“Since I knew as a child that the
dominating power adults exercised over
me and over my gaze was never so
absolute that I did not dare to look, to
sneak a peep, to stare dangerously, I
knew that the slaves had looked.”
What does this have to do with movies?
Back in the day…
When TV and movie cinema first began,
it became a way of maintaining white
supremacy.
BUT, Blacks could now watch, without
fear, engaging “in the negation of black
representation.”
In other words:
Blacks could chart the progress of
political movements for racial equality
via the construction of images, and did
so.
Back to the gaze…
Male response to the “gaze”
In a society where black men could be
murdered/lynched for looking at white
womanhood, the privacy of television
and the darkness of movie theaters
gave black men a new type of
phallocentric power.
Gender becomes an issue
In early black cinema black women
were simply an object to catch the
male’s eyes . Black male spectatorship
and black female spectatorship are
obviously very different.
Important person: Oscar Micheaux.

In 1919, he became the first black man to
produce a film.
The black woman
Because of the apparent absence of black
women in cinema the concept of womanhood
being “white” was reinforced.
Anne Friedberg said that “identification can
only be made through recognition and all
recognition is itself an implicit confirmation of
the ideology of the status quo.”
Come again?
Even though there were occasionally black
women in cinema, they only served to make
womanhood more white.


“Mammies,” mothers without children.
Maids carried out the day to day job of women.
Lenn Horne, “the first black performer signed
to a long term contract by a major (MGM),
was complemented on the paleness of her
skin and the non-negroidness of her
features.”
What Toni Morrison has to say
In her first book, The Bluest Eye, Miss
Pauline is only happy when sitting in the
dark watching picture shows imagining
herself a white woman being pampered.
Afterwards, however she says, “But it
made coming home hard.”
Tragedy
Black women “never went to movies
expecting to see compelling representations
of black femaleness.”
When bell watched Imitation of Life, as a
young girl, she cried for the main character
who had no place in cinema. It was better,
then, to be absent. Because when she was
there, it was “humiliating, strange and sad. “
Sapphire
In the show Amos ‘n Andy, the character
Sapphire is described by the author as a
“backdrop… foil… bitch, nag.” “She was there
to soften the images of black men… a man in
drag.”
But older women adopted Sapphire as their
own. They identified with her hurt and anger.
She was a symbol of their anger that white
folks and black men could not understand.
Problems
Many black women spectators ignored
cinema and/or its importance.
Mainstream feminist film criticism in no
way acknowledged black spectatorship.
One black woman said, “We are afraid
to talk about us as spectators because
we have been so abused by ‘the gaze.’”
Abused?
They, black women, were convinced
that black female spectatorship was not
important enough to theorize and
therefore not that important at all.
Even the new wave of white film
theorists fail to show interest in black
female spectatorship.
Spike Lee
Upon criticizing Spike Lees first film,
She’s Gotta Have It, hooks noted Lee’s
female characters were only an object
of the phallocentric gaze.
A woman interviewed by hooks said she
saw “black women in the position white
women have occupied in film forever.”
Julie Dash
Illusions

First attempt by Dash
Daughters of the Dust

Less than great reviews from white male critics
who did not identify with the main characters in
many ways
Love Song
To conclude
“Identity is constituted ‘not outside but within
representation.’”
Watch these movies voyeuristically through
the main character, not as a mirror.
“Looking and looking back, black women
involve ourselves in a process whereby we
see our history as countermemory, using it as
a way to know the present and invent the
future.”
Short questions
Black women, when used in cinema, are
typically used to ___________ .
In your own words, describe the ‘gaze.’
What is the main difference between the
black male spectator and the black female
spectator? Do you think black men have
been the more satisfied when watching
cinema?
Questions?