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.”

Blacks could chart the progress of political movements for racial equality via the construction of images, and did so. Back to the gaze… In other words:

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?