Bell Hooks Gaze Reaction Paper

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Bell Hooks

In "The Oppositional Gaze," Bell Hooks frames gender in terms of power. Gender is one aspect of social hierarchy, and represents the social construction of power. The act of gazing, looking someone in the eye, or staring, likewise carries important connotations of power. Culturally specific, the norms regarding gazing determine norms related to relational power. Looking intently at someone is construed as brash, confident, and assertive. Therefore, persons with a low social status, such as children, women, and blacks, are told not to stare. Bell Hooks subverts gender and race disparities by owning her gaze.

Hooks also extends the concept of gazing to other forms of visual representations. Gazing has a political dimension, and that dimension can be seen in the rendition of blacks in the white dominant culture. People in power have entitled themselves to represent blacks, and women, as they see fit. Thus, to watch white representations of women of color can be a confrontational gesture with the power to transform social norms.

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Yet more often than not, there is a "violent erasure" of black womanhood" in Hollywood cinema (Hooks 109). Black female bodies are objectified, so that only the white man is privileged enough to "gaze" at it, and therefore to have power over it and possess it. This is what Hooks calls the "phallocentric gaze": the gaze of white male power that coincides with political and social systems.

The oppositional gaze confronts, questions, and subverts the phallocentric gaze. In terms of cinema, the oppositional gaze is rendered when black females take control of their image and representation on screen. It also entails being aware of the role of spectator in the bi-directional process of looking. When individual women of color assume the confrontational gaze, they can shatter the shackles of their own misappropriation. They can challenge the ways black women are depicted, not just literally and overtly, but also in terms of subtext. Even when the world leers and gazes with a sense of….....

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