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 Continue Reading...
Another provocative element of hooks' text is the way that she renders whiteness problematic and alien, while the dominant culture has always done this with blackness. The quest to know what is not 'us' and to know the 'other' she implies, is endem Continue Reading...
Film Theory
The canonical model of the purely cinematic (Eisenstein, Kracauer, Bazin) starts disappearing in contemporary theory. Most film theorists since the 1970s (Baudry, Wollen, Mulvey, Stam/Shohat, or Jameson, etc.) Explain in different ways Continue Reading...
Visual Culture Exam
Mobilizing Shame
For a very long time now, people have perceived shame as a feeling of embarrassment, inadequacy, or the feeling that prevails after someone has done something, which a given society believes is wrong. However, s Continue Reading...
She believes in a new identity and a new meaning of whiteness and blackness, which transcends the centuries-old restrictive ideas about race. Senna argues that skin-based identity is the shallowest and most hollow form of identity construction since Continue Reading...