In the 1992 essay "The Oppositional Gaze: Black Female Spectators", hooks describes the gaze of a black body as repressed, denied, and interrogating. She argues that gaze became an act of rebellion during the era of American slavery when slave-owners often punished slaves for simply looking at them. [ 1 ]

In summary, the oppositional gaze, as conceptualized by bell hooks, is a powerful tool for understanding and resisting the dynamics of power and representation in visual culture. It highlights the importance of critical media literacy and the need for diverse and authentic representations in media.

Coined by bell hooks, the oppositional gaze refers to the “right to look” and the power in looking. As James Baldwin wrote: “You cannot lynch me and keep me in ghettos without becoming something monstrous yourself…

This time we’re going to transition from Montia Diora to bell hooks. Think about what she’s doing as a response to spectatorship theory. As a response to Diawara, her essay is entitled the oppositional gaze, which should remind you of Diora’s essay with the …

She explains how black people and enslaved people were often punished just for looking at somebody, and she uses Emmett Till’s story as the centerpiece of this idea. hooks also references Michel Foucault and his ideas of power, encouraging resistance through the oppositional gaze.

2020年10月7日 · bell hooks was the founding father of a critical discussion that focused on the role of the black female spectators and their relation to white and black representation on film. She contends that, despite a long history of oppression on screen and in real life, black people had the right to gaze, or observe, and at times this right was ...

Looking at films with an oppositional gaze, black women were able to critically assess the cinema's construction of white womanhood as object of phallocentric gaze and choose not to identify with either the victim or the perpetrator (pp. 149-150).

Black female spectators have gone to films with awareness of the way in which race and racism determined the visual construction of gender. Black female spectators actively chose not to identify with the film's imaginary subject because such identification was dis-enabling.

2022年6月1日 · In this essay she detailed the history of racial oppression where enslaved people were deprived of the right to look. She applies this to film theory and constructs the concept of an “oppositional gaze” – one where black people disrupt the power dynamic of most cinema that others blackness.

2023年12月17日 · feminism, film, male gaze, race, Black women, reflection theory Collection opensource Item Size 14.2M