This document discusses Bell Hooks' concept of the "oppositional gaze". It summarizes that for Hooks, the gaze has historically been a site of political resistance for black women. As black women were objectified under white supremacist standards of beauty, developing an oppositional gaze allowed for black women to look back and assert their own subjecthood and agency. The document also reviews how independent black cinema has helped establish new representations that resist stereotypical portrayals and instead provide points of identification for black women.

1. The Oppositional Gaze
Bell Hooks, Professor of English, City College, New

2. Introduction
 Foucault:
 The power relationship.
 „Power as domination, it
reproduces itself in
different locations and
employing similar
apparatuses, strategies
and mechanisms of
control.
 In all relations of power
„there is necessarily the

3. The Oppositional Gaze
 The power of looking as
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contrast to gaze in general.
The gaze has always been
political in my life.
As confrontational and as a
gesture of resistance
The gaze can be dangerous
and be understood by
repeated punishments.
„Look at me when I talk to
you‟
„There is power in looking‟.

4. The Oppositional Gaze
 The right to gaze
 “Not only will I stare, I want
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my look to change the reality”.
Experientially, a critical gaze
and cultivating awareness.
It politicizes the „looking‟
relations.
The looking was also about
the contestation and
confrontation.
It‟s a site for colonized black

5. The analysis of gaze
 The critical investigation
 Typical race and racism and
over-determined
representation.
 “Our bodies being were there
to serve, to enhance, and
maintain white womanhood.
 As an object of phallocentric
gaze” – Anne Friedberg. (A
Denial of Difference).
 The insertion of violating
representation (content, form
and language.

6. The white Supremacy and
Conventional Representation
 The powerful white „other‟.
 Black men were murdered or
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lynched for looking at white
womanhood.
Emmet Till (1955).
„To be looked as at and desired
is white‟.
„Denial the body of black
female.
Compelling representations of
black femaleness

7. The white Supremacy and
Conventional Representation
 Do you remember Sapphire
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(Amos „n‟ Andy) ?
“She was not us”.
To soften images of black
men, to make them seem
vulnerable, easygoing, funny and
unthreatening to a white
audience.
„Our image visually constructed
was ugly‟ and „hated black
female‟
These screen images could
assault the black
womanhood, could name us

8. Deconstruction and Independent
Black Cinema
 To develop critical black
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spectatorship.
Looking was also about
contestation and confrontation.
It mainly focuses on racial
equality via the construction of
images.
These are all one way to protest
and to reject navigation.
Deconstruction of “Women as
image and men as bearer” .
Deconstruction and of reading,
„against the grain‟ .

9. Deconstruction and Independent
Black Cinema
 The pleasure of deconstruction
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and „the woman‟s stake .
Julie Dash and Doane.
filming female body and
pleasure of interrogation.
Resisting the imposition of
dominant ways of „knowing and
looking‟ (As Sussan & Hartley
John).
Inverting the „real life‟ power
structure and black female
representation.

10. Independent Black Cinema
 A critical gaze against the
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conventional racist and sexiest
stereotypical, representations of
„black female‟ bodies.
“A radical departure”.
they provide new points of
recognition and embodying a
vision of critical practice.
Camillle Billop, Katheen Collins,
Julie Dash, Ayoka Chensira.
Daughter of Dust, Passion of
Remembrance, Illusions etc.

11. Conclusion
 The identity is constituted „not
outside but with in
representation‟
 It invites us to see film „not as
a second-order mirror‟ held up
to reflect what already exists.
 But as that form of
representation which is enable
us to „discover who we are‟ –
Stuart Hall‟s view on
representation.

12. Conclusion
 The oppositional gaze is a
new framework which offers a
critical investigation to rethink
a body of feminist film theory
and denial of the reality (the
objectivity of reality and
content forms).
 Black women must involve
ourselves in a process
whereby we see our history
“as counter-memory”.
 What we need is radical
openness ?

13. Bell Hooks‟s publications

14. Thank You
By
Nagarjuna K
12 SCMC 07