6/30/2023 0 Comments Bell hooks theory![]() ![]() ![]() As a result of the racist portrayals of black people in white-dominated cinema, independent black film arose. Through critical discussion around black women and cinema, the oppositional gaze enters as a way for black people to attain agency to combat white supremacy. hooks describes the gaze of a black body as repressed, denied, and ultimately interrogating. ![]() It was created as a critique of film theory by bell hooks in her essay "The Oppositional Gaze: Black Female Spectators". Therefore the act of gazing, when conditioned against it, becomes a powerful act to alter power dynamics. The act of the gaze became an act charged with rebellion when enslaved persons would defiantly gaze back at the slave-owners since they would often be punished for simply looking at them. Hooks' essay is a work of feminist film theory that criticizes both the male gaze through Michel Foucault's "relations of power" and the prevalence of white feminism in feminist film theory. The "oppositional gaze", first coined by feminist, scholar and social activist bell hooks in her 1992 essay collection Black Looks: Race and Representation, is a type of looking relation that involves the political rebellion and resistance against the repression of a black person's right to look. ![]()
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