The Oppositional Black Gaze

The Oppositional Gaze and Black People’s Relationship and Representation in Cinema 

In the writing The Oppositional Gaze: Black Female Spectators author bell hooks explains the domination of white supremacy engrained in the gaze of black people, the effects of blacks looking and being looked at and the representations of blacks in the cinematic experience. Hooks statements about the white gaze and the black gaze as well as its relationship to many different things is accurate. I think it is important that blacks are represented in a way that does not reinforce white European culture and values.  

In the beginning of this chapter hooks talks about the child's relationship with the gaze. When children are young they are told not to stare but they are also told to look at adults when they are being scolded. This control of children’s looking is an example of how making eye contact and not making eye contact can mean and result in different outcomes. Then hooks explains that during times of slavery in the United States, enslaved black people were not to look their white slave owners in the face or eyes and they were punished if they did so. When hooks goes into how blacks gazing has been policed for a very long time she makes the connection that the gaze and right to can be very political. Hooks also claims that a gaze can also be defiant. Often when told not to look the desire to look is greater. For many black people then and now the gaze is a mechanism of resistance instead of a mechanism of control. 

Bell hooks references many other individuals in her writing such as Michel Foucault and Stuart Hall. Michel Foucault formed opinions on the relationships of power and how where there is power, domination and control there is always the possibility of resistance or rising. Stuart Hall formed opinions about white representations of black people that were not accurate in film and television. In the writing, hooks describes how when blacks were first able to view film and television they did so knowing very well it would be dominated by white supremacy and black people would be horrible miss represented.  The oppositional black gaze is about responding to these poor representations of blacks. Blacks developed their own cinematic works, they advocated that their roles be played without reinforcing white european culture and values. Advocacy for proper representation in films led to progression in many political movements for equality. Again reinforcing how political looking can be. Equal representation in films and television is valuable because we consciously and subconsciously learn so much from looking and observing, we also communicate through looking as well as. Accurate representations of ethnicity leads to less stereotyping, stops the spread of misinformation and is not insulting to the cultures being represented. 

Clementine Hunter, Wash Day 

The painting above is by Celementine Hunter a black slave woman who lived on the Melrose cotton plantation close to Natchitoches, Louisiana. She did not start painting until the 1940’s but she painted on any surface that was available to her. Sadly this isn't a plethora of information on her work such as accurate dates or specific material, some works are better explained than others. I saw different dates listed for this work on many different websites so I decided not to list one incase of inaccuracy. Clementine Hunter recorded how she spent her time on the plantation. Even after slavery was abolished Hunter continued to work for the melrose plantation until the year 1970. She exhibited some of her paintings towards the end of her life, even with her success she stayed in Louisiana until leaving the plantation and moving to a small trailer park. I chose to include this art because it not only represents the labor intensive work, poor living conditions and the poor treatment that colonized blacks received but I think it is important we acknowledge more blacks throughout history who did remarkable things. Hunter could have easily been punished for creating works of art, as many enslaved blacks were often punished for reading, writing or learning in any way art included. All of her paintings show an emotionless profile of all the black characters carrying out their tasks from harvesting cotton, washing clothes, or funerals and baptisms at the church. When noticing this I think of how slave owners policed the appearance of the enslaved and that is shown even in black representation although other slaves probably made visual communication with each other differently than with their owners. I wonder what Hunter would have thought of the white representations of blacks in the cinematic experience, if she would have rejected them or emphasized their struggles.  

“Clementine Hunter: Artist Profile.” NMWA, 10 Mar. 2021, https://nmwa.org/art/artists/clementine-hunter/. 

Hooks, bell. Black Looks: Race and Representation. The oppositional Gaze: Black Female Spectators. Chapter 7. Boston: South south End Press. 1992. Accessed 3 October 2021.