Post 2

The male gaze is a subjective view upon women's bodies, generalizing characteristics and promoting an image that may not be factual, yet heavily influences our society for years. The male gaze has been controlling everything since the beginning of time. Men "always" have the final say, so to speak, about women and how they're viewed. The oppositional gaze started with film, Bell Hooks states "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 victim or the perpetrator." The oppositional gaze allows you to examine how black women are portrayed in film, that portrayal in film may seem small but it creates a huge impact on the discourse that surrounds the matter. This helps viewers make hasty generalizations and make misinterpretations about black women. 

Bell Hooks mentions the film Imitation of Life, and when I watched that film myself, I remembered my grandmother telling me about how white women never raised their own children, they would hire black wet nurses and nannies to care for them. For me to see a movie that depicts lack women struggling and even when doing "right" they are never good enough. Women have always been under pressure to be and act a certain way and there is art dating back to the Renaissance Era that shows images of women projected a certain way. 

John Berger's "Ways of Seeing" is a perfect example about how women were projected during that time period. Berger begins by discussing Adam and Eve and states "They became aware of being naked because, as a result of eating the apple, each saw the other differently. Nakedness was created in the mind of the beholder. [The second striking fact is that] the woman is blamed and is punished by being made subservient to the man. In relation to the woman the man becomes the agent of God." This then leads into how shame came into play depicting women naked and feeling ashamed about it.

Berger also states that in these images, the implication is that the woman is being noticed by a spectator (a man). He also described the difference between nudity and nakedness in these oil paintings. Nakedness has a sort of shame behind it whereas nudity is where a woman is depicted sexually appealing to a man. This has some place in the world now because women are seen as sex objects too frequently. 

The film Miss Representation discusses how women are portrayed as sex symbols more frequently than in positions of power as if women could never attain that. The film explains that in other films or television shows, women are not portrayed as the decision maker, or have a position in politics or business. Movies as old as His Girl Friday even discusses that women can't even be taken serious as journalists. Bell Hooks touches on how women are shown as "bitches and nags," this shows that men dominate the views of women and thus have the upper hand because they're obviously the "better sex."

Works Cited

Hooks, Bell. The Oppositional Gaze. Black Looks: Race and Representations. South End Press, 1992.

Berger, John. Chapters 2, 3. Ways of Seeing:. London: Penguin, 2008. Print.