Hist 2480
Oct 2nd 2017
Reading Analysis- week 5
There are many things wrong about the way media and film devalues women and men in this career and really needs to be changed. But one that is a main focus that is seen as a big problem is the way female women of black decent are portrayed as in these films. These articles “The Oppositional Gaze”, “moving Beyond Pain” and “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionally, Identity Politics and Violence Against Women of Colour” how people feel about this problem.
In the “Opposition of Gaze” it really focuses on how black women feel about the image that is put out there of them. It is said that there is not that many movies with black people in them and if they are in them it is usually offensive to the black, as it may be very obvious that everyone notices or if you look into to it and know your facts it very offensive but those turn a blind eye to it. Really it has turned many black people away from media and film because they just don’t want to support this disrespect that is set out there for the world to see as ok.
The article “Mapping the Margins” goes to show that with allowing the things that was said in the first article it allows for terrible things to happen. For instance, it shows that it is ok to see women of colour as less and it shows them as a weakness. With this it leads to violence towards them. There have been many studies that have proven that these lead to horrible violence that puts people of different colour in danger of their safety and even their lives. Which is horribly wrong that our society can have such a strong impact on this action that happens in such a negative way.
But in the article “Moving Beyond Pain” it lets us know that there is going to be a change in this as this is so wrong that society feels this is ok. Thankfully for female black artist like Beyoncé and others they are bringing awareness to everyone that this is a problem. Beyoncé has taken it to another level in raising awareness about how the image of black people in media can have serious impacts on the black culture, she has done this my including it in her music. Hopefully with people like her things will change for the better. The only thing that comes to mind when reading this is does she not set that stereotyped image with showing and acting exactly like the white producers feel like she should look like to get more fans. Will she take a step further and say no to this image and help this problem change that much more?
The other thing that is though when putting the theme of all these article together is how they mainly focus on the black people and what is happening to them. Does media and film not have the same impacts on all women of colour? Why are black people of major concern and not all races there of major concern too? When will they focus on all the problems of the race divide. Does doing a study on just the black people problems still not single them out, thus feeding to that race divide that they are trying to stop. Does acknowledging this divide help or increase the problem? When will this problem end?
Bibliography
Crenshaw, K., “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Colour,” Stanford Law Review, 43 (July 1991): 1241-1299
hooks, b., “The Oppositional Gaze,” in Black Looks: Race and Representation
hooks, b., “Moving Beyond Pain,” http://www.bellhooksinstitute.com/blog/2016/5/9/moving beyond-pain