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| Ana Mendieta- Untitled (Glass on body imprints) |
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| Glass Faces |
John Berger | Chapters 2&3
Quote 1: “One might specify this by saying: men act and women appear. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at. This determines not only most relations between men and women but also the relation of women to themselves. The surveyor of women in herself is male: the surveyed female. Thus she turns herself into an object— and most particularly an object of vision: a sight”.
Response: This statement is accurate. I have moments where I catch myself doing this, I watch myself being looked at or how I'm being perceived/ want to be perceived. It is so embedded into us, we survey our own femininity.
Quote 2: “Durër believed that the ideal nude ought to be constructed by taking the face of one body, the breasts of another, the legs of a third, the shoulders of a fourth, the hands of a fifth— and so on”.
Response:When reading this it made me feel like an object, it is the way most men see women.. For us to be just simple body parts that they wish to control. Control by changing the way we look or what aspects we need to have in order for the spectator to have the “ideal” woman.
Bell Hooks | Understanding Patriarchy and The Oppositional Gaze
The Oppositional Gaze
Quote 1: “ major early black male independent filmmakers represented black women in their films as objects of male gaze. Whether looking through the camera or as spectators watching films, whether mainstream cinema or “race” movies such as those made by Oscar Micheau, the black male gaze had a different scope of the black female”.
Response: In the “iimperialist white supremacist capitalist patriarchy” as said by Bell Hooks, most cinema was by white people for white people although when they were able to create cinema for black people.. Black men were depicting black women differently from how white women were viewed, they were seen as more fragile and sensitive. Overall white women were still put on a pedestal and above black women. Using black women’s work and bodies to serve white womanhood.
Quote 2: “ There they could “look” at white womanhood without a structure of dominant overseeing the gaze, interpreting and punishing”.
Response: It’s interesting to think about this and how Laura Mulvey wrote about the objectification of white women and how it plays into cinema. Bell hooks noted how black men can be spectators in this patriarchal structure of cinema without receiving punishment or feeling fear for looking at white women on screen. In a segregated time where black people even looked at white people it meant that their life could be in danger. In the eyes of white people they were seen as dangerous and threatening just for looking or being in their presence. Especially Black men looking at white women, just like what happened to Emmet Till.
Understanding Patriarchy
Quote 1: “ At church they had learned that God created man to rule the world and everything in it and that it was the work of women to help men perform these tasks, to obey and to always assume a subordinate role in relation to a powerful man”.
Response: Growing up with a christian mother, she would always force me to attend church with her. The more I attended the more I despised it, it is when I started noticing these things that Bell Hooks wrote about. I started to think about how misogynistic the bible is and how the preaching sounded and I couldn’t believe that this is what we're meant to follow.. It did not seem fair. It all started with Eve being the woman who bit the apple and she is blamed for all sins. As I grew older and had the chance to decide for myself and as an act of rebellion seen by my mother I decided to put my foot down and let her know I will no longer be going to church and since then have steered away from christianity.
Quote 2: Listen to the voices of wounded grown children raised in patriarchal homes and you will hear different versions with the same underlying theme, the use of violence to reinforce our indoctrination and acceptance of patriarchy”.
Response: As I said in my last response, when I was able to put my foot down on the authority which was my own mother for not going to church anymore. Of course there were punishments that followed along for me throughout those years along with a depiction of me being a “rebellious child”. Bell Hooks even said that this is the most common form of patriarchal violence (between parents and children). We are taught to stay silent and obey the rules of the authority (the rules of the father). Silence does promote denial, in the same way men were taught and brainwashed to obey which is why Hooks stated “We must challenge both its psychological and its concrete manifestations in daily life”.
What is the Male Gaze? The objectification of women by men. Women being sexualized.
Female Gaze? How women look at the world
Oppositional Gaze? the power to look
Ana Mendieta: Artist Who Pushed Boundaries | NYTimes
Quote: “The making of my ‘Silueta’ in nature keeps the transition between my homeland and my new home,” she once said. “It is a way of reclaiming my roots and becoming one with nature. Although the culture in which I live is part of me, my roots and cultural identity are a result of my Cuban heritage.”
Female Gaze: Art that Looks at What Women See | NYTIMES
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