BELL HOOKS

bell hooks

The oppositional gaze

Where dominant looking has been structured by race, gender and history, looking is not neutral. The history of looking includes prohibition, punishment and domination; looking back can become resistance.

A spectator can refuse, question, read against and reinterpret an image. Thus the spectator is not simply passive: spectator positioned by image → spectator capable of resisting the position.

Do not collapse this into a correction of Mulvey. Mulvey asks how classical cinema organises gendered looking; hooks asks how race, history and power affect who has been allowed to look and how.

Mulvey → gaze as power; hooks → gaze as possible resistance.