The imperial gaze is defined by Kaplan as, “a gaze structure which fails to understand that, as Edward Said phrases it, non-American peoples have integral cultures and lives that work according to their own, albeit different, logic.” Since the development of film, television, and modern media, the imperial gaze is something that has affected the representation of colonised women. These integral cultures that they have, seen as ‘not normal’ through white eyes, are transformed into the exotic within media. Along with Kaplan, bell hooks and Marcus Wood also explore ideas of how those who have been colonised are treated. The ideas that they present can be compared with the short story Tar Baby and also with Toni Morrison’s novel of the same name,
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and Why? Wood provides a simple answer to the latter, stating that, “the art and literatures generated by slavery appear to be consistently fuelled by a desire, on the part of the creator, to subsume the traumatic experience of the slave” The privileged white therefore continue to use tools of oppression in order to maintain their prestige. What is more complex is how this privilege is upheld. To look at the ways in which colonised women are oppressed within media, what needs to be explored is how they are victims of a combination of racism and sexism through a modern lens. The imperial gaze has various templates which are used to represent colonised women within media. Kaplan provides a short explanation of the representations that are created in the image of those who are not …show more content…
The ways in which black women are looked at has not changed, but what is used to look at them has changed. Firstly, John Bell’s statue The Octoroon (1868) presents a nude female slave, bound with rope. ‘Octoroon’ was a word used to classify an individual’s blackness, and how they would be classed in society by law. The woman’s nudity firstly shows the sexualisation of the subject, as a commodity it is not deemed unacceptable for her to appear this way. As she is nude and bound, it shows that she is on display, most likely for sale. As a piece of art, event now, the subject of the sculpture is once again for sale. What is also noticeable about the woman is that she is looking down, away from whoever may be looking at her. Kaplan makes a point about the imperial gaze, saying:
“The gaze of the colonialist this refuses to acknowledge its own power and privilege: it unconsciously represses knowledge of power, hierarchies and its need to dominate, to control. Like the male gaze, it’s an objectifying gaze, one that refuses mutual gazing, mutual subject-to-subject recognition. It refuses what I am calling a “looking
and Why? Wood provides a simple answer to the latter, stating that, “the art and literatures generated by slavery appear to be consistently fuelled by a desire, on the part of the creator, to subsume the traumatic experience of the slave” The privileged white therefore continue to use tools of oppression in order to maintain their prestige. What is more complex is how this privilege is upheld. To look at the ways in which colonised women are oppressed within media, what needs to be explored is how they are victims of a combination of racism and sexism through a modern lens. The imperial gaze has various templates which are used to represent colonised women within media. Kaplan provides a short explanation of the representations that are created in the image of those who are not …show more content…
The ways in which black women are looked at has not changed, but what is used to look at them has changed. Firstly, John Bell’s statue The Octoroon (1868) presents a nude female slave, bound with rope. ‘Octoroon’ was a word used to classify an individual’s blackness, and how they would be classed in society by law. The woman’s nudity firstly shows the sexualisation of the subject, as a commodity it is not deemed unacceptable for her to appear this way. As she is nude and bound, it shows that she is on display, most likely for sale. As a piece of art, event now, the subject of the sculpture is once again for sale. What is also noticeable about the woman is that she is looking down, away from whoever may be looking at her. Kaplan makes a point about the imperial gaze, saying:
“The gaze of the colonialist this refuses to acknowledge its own power and privilege: it unconsciously represses knowledge of power, hierarchies and its need to dominate, to control. Like the male gaze, it’s an objectifying gaze, one that refuses mutual gazing, mutual subject-to-subject recognition. It refuses what I am calling a “looking