What is the Oppositional Gaze?
- You have already learned that the male gaze and the white gaze are ways in which racial minorities and women are portrayed in stereotypical, controlling ways.
- The oppositional gaze is a rebellion against these controlling images. Subordinated people use to oppositional gaze to resist by looking back,
- Through the oppositional gaze, people are encouraged to actively critique the stereotypes presented in the media rather than just accept them. It encourages racial and gender minorities to accept themselves and represent themselves in the media as more than a stereotype.
Example 1: Brave
- In the movie Brave, Merida is a young girl who has reached the age where she is expected to get married. Several young men come to compete for her hand in marriage. However, instead of giving into the happily ever after stereotype where the princess only wants to wear a ball gown, find her prince and fall in love, Merida rebells against the idea of marriage. She rejects the restrictive gowns her mother dresses her in and announces that she is going to join the competition with her suitors competing for her own independence.
- Merida's rejection of what is stereotypically female in Disney movies is an example of the oppositional gaze
Example 2: Hercules
- In the movie Hercules, Meg is enslaved to Hades, god of the underworld, but falls in love with the hero Hercules who Hades is trying to kill.
- Meg rejects the common theme in Disney movies of women as innocent and passive, and instead embraces her own sexuality and uses it to get what she wants.
Hooks, Bell. "The Oppositional Gaze: Black Female Spectators." Black Looks: Race and Representation. Boston: South End, 1992. 115-31. Print.