University of Minnesota Press

White Privilege and Looking Relations: Race and Gender in Feminist Film Theory
Author(s): Jane Gaines

Source: Cultural Critique, No. 4 (Autumn, 1986), pp. 59-79
Published by: University of Minnesota Press
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White
Privilege
and
Looking
Relations:
Race and Gender in Feminist Film
Theory
Jane
Gaines
orn in
Flames,
a feminist science fiction film set ten
years
after a
Social-Democratic "revolution" in the
U.S.,
provides
an
abrupt
reminder of the
place
of
theory
in the context of social
change.
Toward
the end of the
film,
with the women's takeover of New York com-
munications channels in
progress,
the voice of
theory
is heard over the
image, insisting
that women also need to take over the
production
of
language. Although
the film
gives
credence to the voice of
theory (a
white female British-accented
voice),
it is clear that the militant Wom-
en's
Emergency Brigade
and the
martyred
Black lesbian leader are
carrying
the
revolutionary
moment. What strikes me about the
jux-
taposition
-
images
of women
hot-wiring
U-Haul trucks and the voice
of
theory urging
women to take control of their own
images
-
is that
the voice sounds so
crisply
detached and arid.'
What I want to discuss is not so much the scene as the tenor of the
female intellectual
voice,
which
immediately
recalls for me the tone of
feminist film
theory
-
firm in its insistence on attention to cinematic
1. Feminist discussions around Lizzie Borden's 1983
feature,
such as the one in
June,
1985,
at the
Society
for Cinema Studies Conference at New York
University,
actually exemplify
my
argument. Holding
ourselves to consideration of the film's
repre-
sentational
system
was a
frustrating
exercise since crucial issues of subcultural
recep-
tion and feminist
political strategy
were also at stake.
59
60 Jane Gaines
language
and strict in its
prohibition against making comparisons
be-
tween
"actuality"
and the text. Let me be clear that this is
something
of
a caricature of a stance which
many
of us who work on feminist film
theory
find less and less tenable.2
Certainly,
the intense concentration
on cinema as
language
has
helped
to
remedy
a naivete about form
which characterized
early
feminist film criticism.
However,
as interest
in the
operations
of the cinematic text
increased,
we witnessed the
banishment of
sociological
reference
points
and historical detail from
criticism. From this
viewpoint
it seems that one can
only analyze
the
ideological through
its
encoding
in the conventions of
editing
or the
mechanics of the motion
picture
machine.3
For
Marxists,
this textual
detachment,
as I will call
it,
has
special
implications:
concentration on the
functioning
of discourse creates the
impression
that
developments
in an
ideological
realm are unrelated to
developments
elsewhere in social life. As feminist film
theory
has
emphasized
the irresistible allure and
captivating power
of classical
narrative
cinema,
it has located determination
exclusively
in the
ideologi-
cal realm. At the center of this
difficulty
has been the effort to understand
the
ideological
work of mainstream cinema in terms of the
psy-
choanalytic concept
of sexual
difference,
which has
largely
meant cast-
ing
formal structures such as narrative and
point
of view as
masculine,
and
locating
the
feminine,
the
opposite
term,
in the
repressed
or
excluded. Since this
theory
has focused on sexual
difference,
class and
racial differences have remained outside its
problematic,
divorced
from textual concerns
by
the
very split
in the social
totality
that the
incompatibility
of these discourses
misrepresents.
Adorno has re-
marked on this
split, although
in the context of an
argument
for the
merger
of
sociology
and
psychology:
2. For an
overview,
see
my
"Women and
Representation:
Can We
Enjoy
Alterna-
tive Pleasure?" in Entertainment as Social
Control,
ed. Donald Lazere
(Berkeley:
Univ. of
California
Press), forthcoming.
3. In "Aesthetics and
Politics,"
New
Left
Review 107
(1978):
23,
Terry Eagleton
de-
scribes his
exasperation
with
Screen,
the
journal
which introduced this
analytical style
into British criticism:
And
yet, perusing
still another article in that
journal
on the
complex
mechanisms
by
which a shot/reverse shot reinstates the
imaginary,
or the
devices
by
which a
particular
cinematic
syntagm permits
the
interruption
of
symbolic heterogeneity
into the
positioned perceptual space
of the
subject,
one is forced to
query
with certain vehemence
why ideological
codes have been so
remorselessly collapsed
back into the intestines of the
cinematic machine.
White
Privilege
and
Looking
Relations
The
separation
of
sociology
and
psychology
is both correct and
false. False because it
encourages
the
specialists
to
relinquish
the
attempt
to know the
totality
which even the
separation
of the two
demands;
and correct insofar as it
registers
more
intransigently
the
split
that has
actually
taken
place
in
reality
than does the
pre-
mature unification at the level of
theory.4
In the interest of
understanding
the social
totality,
I am
suggesting
that
our criticism should work to
demystify
this
apparent separation by
raising questions
of race and class
exactly
where
they
have been theo-
retically
disallowed.
Here I want to show how a
theory
of the text and its
spectator,
based
on the
psychoanalytic concept
of sexual
difference,
is
unequipped
to
deal with a film which is about racial difference and
sexuality.
Immedi-
ately,
the Diana Ross
star-vehicle,
Mahogany (Berry Gordy, 1975), sug-
gests
a
psychoanalytic approach
because the narrative is
organized
around the connections between
sadism,
voyeurism,
and
photographic
acts.
Furthermore,
it is a
perfect specimen
of classical narrative cinema
which has been so
fully
theorized in Freudian terms. The
psycho-
analytic
mode, however,
works to block out considerations which
take a different
configuration.
For
instance,
the Freudian
scenario,
based on the male/female
distinction,
is
incongruous
with the scenario
of racial and sexual relations in Afro-American
history.
Where we use a
psychoanalytic
model to
explain
Black
family
relations,
we force an
erroneous
universalization,
and
inadvertently
reaffirm white middle-
class norms.
Since it has taken
gender
as its
starting point
in the
analysis
of
oppression,
feminist
theory
has
helped
to reinforce white middle-class
values,
and to the extent that it works to
keep
women from
seeing
other
structures of
oppression,
it functions
ideologically.
In this
regard,
Bell
Hooks
specifically
criticizes a feminism which seems unable to
imag-
ine women's
oppression
in terms other than
gender:
Feminist
analyses
of woman's lot tend to focus
exclusively
on
gen-
der and do not
provide
a solid foundation on which to construct
feminist
theory. They
reflect the dominant
tendency
in Western
patriarchal
minds to
mystify
women's
reality by insisting
that
gen-
der is the sole determinant of woman's fate.5
4. T.W.
Adorno,
"Sociology
and
Psychology,"
New
Left
Review 46
(November-
December
1967):
78.
5. Feminist
Theory:
From
Margin
to Center
(Boston:
South End
Press,
1984),
12.
61
62 Jane Gaines
This
gender analysis
illuminates the condition of white middle-class
women rather
exclusively,
Hooks
explains,
and its
centrality
in femin-
ist
theory suggests
that the women who have contributed to the con-
struction of this
theory
have been
ignorant
of the
way
women in
different racial
groups
and social classes
experience oppression.
How
should the white middle-class feminist who does not want to be racist
in her work
respond
to this criticism? In her
essay,
"On
Being
White,"
one of the few considerations of this delicate
dilemma,
Marilyn Frye
urges
us not to do what middle-class feminists have
historically
done:
to assume
responsibility
for
everyone.
To take it
upon
oneself to re-
write feminist
theory
so that it
encompasses
our differences is another
exercise of racial
privilege.6
What one
can,
with
conscience,
do is to
undertake the difficult
study
of our own "determined
ignorance";
one
can
begin
to learn about the
people
whose
history
cannot be
imagined
from a
position
of
privilege.7
In this
context,
my argument
takes two
directions.
Onejuxtaposes
Black feminist
theory
with those
aspects
of
feminist
theory
which have a
tendency
to function as
normative;
the
other
transposes
these
issues,
as Marxist
theory
would understand
them,
into the
question
of how we are to
grasp
the interaction of the
various levels.
The feminist commitment to
revealing
the
patriarchal assumptions
behind familiar cinematic
language
dates from the mid-seventies with
the
appearance
of Clare
Johnston's
"Women's Cinema as Counter-
Cinema"8 and Laura
Mulvey's
often
reprinted
"Visual Pleasure and
Narrative Cinema."9 The latter
essay, coinciding
as it did with the
publication
of Christian Metz's "The
Imaginary Signifier," paired
with
a
supporting
theoretical statement from the editors of the British
Screen,
helped
introduce
psychoanalytic concepts
into
contemporary
film
theory
where
they quickly
streamlined a Marxist
problematic
6. The Politics
of Reality
(Trumansburg,
New York: The
Crossing
Press,
1984),
113.
7.
Frye,
118.
8. Notes on Women's
Cinema,
ed. ClaireJohnston
(London: Society
for Education in
Film and
Television,
1973); rpt.
Sexual
Strategems,
ed. Patricia Erens
(New
York:
Horizon,
1979),
133-143; Movies
andMethods,
ed. Bill Nichols
(Berkeleyand LosAngeles:
Univ. of
California
Press,
1976),
208-217.
9. Screen
16,
no. 3
(Autumn 1975):
6-18;
rpt.
Womenand
Cinema,
eds.
KarynKayand
Gerald
Peary (New
York: E.P.
Dutton,
1977),
412-428;
Film
Theory
and
Criticism,
eds.
Gerald Mast and Marshall
Cohen,
3rd ed.
(New
York:
Oxford,
1985).
White
Privilege
and
Looking
Relations
which dealt
awkwardly
with the social individual.'0 The terms of
psy-
choanalysis,
introduced
through
the
permission
of Althusserian
Marxism,
made it
possible
to
investigate
the sites outside the work-
place
where
oppression
is
experienced.
For Marxist
feminists,
this
connection between Marxism and
psychoanalysis immediately
en-
riched the
study
of the construction of
subjectivity
in its
prime
location
-
the
family.
Althusser's antidote to
empiricism
and economic reductionism has
been welcomed
by
Marxists
working
in cultural
studies,
and the
appeal
is understandable. If
materiality
is no
longer
elsewhere,
scholars are
suddenly
free to concentrate on textual matters without
having
to con-
cern themselves
simultaneously
with economic
specificity.
Marxists in
cultural studies outside
Screen, however,
believe that Althusser's
understanding
of
ideology
as
having
a
materiality
of its own con-
tradicts basic Marxist tenets."l Within British cultural
studies, then,
psychoanalysis
is held in check
by
the
larger
debates around Althus-
serian Marxism. This is
not, however,
the case in the U.S. where these
traditions are often a distant
point
of reference. Thus the Screen film
theory imported
to the U.S. comes furnished with idealist
assumptions
that are mistaken for Marxist
underpinnings.
Because traditional
Marxist terms do not
support
the critical context in film and television
studies in the U.S. as
they
do in
Britain,
the
challenge
to
psychoanalytic
film
theory
here
may
have to come from other critical
vantage
points.
Lesbian feminists in the U.S. have
already
raised
objections
to the
way
in which
contemporary
film
theory explains
the
operation
of the
classic realist text in terms of tensions between
masculinity
and fem-
ininity. Drawing
on Freud and
Lacan,
this
position (which
is
basically
Mulvey's)
defines the classic cinema as an
expression
of the
patri-
archal unconscious in the
way
it constructs
points
of view or "look-
10. Trans. Ben
Brewster,
Screen
16,
no. 2
(Summer 1975):
14-76.
11.
Examples
include Simon
Clarke, VictorJeleniewski Seidler,
Kevin McDon-
nell,
Kevin
Robins,
and
Terry
Lovell,
One-Dimensional Marxism
(London:
Alison & Bus-
by, 1980);
Kevin
Robins,
"Althusserian Marxism and Media Studies: The Case of
Screen," Media,
Culture and
Society 1,
no. 4
(October 1979):
355-370;
Ed
Buscombe,
Christine
Gledhill,
Alan
Lovell,
Christopher
Williams,
"Statement:
Psychoanalysis
and
Film,"
Screen
20,
no. 1
(Spring 1979):
121-133;
Christine
Gledhill,
"Recent
Developments
in Feminist
Criticism,"
Quarterly
Review
of
Film Studies
3,
no. 4
(Fall
1978):
457-493;
rpt.
Re-Vision,
eds.
Mary
Ann
Doane,
Patricia
Mellencamp,
and Linda
Williams,
(Frederick, Maryland: University
Publications of
America,
1984),
18-48.
63
64 Jane Gaines
ing positions."
At issue here is the
way
these
viewing vantage points
control the female
body
on the screen and
privilege
the visual
position
(the gaze)
of the male
character(s)
within the film. The
governing
"look" of the male character in the film
merges
with the
spectator's
viewing position
in such a
way
that the
spectator
sees as that character
sees. This
theory goes beyond
the
understanding
of the text as
produc-
ing
its own ideal
reader;
the text is also able to
specify
the
gender
of the
imputed subject,
which in the classic cinema is male.
This
understanding
of the
viewing pleasure
in classical cinema as
inherently
male has drawn an
especially sharp response
from critics
who have
argued
that this
response
cancels the lesbian
spectator
whose
viewing pleasure
would never be male
pleasure. Positing
a les-
bian
spectator
would
significanty change
the
trajectory
of the
gaze
since the eroticized star
body might
be the visual
objective
of another
female character in the film with whose "look" the viewer
might
iden-
tify. (Marilyn
Monroe and
Jane
Russell in Gentlemen
Prefer
Blondes,
according
to this
argument,
are
"only
for each other's
eyes.")'2
Follow-
ing
the direction of an
early
lesbian
reading
of Gentlemen
Prefer
Blondes,
studies of Personal Best show lesbian
readership
as
subverting
dominant
meanings
and
confounding
textual structures.13
Consistently,
lesbians
have
charged
that cultural
theory posed
in
psychoanalytic
terms is
unable to conceive of desire or
explain pleasure
without reference to
the
binary oppositions
male/female. This
is,
as
Monique Wittig
sees
it,
the function of the heterosexual
assumption,
or the
"straight
mind,"
that
unacknowledged
structure built not
only
into Lacanian
psy-
choanalysis,
but
underlying
the basic divisions of Western
culture,
organizing
all
knowledge, yet escaping any
close examination:
With its
ineluctability
as
knowledge,
as an obvious
principle,
as a
given prior
to
any
science,
the
straight
mind
develops
a
totalizing
interpretation
of
history,
social
reality,
culture,
language
.... I
can
only
underline the
oppressive
character that the
straight
mind
is clothed in in its
tendency
to
immediately generalize
its
produc-
12. Lucie Arbuthnot and Gail
Seneca,
"Pre-Text and Text in Gentlemen
PreferBlondes,"
Film Reader 5
(Winter 1981):
13-23.
13. Chris
Straayer,
"Personal Best: Lesbian/Feminist
Audience,"Jump
Cut 29
(Feb-
ruary 1984):
40-44;
Elizabeth
Ellsworth,
"The Power of
Interpretive
Communities:
Feminist
Appropriations
of Personal
Best,"
paper
delivered at
Society
for Cinema
Studies
Conference,
University
of
Wisconsin-Madison, March,
1984.
White
Privilege
and
Looking
Relations
tion of
concepts
into
general
laws which claim to hold true for all
societies,
all
epochs,
all individuals.
.14
I want to
suggest
further that the male/female
opposition,
so
seemingly
fundamental to
feminism,
may actually
lock us into modes of
analysis
which will
continually
misunderstand the
position
of
many
women.
Women of
color,
like
lesbians,
have been added to feminist
analysis
as an
afterthought.
Standard feminist
anthologies consistently
include
articles on Black female and lesbian
perspectives
as illustration of the
liberality
and the inclusiveness of feminist work.
However,
the
very
concept
of "different
perspectives,"
while
validating
distinctness
and
maintaining
a common denominator
(woman),
still
places
the
catego-
ries of race and sexual
preference
in theoretical limbo. Our
political
etiquette
is
correct,
but our
theory
is not so
perfect.
A familiar
litany
in
our work is the broad-minded conclusion to a feminist
argument:
"Of
course,
the
implications
are somewhat different if
race, class,
and sex-
ual
preference
are considered." In Marxist feminist
analysis,
the fac-
tors of race and sexual
preference
often remain loose ends because
these
categories
of
oppression
do not fit
easily
into a model based on
class relations in
capitalist society.
Some
gay
historians have been able
to determine a
relationship
between the rise of
capitalism
and the
creation of the social homosexual.15
However,
only
with a
very gen-
erous notion of sexual
hierarchies,
such as the one
Gayle
Rubin uses in
her recent work on the
politics
of
sexuality,
can sexual
oppression
(as
different from
gender oppression)
be located in relation to a framework
based on class.16 Race has folded more
neatly
than sexual
preference
into Marxist
models,
but the orthodox formulation which understands
racial conflict as class
struggle
is
unsatisfactory
to Marxist feminists
who want to know
exactly
how
gender
intersects with race. The
oppres-
sion of women of color remains
incompletely grasped by
this
paradigm.
Just
as the classic Marxist model of social
analysis
based on class has
14. "The
Straight
Mind,"
Feminist Issues
(Summer 1980):
107-111.
15.
See,
for
instance,
John
D'Emilio's Sexual
Politics,
Sexual Communities
(Chicago:
Univ. of
Chicago
Press,
1984).
16. In
"Thinking
Sex: Notes for a Radical
Theory
of the Politics of
Sexuality,"
in
Pleasure and
Danger,
ed. Carol Vance
(Boston
and London:
Routledge
&
Kegan Paul,
1984),
307,
Rubin stresses the need to make this distinction because feminism does not
immediately apply
to both
oppressions.
As she clarifies this:
Feminism is the
theory
of
gender oppression.
To
automatically
assume
that this makes it the
theory
of sexual
oppression
is to fail to
distinguish
between
gender,
on the one
hand,
and erotic
desire,
on the other.
65
66 Jane Gaines
obscured the function of
gender,
the feminist model based on the
male/female division under
patriarchy
has obscured the function of
race. The dominant feminist
paradigm actually encourages
us not to
think in terms of
any oppression
other than male dominance and
female subordination. Feminism
seems,
as Barbara Smith
states, "...
blinded to the
implications
of
any
womanhood that is not white
womanhood."'7 Black feminists
agree
that for
purposes
of
analysis,
class is as
significant
as
race; however,
if these feminists hesitate to
emphasize gender
as a
factor,
it is in deference to the
way
Black women
describe their
experience.18 Historically,
Afro-American women have
formulated
political allegiance
and
identity
in terms of race rather than
gender
or
class.'9 Feminism, however,
has not
registered
the state-
ments of women of color who realize
oppression
first in relation to race
rather than to
gender:
for them
exploitation
is
personified by
a white
female.20 Even more difficult for feminist
theory
to
digest
is Black
female identification with the Black male. On this
point,
Black femin-
ists
diverge
from white feminists as
they repeatedly
remind us that
Black women do not
necessarily
see the Black male as
patriarchal
antagonist
but feel instead that their racial
oppression
is "shared" with
men.21 In the most
comprehensive analysis,
Black lesbian feminists
17. Towards a Black Feminist Criticism
(Trumansburg,
New York: Out and Out
Books,
1977),
1.
18. Bonnie Thornton
Dill, "Race, Class,
and Gender:
Prospects
for an All-Inclusive
Sisterhood,"
Feminist Studies
9,
no. 1
(Spring 1983):
134;
for a
slightly
different version
of this
essay,
see" 'On the Hem of Life':
Race, Class,
and the
Prospects
for
Sisterhood,"
in
Class, Race,
and Sex: The
Dynamics of
Control,
eds.
Amy
Swerdlow and Hanna
Lessinger
(Boston:
G.K.
Hall,
1983).
19.
Margaret
Simons,
"Racism and Feminism: A Schism in the
Sisterhood,"
Feminist Studies
5,
no. 2
(Summer 1979):
392.
20. Adrienne
Rich,
in On Lies, Secrets, and Silence
(New
York: W.W.
Norton,
1979),
302-303,
notes that while Blacks link their
experience
of racism with the white
woman,
this is still
patriarchal
racism
working through
her. It is
possible,
she
says,
that "a black
first
grader,
or that child's
mother,
or a black
patient
in a
hospital,
or a
family
on
welfare,
may experience
racism most
directly
in the
person
of a white
woman,
who
stands for those service
professions through
which white male
supremacist society
controls the
mother,
the
child,
the
family,
and all of us. It is her
racism,
yes,
but a racism
learned in the same
patriarchal
school which
taught
her that women are
unimportant
or
unequal,
not to be trusted with
power;
where she learned to mistrust and hear her
own
impulses
for
rebellion;
to become an instrument."
21.
GloriaJoseph,
"The
Incompatible Menage
a Trois:
Marxism, Feminism,
and
Racism,"
in Women and
Revolution,
ed.
Lydia Sargent (Boston:
South End
Press,
1981),
96;
The Combahee River Collective in "Combahee River Collective
Statement,"
in
White
Privilege
and
Looking
Relations
have described
race, class,
and
gender oppression
as
"interlocking"
in
reference to the
way
these
oppressions
are
synthesized
in the lives of
Black women.22
The
point
here is not to rank the structures of
oppression
in a
way
that
implies
the need for Black women to choose between
solidarity
with men or with women and between race or
gender
as the basis for a
political strategy.
At issue is the
question
of the fundamental
antago-
nism relevant to
any
Marxist feminist
theory.23
Where we have fore-
grounded
one
antagonism
in our
analysis,
we have misunderstood
another,
and this is most
dramatically
illustrated in the
applications
of
the notion of
patriarchy.
Feminists have not been
absolutely
certain
what
they
mean
by patriarchy: alternately
it has referred to either
father
right
or to the domination of
women;24
but what is consistent
about the use of the
concept
is the
rigidity
of the structure it describes.
Patriarchy
is
incompatible
with Marxism where it is used trans-historical-
ly
without
qualification
and where it becomes the source to which all
other
oppressions
are
tributary,
as in the radical feminist
theory
of
patri-
archal order which sees
oppression
in all forms and
through
all
ages
as
derived from the male/female division.25
Unfortunately,
this deter-
ministic
model,
which in Sheila Rowbotham's
analysis
almost func-
tions like a "feminist
base-superstructure,"
has the
disadvantage
of
leaving
us with no sense of
movement,
or no idea of how women have
acted to
change
their
condition,
especially
in
comparison
with the
Home
Girls,
ed. Barbara Smith
(New
York: Kitchen Table
Press,
1983),
275,
compares
their alliance with Black men with the
negative
identification white women have with
white men:
Our situation as Black
people
necessitates that we have
solidarity
around
the fact of
race,
which white women of course do not need to have with
white
men,
unless it is their
negative solidarity
as racial
oppressors.
We
struggle together
with Black men
against
racism,
while we also
struggle
with Black men about sexism.
22. "Combahee River Collective
Statement,"
272.
23. E. Ann
Kaplan,
in Women and Film
(New
York and London:
Methuen,
1983),
140,
says
the
danger
for Marxists in
employing
the connection between Althusseur
and Lacan is that "the theories do no accommodate the
categories
of either class or
race: economic
language
as the
primary shaping
force
replaces
socioeconomic rela-
tions and institutions as the dominant influence. Sexual difference becomes the driv-
ing
force of
history
in
place
of the Marxist one of class contradictions."
24. Michele
Barrett,
Women's
Oppression
Today (London:
Verso,
1980),
15.
25. For a
comparison
between radical
feminism,
liberal
feminism,
Marxism and
socialist
feminism,
see Alison
Jaggar,
Feminist Politics and Human Nature
(Sussex:
The
Harvester
Press, 1983).
67
68 Jane Gaines
fluidity
of the Marxist
conception
of class.26 The radical feminist notion
of absolute
patriarchy
has also
one-sidedly portrayed
the
oppression
of women
through
an
analogy
with
slavery,
and since this
theory
has
identified woman as man's
savage
or
repressed
Other it
competes
with
theories of racial difference which understand the Black as the "un-
assimilable Other."27
Finally,
the notion of
patriarchy
is most obtuse
when it
disregards
the
position
white women
occupy
over Black men as
well as Black women.28 In order to
rectify
this
tendency
in
feminism,
Black feminists refer to "racial
patriarchy,"
based on an
analysis
of the
white
patriarch/master
in American
history
and his dominance over
the Black male as well as the Black female.29
For Black
feminists,
history
also seems to be the
key
to understand-
ing
Black female
sexuality.
"The construction of the sexual self of the
Afro-American
women,"
says
Rennie
Simson,
"has its roots in the
days
of
slavery."30 Looking
at this construction over time reveals a
pattern
of
patriarchal phases
and women's sexual
adjustments
that has no
equiva-
lent in the
history
of white women in the U.S. In the first
phase,
charac-
terized
by
the dominance of the white master
during
the
period
of
slavery,
Black men and women were
equal by
default. To have allowed
the Black male
any power
over the Black woman would have threatened
the
power
balance of the slave
system.
Thus,
as
Angela
Davis
explains
social control in the slave
community,
"The man slave could not be the
unquestioned superior
within the
'family'
or
community,
for there was
no such
thing
as the
'family provided' among
the
Slaves."3'
The
legacy
26. "The Trouble with
Patriarchy,"
in
People's History
and Socialist
Theory,
ed.
Raphael
Samuel
(London
and Boston:
Routledge
&
Kegan
Paul,
1981),
365.
27. Franz
Fanon,
Black
Skin,
White
Masks,
trans. Charles Lam Markmann
(Paris,
1952;
rpt.
New York: Grove
Press,
1967),
161.
28.
Simons,
387.
29. Barbara
Omolade,
"Hearts of
Darkness,"
in Powers
ofDesire,
eds. Ann
Snitow,
Christine
Stansell,
and Sharon
Thompson (New
York:
Monthly
Review Press,
1983),
352.
30. The Afro-American Female: The Historical Context of the Construction of
Sexual
Identity,"
in Powers
of
Desire,
230. The
"days
of
slavery"
is a
recurring
reference
point
in the
writings
of Black feminists.
Although
I am
arguing
that
studying
the Black
condition in
history
is the antithesis of
theorizing subjectivity ahistorically,
I can also see
how the
"days
of
slavery" might
function as an
ideological
construct. We do the
evolving
work of Black feminists a disservice if we do not
subj
ect it to the same
critique
we would
apply
to white middle class feminism.
How,
for
instance,
can
equal subjugation
dur-
ing slavery
have
anything
to do with ideals of male/female
equality?
I am indebted to
Brackette Williams for
calling
this to
my
attention.
31. "The Black Woman's Role in the
Community
of
Slaves,"
The Black Scholar
(December 1971):
5-6.
White
Privilege
and
Looking
Relations
of this
phase
has involved both the
rejection
of the
pedestal
the white
female has
enjoyed
and the
heritage
of retaliation
against
white male
abuse. If the
strategy
for racial survival was resistance
during
the first
phase,
it was accommodation
during
the
following phase. During
Reconstruction,
the Black
family,
modelled after the white
bourgeois
household,
was constituted
defensively
in an effort to
preserve
the
race.32 Black women
yielded
to their men in deference to a tradition
that
promised respectability
and
safety. Reevaluating
this
history,
Black feminists
point
out that
during
Reconstruction the Black
male,
following
the
example
of the white
patriarch,
"learned" to dominate.
The
position consistently
taken
by
Black
feminists,
that
patriarchy
was
originally foreign
to the Afro-American
community
and was introduced
into it
historically,
then,
represents
a
significant
break with feminist
theories which see
patriarchal power
invested in all men
through-
out
history.33
Black
history
also adds another dimension to the
concept
of
rape
which has
emerged
as the favored
metaphor
for
defining
women's
jeopardy
in the second wave of feminism.34 The
charge
of
rape, conjur-
ing up
a historical connection with
lynching,
is
always
connected with
the
myth
of the Black man as
archetypal rapist. During slavery,
this
abuse
provided
an
opportunity
to strike a blow at Black
manhood,
but
the increase in the sexual violation of black women
during
Reconstruc-
tion reveals its
political implications.
After
emancipation,
the
rape
of
Black women was a
"message"
to Black men
which,
as one historian
describes the
phemomenon,
could be seen as "a reaction to the effort
32.
Omolade,
352.
33.
Joseph,
99;
Audre
Lorde,
in Sister Outsider
(Trumansburg,
New York: The
Crossing
Press,
1984),
119,
sees sexism in Black communities as not
original
to
them,
but as a
plague
that has struck. She
argues:
Because of the continuous battle
against
racial erasure that Black women
and Black men
share,
some Black women still refuse to
recognize
that we
are also
oppressed
as
women,
and that sexual
hostility against
Black
women is
practiced
not
only by
the white racist
society,
but
implemented
within our Black communities as well. It is a disease
striking
the heart of
Black
nationhood,
and silence will not make it
disappear.
34. Linda Gordon and Ellen
DuBois,
in
"Seeking Ecstasy
on the Battefield:
Danger
and Pleasure in Nineteenth
Century
Feminist Sexual
Thought,"
Feminist
Review 13
(Spring 1983):
43,
note that in its two
stages
the feminist movement has
developed
two
major
themes which have
expressed
women's sexual
danger.
Whereas
prostitution
articulated women's fears in the nineteenth
century, rape
summarizes the
contemporary
terror.
69
70 Jane Gaines
of the freedman to assume the role of
patriarch,
able to
provide
for
and
protect
his
family."35
If,
as feminists have
argued,
women's
sexuality
evokes an unconscious terror in
men,
then Black women's
sexuality
represents
a
special
threat to white
patriarchy;
the
possibility
of
its
"eruption"
stands for the
aspirations
of the Black race as a whole.
The
following analysis poses
the
questions
raised when race
complicates
sexual
prohibition.
In the context of race relations in U.S.
history,
sex-
ual
looking
carries with it the threat of actual rather than
symbolic
castration. The
following analysis poses
the
questions
raised when race
complicates
sexual
prohibition.
In the context of race relations in
U.S.
history,
sexual
looking
carries with it the threat of actual rather then
symbolic
castration.
In
Mahogany,
the
sequel
to
Lady Sings
the
Blues,
Diana Ross
plays
an
aspiring
fashion
designer
who dreams of
pulling
herself
up
and out of
her
Chicago
South Side
neighborhood through
a
high-powered
ca-
reer.
During
the
day, Tracy
Chambers is assistant to the
modelling
supervisor
for a
large department
store
resembling
Marshall Field &
Company.
At
night
she attends
design
school where the instructor
rep-
rimands her for
sketching
a cocktail dress instead of the
assignment,
the first
suggestion
of the exotic irrelevance of her
fantasy
career.
Although
she loses her
job
with the
department
store,
the renowned
fashion
photographer
Sean
McEvoy (Tony Perkins)
discovers her as a
model and whisks her off to Rome. There
Tracy finally
realizes her
ambition to become a
designer
when a
wealthy
Italian admirer
gives
her a business of her own. After the
grand
show,
unveiling
her first line
of
clothes,
she decides to return to
Chicago
where she is reunited with
community organizer
Brian Walker
(Billy
Dee
Williams)
whose
politi-
cal career is
organized
as a kind of
counterpoint
to
Tracy's.
With its
long
fashion
photography montage sequences temporarily
interrupting
the
narrative,
Mahogany
invites a
reading
based on the
alternation between narrative and
woman-as-spectacle
as theorized in
"Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema." To the allure of
pure specta-
cle these
sequences
add the fascination of
masquerade
and transfor-
mation. Effected with
wigs
and
make-up
colors,
the transformations
are a
play
on and
against "darkness";
Diana Ross is a
high-tech Egyp-
tian
queen,
a
pale
medieval
princess,
a turbaned
Asiatic,
and a
body-
35.
Jacquelyn
Dowd
Hall,"
'The Mind That Burns in Each
Body': Women, Rape,
and Racial
Violence,"
in Powers
of Desire,
332.
White
Privilege
and
Looking
Relations
painted
blue
nymph.
As her
body
color is washed out in
bright light
or
powdered
over,
and as her
long-haired wigs
blow around her
face,
she
becomes
suddenly
"white."
Motion
pictures
seem never to exhaust the narrative
possibilities
associated with the
metaphor
of the
camera-as-deadly-weapon; Mahog-
any
adds to this the sadomasochistic connotations of
high
fashion
photography
with reference to the mid-seventies work of
Guy
Bourdin
and Helmut Newton that is linked to the tradition of "attraction
by
shock."36 The
montage
sequences chronicling Tracy's
career,
from
perfume
ads to
high
fashion
magazine
covers,
equate
the
photo-
graphic
act with humiliation and violation. Camera zoom and freeze
frame effects translate
directly
into
aggression,
as in the
sequence
in
which Sean
pushes Tracy
into a fountain: her
dripping image
solidifies
into an Italian Revlon advertisement.
Finally,
the motif of
stopping-
the-action-as-aggression
is
equated
with the
supreme
violation -
the
attempt
to murder.
Pressing
his favorite model to her
expressive
limits,
Sean drives her off an
expressway ramp.
Since this
brutality
escalates
after the scene in which he fails with
Tracy
in
bed,
the film
represents
her
punishment
as a direct
consequence
of his
impotence.37
With its classic castration threat
scenario,
its connection between
voyeurism
and
sadism,
and its reference to fetishization as seen in
Sean's
photographic
shrine to the models he has
abused,
Mahogany
is
the
perfect complement
to a
psychoanalytic analysis
of classical
Holly-
wood's "visual
pleasure."
The film feeds further into the latter
by pro-
ducing
its own
"proof'
that there is
only
an incremental difference
between
voyeurism (fashion photography)
and the
supreme
violation
-
murder. The black and white
photographic blow-ups
of
Tracy
salvaged
from the death car seem undeniable evidence of the fine line
between
looking
and
killing,
or,
held at another
angle,
between adver-
tising imagery
and
pornography.
These, then,
are the
points
that the
analysis
of cinema as
patriarchal
makes when it characterizes classical
film form as
ideologically
insidious in its control of the female
image,
its
assuagement
of women's
threat,
and its denial of its own
complicity
in this
signifying activity.
36.
Nancy
Hall-Duncan,
The
History
ofFashion Photography (NewYork: Alpine
Books,
1979),
196.
37. White
reviewerJay
Cocks,
in"BlackandTanFantasy,"Time,
27
October, 1975,
71,
interprets
the scene in which
Tony
Perkins is
represented
as
severely
devastated
after his failure in bed with Diana Ross as a "romantic
interlude,"
and the "one
pearl"
in the entire film.
71
72 Jane Gaines
To
explain
the
ideological
function of this film in terms of the con-
struction of male
pleasure,
however,
is to "aid and abet" the film's
other
ideological project. Following
this line of
analysis,
one is
apt
to
step
into an
ideological signifying trap
set
up by
the chain of
meanings
that lead
away
from
seeing
the film in terms of black and white conflict.
Because there are so
many
connotative
paths
-
photographer exploits
model,
madman assaults
woman,
voyeur attempts
murder
-
we
may
not
immediately
see white man as the
aggressor against
Black woman.
Other
strategies encourage
the viewer to
forget
or not notice racial
issues. For
instance,
the narrative removes
Tracy
from
racially polar-
ized
Chicago
to Rome where the brown Afro-American woman with
Caucasian features is collected
by
the
photographer
who names his
subjects
after inanimate
objects. Losing
her Black
community identity,
Tracy
becomes
Mahogany,
a
dark, rich,
valuable
substance;
that
is,
her
Blackness becomes commodified.
Mahogany
functions
ideologically
for Black viewers in the traditional
Marxist
sense,
that
is,
in the
way
the film obscures the class nature of
social
antagonisms.
This has certain
implications
for
working
class
Black viewers who would benefit the most from
seeing
the
relationship
between
race,
gender,
and class
oppression.
This film
experiences
the
same
problem
in its
placement
of Black femaleness that the wider cul-
ture has had
historically;
a Black female is either all woman and tinted
Black,
or
mostly
Black and
scarcely
woman. These two
expectations
correspond roughly
to the two worlds and two
struggles
the film con-
trasts: the
struggle
over the sexual
objectification
of
Tracy's
body,
targeting
commercial
exploiters,
and the class
struggle
of the Black-
community, targeting
slum landlords. The film identifies this
antag-
onism as the
hostility
between fashion and
politics, corresponding
roughly
with
Tracy
and Brian and
organizing
their conflict and recon-
ciliation.
Intensifying
the conflict between the two
characters,
the film
brings "politics"
and "fashion"
together
in one
daring homage
to the
aesthetic of"attraction
by
shock." Sean
arranges
his models
symmet-
rically
on the back stairwell of a run-down
Chicago apartment building
and
plants
the confused tenants and street
people
as
props.
Flam-
boyant
excess,
the residue of
capital,
is
juxtaposed
with a kind of
dumbfounded
poverty.
For a
moment,
the scene
figures
the
synthesis
of
gender,
class,
and
race,
but the
political glimpse
is
fleeting.
Forced
together
as a
consequence
of the
avant-garde's socially irresponsible
quest
for new
outrage,
the
political antagonisms
are
suspended
-
temporarily
immobilized as the
subjects pose.
White
Privilege
and
Looking
Relations
The connection between
gender,
class,
and race
oppression
is also
denied as the
ghetto photography
session illustrates the
analogy
be-
tween commercial and race/class
exploitation
which
registers
on the
screen as visual
incongruity.
Visual
discrepancy,
which is
finally
used
for aesthetic
effect,
also makes it difficult to
grasp
the confluence of
race, class,
and
gender oppression
in the
image
of
Tracy
Chambers.
Her class
background magically
becomes decor in the
film;
it neither
radicalizes her nor
drags
her down
-
rather it sets her off. Diana Ross
is
alternately weighed
down
by
the
glamour iconography
of commercial
modelling
and
stripped
to a Black
body
essence. But the haute couture
iconography ultimately
dominates the film. Since race is decorative
and class does not reveal itself to the
eye,
she can
only
be seen as "ex-
ploited"
in terms of her role as a model.
If the film
plays
down
race,
it does so not
only
to accommodate white
audiences. While it
worships
the success of the Black cult star and treats
aspiring young
Blacks to Diana Ross's dream come true
-
a chance to
design
all the costumes in her own
film,
Mahogany
also hawks the
philosophy
of Black
enterprise.
Here it does not matter where
you
come
from,
but
you
should ask
yourself,
in the words of the theme
song,
"Where are
you going
to,
do
you
know?"38 Race is like
any
other
obstacle
-
to be transcended
through diligent
work and dedication to
a
goal. Supporting
the film's
self-help philosophy
is the related
story
of
Diana Ross's
discovery
as a
skinny teenager singing
in a
Baptist
Church
in Detroit. With
Mahogany,
Motown
president
and founder
Berry
Gordy (who
fired
Tony
Richardson to take over the film's direction
himself) helps
Diana Ross make
something
of herself
again
(on
a
larger scale) just
as he
helped
so
many aspiring recording
artists
by
coaching
them in
money management
and social decorum in his
talent school.39
The
phenomenon
of Motown Industries comments less on the
pop-
ularity
of the
self-help philosophy
and more on the
discrepancy
be-
tween the
opportunity
formula and the social existence of Black
Americans.
Ironically,
Black
capitalism's
one
big
success is
thriving
on
the
impossibility
of Black
enterprise:
soul entertainment as
compensa-
38. Simon
Frith,
in "Mood
Music,"
Screen
25,
no. 3
(May-June 1984):
78,
says
that
the theme
song
is more
signficant
than critics have realized. It is the last of the motion
picture experience
to touch us as we leave the
theatre,
and it works to
"rearrange
our
feelings."
39.
Stephen Birmingham,
Certain
People (Boston
& Toronto:
Little, Brown,
and
Co.,
1977),
262-263.
73
74 Jane Gaines
tion and release sells because
capitalism
cannot deliver
well-being
to
all.40 Black music and
performance, despite
the
homogenization
of the
original
forms,
represent
a
utopian aspiration
for Black Americans as
well as white suburbanites. Simon Frith describes the "need"
supplied
by
rock
fantasy:
Black music had a
radical,
rebellious
edge:
it carried a sense of
possibility
denied in the labor
market;
it
suggested
a
comradeship,
a
sensuality,
a
grace
and
joy
and
energy lacking
in work... the
power
of rock
fantasy
rests,
precisely
on
utopianism.41
Here I am
drawing
on a
theory
of culture which sees
capitalism
as
erratically supplying
subversive "needs" as well as "false"
desires,
often
through
the same commodities which
produce
the
ideological
effect.
Given that
popular
culture can accommodate the
possibility
of both
containment and resistance in what Stuart Hall calls its "double move-
ment,"
I want to
turn, then,
to the
ways Mahogany
can be seen to move
in the other direction.42
Racial conflict surfaces or recedes in this film rather like the
percep-
tual trick in
which,
depending
on the
angle
of
view,
one
swirling pat-
tern or the other
pops
out at the viewer. Some
ambiguity,
for
instance,
is built into the confrontation between Black and
white,
as in the scene
where Sean lures Brian into a
struggle
over an unloaded
weapon.
The
outcome,
in which
Sean,
characterized as a harmless
eccentric,
manip-
ulates Brian into
pulling
the
trigger,
could be read as
confirming
the
racist
conception
that Blacks who
possess
street reflexes are mur-
derous
aggressors.
Ebony
magazine,
however,
features a
promotional
still of the scene
(representing
Brian
holding
a
gun
over
Sean),
with a
caption describing
how Brian is tricked but still wins the
fight.43
View-
ers,
who choose the winners of
ambiguous
conflicts,
may
also choose
to inhabit
"looking"
structures. The studies of lesbian
readership
already
cited show that subcultural
groups
can
interpret popular
forms to their
advantage,
even without "invitation" from the text. Cer-
tainly
more work needs to be done with the
positioning
of the audience
40.
Manning
Marable,
in How
Capitalism Underdeveloped
Black America
(Boston:
South End
Press,
1983),
157,
lists Motown Industries as the
largest grossing
Black-
owned
corporation
in the
U.S.,
which did $64.8 million in business in 1979.
41. Sound
Effects (New
York:
Pantheon,
1981),
264.
42. "Notes on
Deconstructing
'The
Popular',"
in
People's History
and Socialist
Theory,
228.
43.
"Spectacular
New Film for Diana Ross:
Mahogany," Ebony,
October
1975,
146.
White
Privilege
and
Looking
Relations
around the
category
of
race,
considering,
for
instance,
the social
pro-
hibitions
against
the Black man's sexual
glance,
the interracial inter-
mingling
of male
"looks,"
and other visual taboos related to sanctions
against
interracial
sexuality,
but these issues are
beyond
the
scope
of
this
essay.
What I do find is that one of the basic tenants of
contemporary
feminist film
theory
-
that the
(male) spectator possesses
the female
indirectly through
the
eyes
of the male
protagonist
(his
screen sur-
rogate)
-
is
problematized
in a film in which racial difference struc-
tures a
hierarchy
of access to the female
image.
These racial
positions
relate to other scenarios which are unknown
by psychoanalytic
cate-
gories. Considering
the racial
categories
which
psychoanalysis
does
not
recognize,
we see that the white male
photographer monopolizes
the
classic
patriarchal
look
controlling
the view of the female
body,
and
that the Black male
protagonist's
look is either
repudiated
or frus-
trated. The
sumptuous image
of Diana Ross is made available to the
spectator
via the white male character
(Sean)
but not
through
the look of
the Black male character
(Brian).
In the
sequence
in which
Tracy
and Brian first meet outside her
apartment building,
his "look" is
renounced. In each of the three shots of
Tracy
from Brian's
point
of
view,
she turns from
him,
walking
out of his
sight
and
away
from the
sound of his voice as he shouts at her
through
a
megaphone.
The
relationship
between the male and female
protagonists
is
negotiated
around Brian's
bullhorn,
emblem of his charismatic Black
leadership,
through
which he tries to reach both the Black woman and his con-
stituents. Thus both visual and audio control is denied the Black
male,
and the failure of his voice is
consistently
associated with
Tracy's
publicity image.
The
discovery by
Brian's aides of the
Mahogany
ad for
Revlon in Newsweek coincides with the
report
that the
Gallup polls
show the Black candidate
trailing
in the election.
Later,
the film cuts
from
Mahogany
on the
Harper's
Bazaar cover to Brian's
limping
cam-
paign
where the sound of his voice
magnified through
a
microphone
is
intermittently
drowned out
by
a
passing
train as he makes his futile
pitch
to white
factory
workers. The manifest
goal
of the
film,
the recon-
ciliation of the Black heterosexual
couple,
is thwarted
by
the commer-
cial
appropriation
of her
image,
but,
in
addition,
her
highly
mediated
form threatens the Black
political struggle.
Quite simply,
then,
there are structures relevant to
any interpreta-
tion of this film which override the
patriarchal
scenario feminists have
75
76 Jane Gaines
theorized as
formally determining.
From Afro-American
literature,
for
instance,
we should consider the scenario of the talented and
beautiful mulatta who
"passes"
in white
culture,
but decides to return
to Black
society.44
From Afro-American
history,
we should recall the
white male's
appropriation
of the Black women's
body
which weak-
ened the Black male and undermined the
community.
We need to
develop
a
theory
of Black female
representation
which takes account of
"passing"
as an
eroticizing
alternation and a
peculiar play
on differ-
ence,
and the
corresponding
double consciousness it
requires
of those
who can seem either Black orWhite.
Further,
we need to reconsider the
woman's
picture
narrative convention
-
the career renounced in
favor of the man
-
in the context of Black
history. Tracy
Chambers's
choice
recapitulates
Black
aspiration
and the white middle class model
which
equates
stable
family
life with
respectability,
but
Tracy's
deci-
sion is
complicated
since it favors Black
community cooperation
over
acceptance by
white
society. Finally,
one of the most difficult
questions
raised
by
Afro-American
history
and literature has to do with interra-
cial
heterosexuality
and sexual
"looking." Mahogany suggests
that,
since a Black male character is not allowed the
position
of control
occupied by
a white male
character,
race could be a factor in the con-
struction of cinema
language.
More work on
looking
and racial taboos
might
determine whether or not mainstream cinema can offer the
spectator
the
pleasure
of
looking
at a white female character via the
gaze
of a Black male character.
Framing
the
question
of male
privilege
and
viewing pleasure
as the
"right
to look"
may help
us to rethink film
theory along
more materialist
lines,
considering,
for
instance,
how some
groups
have
historically
had the license to "look"
openly
while other
groups
have "looked"
illicitly.45
Or,
does the
psychoanalytic
model
44.
See,
for
instance,
Jessie
Fauset's There is
Confusion (New
York.: Boni and Liv-
eright, 1924),
and Plum Bun
(
New York:
1928;
rpt.
New York and London:
Roudedge
and
Kegan
Paul,
1985);
Nella Larsen's
Quicksand (New
York:
1928;
rpt.
New York:
Collier,
1971),
and
Passing (New
York:
1929;
rpt.
New York:
Collier,
1971).
45.
FredricJameson,
in "Pleasure: A Political
Issue,"
Formations
of
Pleasure
(Boston
and London:
Routledge
&
Kegan
Paul,
1983),
7,
interprets Mulvey's
connection be-
tween
viewing pleasure
and male
power
as the conferral of a
"right
to look." He does
not take this
further,
but I find the term
suggestive
and at the same time
potentially
volatile. I refer to the current division in the women's movement over the need for anti-
pornography legislation.
Feminist
supporters
of the
legislation argue
that male
por-
nographic reading
and
"looking"
should be
illegal
because it is an
infringement
of
White
Privilege
and
Looking
Relations
allow us to consider also the
prohibitions against homosexuality
and
miscegenation?
Feminists who use
psychoanalytic theory
are careful to
point
out
that
"looking" positions
do not correlate with social
groups,
and that
ideological positioning
is
placement
in a
representational system
which has no one-to-one
correspondence
with social
reality.
This,
of
course,
keeps
the levels of the social
totality hopelessly separate.
While
I would not want to
argue
that form is
ideologically
neutral,
I would
suggest
that we have
overemphasized
the
ideological
function
of"sig-
nifying practice"
at the
expense
of
considering
other
ideological
im-
plications
of the
conflicting meanings
in the text.
Or,
as
Terry
Lovell
puts
it:
...
while
interpretation depends
on
analysis
of the work's
signify-
ing practice,
assessment of its
meanings
from the
point
of view of
its
validity,
or of its
ideology, depends
on
comparison
between
those structures of
meaning
and their
object
of
reference,
through
the mediation of another
type
of discourse.46
The
impetus
behind Marxist
criticism,
whether we want to admit it or
not,
is to make
comparisons
between social
reality
as we live it and
ideology
as it does not
correspond
to that
reality.
Mahogany
is
finally
about the
mythical
existence of some illusive and
potent
substance. We know it
only through
what white men do to
secure
it,
and what Black men are without it. It is the ultimate substance
to the
photographer-connoisseur
of women who dies
trying
to record
its "trace" on film. It is known
by degree
-
whatever is most wild and
enigmatic,
whatever cannot be
conquered
or subdued
-
the last fron-
tier of female
sexuality. Although
it is undetectable to the
advertising
men who
analyze physical
attributes,
it is
immediately perceptable
to a
woman
(Gavina
herself,
the owner of the Italian
advertising agency),
who uses it to
promote
the most
inexplicable
and
subjective
of com-
women's civil
rights.
For an overview of the debates around
pornography
as
they
relate
to film
theory
see Chuck Kleinhans
andJulia
Lesage,
"The Politics of Sexual
Represen-
tation,"
inJump
Cut 30
(March, 1985):
24-26. In the same
issue,
two articles
argue
the
political significance
of sexual
looking
for the
gay
male subculture
(Richard Dyer's
"Coming
to
Terms," 28-29,
and Tom
Waugh's
"Men's
Pornography: Gay
vs.
Straight,"
30-33.)
For one of the most
provocative analyses
of the feminist
position
on
por-
nography,
see
Joanna
Russ,
Magic
Mommas,
Trembling
Sisters, Puritans,
and
Perverts,
(Trumansburg,
New York: The
Crossing
Press,
1985).
46. Pictures
of Reality (London:
British Film
Institute,
1980),
90.
77
78 Jane Gaines
modities
-
perfume.
In one of the fullest considerations of Black
female
sexuality
to
date,
Hortense
J. Spillers
correlates the
great
si-
lence on this
subject
with the unmarked
territory
that has not
yet
been
designated
as culture.
Paradoxically,
the Black female is
thought
to
have ". . . so much sexual
potential
that she has none at all that
any-
body
is
ready
and able to
recognize
at the level
of
culture."47 Black
women's
sexuality
remains
unfathomed,
Spillers goes
on,
because the
opportunity
to
codify
one's
sexuality belongs only
to those in
power;
even as feminists have theorized women's
sexuality, they
have univer-
salized from the
particular experience
of white
women,
thus
effecting
a
"deadly metonomy."48
While white feminists theorize the female
image
in terms of
objec-
tification, fetishization,
and
symbolic
absence,
their Black counter-
parts
describe the
body
as the site of
symbolic
resistance and the
"paradox of
non-being."49
What strikes me
immediately
in this com-
parison
is the stubbornness of the terms of discourse
analysis
which
cannot be made to
deal,
for
instance,
with both what it has
historically
meant to be
designated
as not-human and how Black women whose
bodies were not
legally
their own
fought against
treatment based on this
determination.
Further,
feminist
analysis
of culture as
patriarchal
can-
not conceive of
any
connection between the female
image
and class or
racial
exploitation
which includes the male.
Historically,
Black men
and
women,
although equally endangered,
have been
simultaneously
implicated
in incidents of interracial
brutality. During
two different
periods
of Afro-American
history,
sexual
assault,
". ..
symbolic
of the
effort to
conquer
the resistance the blackwoman could
unloose,"
was a
47. "Interstices: A Small Drama of
Words,"
in Pleasure and
Danger,
85.
48.
Spillers,
78. It is
very tempting
to contrast the colonized
(the body
or other
cultural
terrain)
with a notion of the
"authentic,"
as
though something
has
escaped
or
eluded colonization. We often
argue
for the
integrity
of
people's indigenous
culture or
alternative
experience by characterizing
it as
"pure";
we
hope
that the colonizer will
find the alien culture
incomprehensible
or "unfathomable." Feminists have
recently
slipped
into this
position
as
they
have created a new
mystique
based on women's "un-
realized"
sexuality
-
a wild
place
as
yet
uncharted
by
the dominant culture. The
prob-
lem is that even this
space
is filled out with well worn notions of
pleasure
and
fulfillment. Given the
opportunity
to
symbolize,
to
codify sexuality,
the sexual subor-
dinate can never
represent
or
experience
in
complete
cultural isolation. In
borrowing
Spillers's argument,
I have made a case for Black women's
sexuality
that I would never
have made for female
sexuality
as a whole. Brackette Williams has corrected me
here
again.
49.
Spillers,
77.
White
Privilege
and
Looking
Relations
warning
to the entire Black
community.50 My
frustration with the
feminist voice that insists on
change
at the level
of language
is that this
position
can
only
deal with the historical situation described above
by
turning
it into
discourse,
and even as I write
this,
acutely
aware as I am
of the theoretical
prohibitions against mixing representational
issues
with real historical
ones,
I feel the
pressure
to
transpose people's
struggles
into more
discursively manageable
terms.
A
theory
of
ideology
which
separates
the levels of the social forma-
tion in such a
way
that it is not
only inappropriate
but
theoretically
impossible
to introduce the
category
of
history
cannot be
justified
with
Marxism. This has been
argued
elsewhere
by
British
Marxists,among
them Stuart
Hall,
who finds the "universalist
tendency"
found in both
Freud and Lacan
responsible
for this
impossibility.
The incom-
patability
between Marxism and
psychoanalytic theory
is insurmount-
able at this
time,
he
argues,
because ". .. the
concepts
elaborated
by
Freud
(and
reworked
by Lacan)
cannot,
in their
in-general
and universalist
form,
enter the theoretical
space
of historical materialism .. ." What is
needed is "further
specification
and elaboration
-
specification
at the
level at which the
concepts
of historical materialism
operate (historically-
specific
modes of
production, specific
social
formations,
ideology
as a
determinate and
over-determining
instance,
etc.)."5'
In discussions
within feminist film
theory,
it often seems the other
way
around
-
that
historical materialism cannot enter the
space
theorized
by
discourse
analysis drawing
on
psychoanalytic concepts.
Sealed off as it is
(in
theory),
this
analysis may
not
comprehend
the
category
of the real his-
torical
subject,
but its use will
always
have
implicationsfor
that
subject.
50.
Davis,
11.
51. "Debate:
Psychology, Ideology
and the Human
Subject," Ideology
and Con-
sciousness 2
(October 1977):
118-119.
79

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White Privilege and Looking Relations: Race and Gender in Feminist Film Theory

Author(s): Jane Gaines

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