Bell Hooks's "oppositional Gaze" In Edouard Manet's Painting Olympia

Name Instructor Course Date Re-reading of Bell Hooks's "Oppositional Gaze" in Edouard Manet's Painting Olympia (1863) Bell Hooks coined the phrase “oppositional gaze” in 1992. The phrase has been used politically to address the right of black people to gaze. To Hook, gazing comes with a lot of power. Edouard Manet's painting Olympia (1863) shows a nude woman, Olympia, being given flowers by a black lady servant. Olympia is lying nude on her bed. When first released, the confrontational gaze that Olympia had caused a shock. However, the opposing gaze of Olympia’s maid in the background is almost ignored. People were never even bothered that Olympia was nude in the presence of a fully clothed black maid or at the details that depicted her as a prostitute-they were mad at her gaze. The intense gaze of Olympia portrays the concept of “social modernity” whereas the opposing gaze of Olympia’s maid is given no attention even though it is apparent that it plays a critical role in the picture. Bell brings up the issue of the black female as a spectator, never the one to be the center of focus. In the picture, the white lady is the center of focus and stares confidently at the viewer. For the black woman, her presence there is not treated with much recognition and she might as well not been there. But she is only there to fulfill the focus on the white woman. And in the view of Hook, the spectator must have oppositional gaze because their presence in art and cinema is normally ignored. The oppositional gaze gives them some space of power. The white women dominate the mainstream cinema while the black women are overlooked. The inclusion of the black woman in the painting has elicited a number of reactions including an attempt by the painter to try to compare black and white as clean and dirty or good and evil. In the picture, Olympia’s maid appears to be “looking back” and Bell Hooks considers that to be having an opposing gaze. Hook holds that there is power in gazing that can be used to challenge the relationship between a viewer and a viewee. According to Hook (95), the power of the opposing gaze could be to show that she is denied, repressed, or just interrogating. At the time of this painting, there was widespread “white slavery” and most white women were attended to by black servants. Olympia’s maid, Laure has been depicted in humane and sensitive manner compared to the aggressive way in which Olympia has been portrayed. Laure can be said to have been used to portray black femininity. Laura never meets the gaze of the viewers. The begging question is, is she ashamed of her body conditions? As Hook explains, when black women are able to return the gaze, they can be able to transcend their luminal body conditions. It can be argued that the black maid is used to bring out the sexuality of Olympia. When a viewer looks at the two pictures, it is open to the eyes that they are a stuck contrast with each other. The painter wanted to give the impression that there is just a sharp contrast between the white woman and the black woman. The white woman is the goddess of the painting, never shying from showing her nakedness. When one argues along that line, the overall impression is that people would not be dawn to the sexualit...