A REFLECTION ON PROCESS

When I started my process, I was really afraid that I’d come out on the other side feeling real cynical about being a black woman, real quick.

 

My origin piece praised the movie Rear Window for its surface level character complexity, portraying Grace Kelly as a hyper-aware female character for the classic cinema. Too bad she couldn’t be the badass I thought she was, because of the fetishy angles Hitchcock used throughout his film. I became obsessed with the male gaze, and how it controlled female characters on the big screen. A lot of my early research focused around women co-existing in a world dominated by the male gaze. My initial ignorance towards Kelly’s tie to the male gaze let me analyze the film on a deeper level, and reconcile with the assumption that women are able to exist in these types of films without being objectified. But from here, I realized that a lot of the male gaze was complicated by individuals I identified with; being a black female, it was hard to put myself into the role of Grace Kelly, when I literally couldn’t be Grace Kelly. During the end of this experiment cycle, I felt more disconnected than I had originally felt with the piece. While I still had this deep love for the aesthetic of classic cinema (albeit their fetishy nature), I couldn’t see myself ever truly connecting with the genre, and the white-influenced theories that came with it. I started to write a script for my video essay, but...I felt...really white, which I’m not. I’m half-black. During the process, the black part of me felt so lost and invisible, that I felt like I was doing myself a disservice. But I still felt like I had a connection to the male gaze, because black women still popped up in media all the time.

 

So, what gives?

 

The male gaze was relevant to the role of black, female voices...but different. It was that feeling that you get when something’s off, but you can’t really tell what it is until you chip away at it. At first, I wanted to combat this theory by introducing all minority voices that are subjects of the male gaze, ones far worse off than that of Grace Kelly’s. But this still felt like a reach...I couldn’t speak about experiences I didn’t know. So I took up the genre of an op-ed, to give my hot-headed opinion about society’s view of black women, and how the female gaze is starting to combat this. I discussed how SZA’s identity tied her to the male gaze, and complicated this world view. Her album Crtl actively combated misogynistic, stereotyped ideals placed on black women through the newly coined “female gaze”. By being open, vulnerable, and emotional, I was able to connect to SZA on a deeper level, as she spoke of events that specifically targeted me. But within the genre I was writing in, I didn’t feel like I had the authority to argue her experience, because the op-ed became disconnected from the society we lived in. I learned from the start, after listing the conventions of an op-ed in a blog post, that opinion-based writing was what I was getting in to. But I was "frankensteining" together all these lost strings of thought, ones that I felt needed a little more theory, but not too much, for people to understand. But also, a little more soul, so that people could connect to it. But where the hell was I going to get THAT from? I was ending up with more questions than answers, at this point.  

 

I was able to place my own identity within a memoir, and recount the times where I felt marginalized by men in my life. A place where I felt victim to the male gaze. I’ve been through a lot of difficult, unfortunately painful experiences that have come to shaped my view of men and masculinity, and their views of me. It’s turned me into a very angry gal when comes to love. It wasn’t so much a journey of self-discovery, but relaying to my audience how the assumptions society has about women’s bodies and how it ties to their ethnicity...how it can hurt real people.

 

So, how did I end up at my final project?

I was being selfish: I wanted something to relate to. I wanted a story where I didn’t feel marginalized or fetishized for who I am. Throughout my processes...I was helping myself set up a really analytical, opinion based argumentative...memoir. I got to know my identity better; why I felt so disconnected from the white women I glorified, but knew I could never be a part of. But I was scared; I didn’t feel like I had authority to speak to what black femininity should be in movies. But didn’t I do all this damn research for a reason? I had all of these experiences, but the male gaze didn’t talk about black women...romantic comedies acknowledge cinema’s racist pasts when it included black women. I needed to bridge those gaps, clear up the history that continued to leave me out. It was important to me to take the broadness of these theories, and see where it applied to my life, and where it didn’t. I was a victim of the male gaze, but it didn’t really want me. I could only love within certain boundaries. I wasn’t going to get my own fairy tale. I had power in being a black female that loved movies, but knew my identity’s history with them. I so had to take all the things I learned about my own gaze, the female gaze, the oppositional gaze, and show people why it mattered. Why a narrative for me was so important. I wasn’t trying to be a white woman, I wasn’t too keen on fitting black stereotypes. I was flesh and blood and more than just a bunch of fucking theory and history. I wanted to create place where that dignity I thought we'd never had, could begin to flourish in a story of my own creation. So that's where I left off. It isn't very long, and definitely not fleshed out. But by I've found that by no means does a black narrative for women have to be perfect yet: we're still figuring things out. I'm still figuring things out.