« Transgender | Main | bell hooks »

Bell Hooks

hooks is a very wise and insightful woman, and has a lot of important and fascinating things to say. Her movie, Cultural Criticism and Transformation exposes racist and anti-feminist messages woven into popular culture. Her opinions are supported by excerpts from music videos, feature films, and television news coverage. The OJ Simpson trial, Spike Lee, and "Hoop Dreams" all come up for analysis. She also takes on the movie Kids, rap, Hollywood's appropriation of "blackness," and the media representation of the black female body. The film has two main focuses. The first focus laid out the foundations of her work, arguing that film imagery and media representations are deliberately crafted to convey messages that reinforce the authority of powerful white males at the expense of women and people of color. The second focus demonstrates how to recognize the "white supremacist, capitalist patriarchal values" reflected in popular media and public debate. hook reveals how black politics, feminist politics, and critical thinking can help you see what you didnt even notice was in front of you.


I strongly agreed with the last line of your entry "critical thinking can help you see what you didn't even notice was in front of you." I think that this fact right here is the reason that the harmful representations in popular culture and media of women and other minority groups are so dangerous to society. These stereotypes and biases are so deeply ingrained upon the subconscious that acting upon them becomes second nature. So much so,that when certain crimes such as that of violence against women occur, people often overlook the question of why this has occurred in the first place; rather, mistaking this behavior as, if not acceptable, at least unsurprising in today's society.