Selfie with Mickalene Thomas

 

Arianna Perez

Mickalene Thomas

                                                              Bell Hooks: Understanding Patriarchy 

“ Until we can collectively acknowledge the damage patriarchy causes and the suffering it creates, we cannot address male pain. We cannot demand for men the right to be whole, to be givers and sustainers for life. Obviously some patriarchal men are reliable and even benevolent caretakers and providers, but still they are imprisoned by a system that undermines their mental health.” PG30

“Instead of wondering why men resist women’s struggle for e freer and healthier life. I began to wonder why men refrain from engaging in their own struggle.” PG 31

Bell Hooks: The Oppositional Gaze

“With the possible exception of early race movies, black female spectators have had to develop looking relations within a cinematic context that constructs our presence as absence, that denies the “body” of the black female so as to perpetuate white supremacy and with it a phallocentric spectatorship where the woman to be looked at and desired is “white.” PG 118

“Grown black women had a different response to Sapphire; they identified with her frustrations and her woes. They resented the way she was mocked. They resented the way these screen images could assault black womanhood, could name us bitches, nags. And in opposition they claimed Sapphire as their own, as the symbol of that angry part of themselves white folks and black men could not even begin to understand.” PG120