Cinema in Toni Morrisons The Bluest Eye Essay - 1584 Words

Cinema in Toni Morrisons The Bluest Eye In Toni Morrison’s novel, The Bluest Eye, characters learn how to perform social roles though film. Pauline goes to the movies in search of a more glamorous identity. Instead, the unattainable beauty she sees onscreen reaffirms her low place in society. Laura Mulvey’s article, Visual and Other Pleasures, explains film’s ability to indoctrinate patriarchal social order. This ability is certainly applicable to Morrison’s novel. Film reinforces the Breedloves’ place in society, teaches Claudia to love Shirley Temple and constructs women as sexual objects for pleasure. Mulvey’s article also examines the powerful, active male gaze. In The Bluest Eye the female gaze is constructed as dirty,†¦show more content†¦A part on the side, with one little curl on my forehead. It looked just like her. Well, almost just like† (Morrison 123). Pauline recognizes herself in the glamorous women onscreen. Mulvey discusses this type of rec ognition in her article. She refers to it as a type of mirror stage when the viewer’s â€Å"curiosity and the wish to look intermingle with a fascination with likeness and recognition† (Mulvey 17). She goes on to explain how this type of recognition then leads to misrecognition. Pauline experiences such misrecognition. She learns that she can never be like the beautiful women in the movies. While watching the show, her tooth falls out. She then realizes, â€Å"There I was five months pregnant, trying to look like Jean Harlow, and a front tooth gone. Everything went then. Look like I just didn’t care no more after that† (Morrison 123). The tooth falling out reminds Pauline of her ugliness and helps her to understand her mistake in identifying with Jean Harlow. She understands she will never be beautiful or glamorous, which are the traits the movies have taught her to value. Because of her film education, Pauline learns to hate herself. The movi es reinforce her inferior social status. She now believes in her ugliness and the ugliness of her family. She sees â€Å"nothing to contradict the statement; saw, in fact, support for it leaning at them from every billboard, every movie, every glance† (Morrison 39). Film instructs Pauline of her proper placeShow MoreRelatedWoman Is The Nigger Of The Wolrd: The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison934 Words   |  4 PagesIgnored as a person. Denied as a species. ‘The total absence of human recognition† (Morrison, 36). For decades, African-Americans have not only been looked down upon by white people, they have been dehumanized. Toni Morrison is controversial for pillorying this topic, that has been silenced by white society for years, not from the ‘Master Narrative’ perspective, that is the white male one’s, but from the exact opposite of this: an African-American girl. 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