subject: Construction of the 'Racial Identity' by Gaze and Blindness in The Bluest Eye and Native Son [print this page] Construction of the 'Racial Identity' by Gaze and Blindness in The Bluest Eye and Native Son
Introduction
According to Michel Foucault, our identity is constructed by how we are seen. In this regard, gaze' and panopticon are the mechanics that create, propagate, establish, and gradually naturalize racial identity and prejudices, leading to the blacks' internalization of hegemonic ideology and inferiority which sustain automatically because of the victims' blindness to them. Therefore, to look' and be looked' through various modes of inscription like films, posters, literature, media (especially newsreels and newspaper reports), as well as commodity consumer popular culture in general, are explored and criticized by many writers and cultural critics. In this dissertation, the central/focal question is"How the identity of the African-Americans constructed and what is its racial effect?" Here, I would try to establish my hypothesis by locating (not comparatively) how various modes of gaze' and blindness have been articulated in Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye and Richard Wright's Native Son, and how false myths of gaze' adversely affect individual psychology and behavior of both the blacks and whites. It is noteworthy that mostly the former novel is concerned with the concept of beauty'; and the latter with the black' and red' phobia.
The methodology adopted in my research consists of a textual analysis, which will draw from a cultural theoretical framework, taking a critical exploration mainly towards the African-Americans' racial identity and its effects. Regarding the terminology, I have composed a chapter titled "Theoretical Framework". There, I would like to clarify Michel Foucault's idea of gaze and panopticon. Besides, to analyze gaze from a cultural perspective, I would also like to have a glance at Louise Althusser's concept of ISA or Ideological State Apparatuses now. Gaze', in the cultural sense, is the desire of one person that constructs the identity of another who is gazed. It is a means of domination, by making others' identity according to some particular (white, colonial etc.) gaze. And ideology is the system of thought in a given society. The primary and secondary sources I have used are enlisted as Works Cited' at the end of my research paper.
The gaze, [sometimes called, the look] is a technical term which was first discussed by French intellectual, namely Michel Foucault's [1926-1984] description of the medical gaze. Gaze is the ideological mechanism which from the perspective of dominant groups constructs, perpetuates, and determines the identity of the subaltern. It is not only a mechanism but also a controlling force. One can not protest this policy, through gaze, one's identity is constructed. The concept of gaze is concerned with the relations of power. Foucault's concept of gaze carries the sense of being objectified, subordinated, or threatened by the look' of another. Foucault argued that we should understand perception as governed by the modes of discourse. It characterizes particular social and intellectual regimes. Foucault also deals directly with the conditions and effects of the gaze in the concept of panopticon surveillance'.
Michel Foucault's example of the panopticon is a model prison designed by Jeremy Bentham, which would comprise a circular building of prison cells, an open yard and a central tower. From this tower the prison-keeper could observe all the inmates without himself being observed. Here, prisoners would be subject to the gaze' of the guard, but never really know if they were really being watched. As a result, they would have to constantly monitor their actions and be on their best behaviour. Foucault argued that such persistent self-monitoring and self-regulation would lead to the normalization of the deviant as they internalized the disciplinary regime to which they were subject. The panopticon would thus ensure the effects of constant surveillance through an invisible and not necessarily actual observer. This is a dramatic instance of the association of power and the gaze Foucault is concerned to identify.
Again, according to Foucault, the supervisor's observation controls the observed individuals by the power that coexists with the supervisor's observation. While the supervisor is observing the individuals, the disciplinary power he wields enters the observed bodies; working through general visibility'. Practically, surveillance appears in many institutions, such as schools, media etc. for they produce supervision. Through surveillance, a massive soup is placed under control, for the disciplinary power pierces into their bodies to make them weak and submissive. In order to keep the society in control, the white gaze as the invisible means of surveillance is everywhere with its disciplinary power of white values. The whites do not impose the white values on the blacks through physical violence; but by some other implicit ways such as the white gaze. The white gaze is such a subtle, oppressive means that the blacks think nothing to fight back. In short, psychology the blacks are overwhelmingly oppressed. The white gaze infuses the white values and the disciplinary power into the inferiority of African-Americans without raising their urges to fight back. Gradually they accustom themselves to the white values embedded in the white gaze.
Both Toni Morrison and Foucault draw attention to how people are implicitly oppressed and disciplined in the construction of their subjectivity. In The Bluest Eye, the dominant racial ideology is that everything related to the colour of whiteness is beautiful and blackness is ugly. Thereby, the identity of the African-Americans is terminated through the interpellation of the western ideological thoughts. And Interpellation is the humble acceptance of one's own position and identity imposed by the dominant culture or society. Most African-Americans are stimulated by the rules or ideologies set by the white Americans. One gets the feelings of constant gazing from the idea of panopticon and loses his/her total sense of identity and freedom. In this novel, the black people's identity is constructed by the gaze of the white people that controls their codes of behaviour. White ideologies work as the mechanism of panopticon in the black community and determine their identity.
It has been argued that the principle of the panopticon lives on in our wider society and culture. So, panopticon is a system of regulation, monitoring and surveillance' to operate patterns of behaviour' continuously through some ideological state apparatuses like educational institution, church, media and other modern technologies. But in the context of The Bluest Eye, panopticon is not merely a visual device of imposing and accepting racial identity of inferiority, but also it works subtly through the life of an individual and a community. The way of admiration, acceptance and praise for any human being can simply be understood by other men's look; at the same time, disgust, rejection and unworthiness for anybody can also be understood by simple look or gaze'. Thus, by panopticon and gaze of white standard, blacks are identified negatively regardless of their origin and without questioning they accept and internalize the hegemonic ideology through total negation and self-hatred. Blacks measure themselves through the eyes of whites. In other words, individual blacks stand to the particular norms of beauty and values imposed by white culture. Here we see the importance of what Baier calls second person-hood,' of seeing oneself through the others' eyes in a social and historical context.
Chapter II
Gaze in The Bluest Eye
Now, the mechanisms of gaze and panopticon work through school, media and church in The Bluest Eye. Firstly, school provides training for blacks to become passive and accept the master's policy: "They go to land-grant colleges, normal schools and learn how to do the white man's work with refinement" (Morrison 64).
As an African-American, Morrison's The Bluest Eye explores the complexity of the look' as the controlling gaze of a dominant, racially oppressive society which constructs whiteness as the norm while viewing the African-Americans as the other'. Understood from the perspective of a black woman, the dominant society's gaze, constructed as a touchstone, is driven by a layering of motivations that expresses racism and classism in its operations. Further, the look' of the dominant social order is internalized by the black characters who construct themselves and others through and in a few instances against, the gaze of the Master', almost always with disastrous results. Indeed, Morrison is critically aware of how the dominant society's ideological and commercial apparatuses maintain and hold the look' in place to the detriment of her black characters. This essay will track down and interrogate some of the diverse, and sometimes intricate, meanings of the look' and blackness articulated in Morrison and Wright's novels comparatively in block style.
Regarding the tracks of the look', The Bluest Eye holds as its central concern a critique of western beauty and its special destructiveness when imposed upon people of colour in general. Therefore, she asserts that the idea of physical beauty is one of "probably the most destructive ideas in the history of human thought. Both originating in envy, thrived in insecurity, and ended in disillusion." (Morrison 95). One can discern much about the construction and working of the look' by exploring the plight of the novel's principal victim, a twelve-year-old black girl named Pecola Breedlove. Her sad situation is compounded by a crushing sense of inferiority and ugliness; inherited from her family and their own struggles with the look' and by her attempts to ease her misery by retreating ever more deeply into a confused and finally shattered psychotic self image. Early in the novel, Morrison locates Pecola and the Breedloves' problems with gaze' in the family setting and poses these problems as, ultimately, ideological. The author goes on to theorize:
You looked at them and wondered why they were so ugly: you looked closely and could not find the source. Then you realized that it came from conviction, their conviction. It was as though some mysterious all-knowing master had given each one a cloak of ugliness to wear, and they had each accepted it without question. The master had said, "You are ugly people." They had looked about themselves and saw nothing to contradict the statement; saw, in fact, support for it leaning at them from every billboard, every movie, every glance. "Yes," they had said, "you are right." And they took the ugliness in their hands, threw it as a mantle over them, and went about the world with it. (34)
Significantly, the "mysterious master" referred to here is the dominant, hegemonic ideology which, with "the look" as its instrument, devalues the Breedloves, assigns them to their social place and correspondingly, to their place in the hierarchy of physical beauty. Equally as important, though, Morrison shows us the pervasiveness of the ideological state apparatuses, as "the look" is figured into billboard advertising, popular cinema, and other media and assimilated from "every glance," be it white or black.
Morrison develops the pathology of these revelations by working into the narrative a number of instances in which Pecola and her family's self-esteem is literally destroyed by their encounters with varied expressions of the dominant society's gaze. In this context, popular culture and media play a vital role as the mechanics of panopticon. Pecola's poor mother Pauline escapes into the fantasy of Hollywood's "classic cinema" that constructs visual pleasure and looking relations. Pauline experiences the look' that Hollywood always tries to efface from the consciousness of the spectator, so that one may identify with one's "ideal ego" image in the story world and deeply submerge into the film's verisimilitude. Likewise, at the movies Pauline identifies herself with the characters on the screen, and quite advertently starts to dream, desire and wish she had hair like Jean Harlow's. She also longs for clothes that will make the women look' at her differently; i.e., as nice: "she merely wanted other women to cast favourable glances her way" (Morrison 92). In a word, the movies Polly watches are destructive since they are imposed from the outside for manipulating and marginalizing the blacks. However, as a black woman, Pauline must suffer self-negation in a compounded sense, for her like hardly exists anywhere on the screen. She is therefore forced to look at and apply to herself a completely unrealizable, alien standard of beauty and to experience dissatisfaction resulting from the contradiction with the white actresses. Her problem with the dominant gaze is that it conjures up the triple devaluation of her being female, black and poor. Beyond that, tooth-falling is a climax for Pauline because she has got the message that she cannot be Jean Harlow. Thereafter, she loses all love and it affects her psychology forever.
Understanding the importance of dominant cinema in shaping looking relations and society's racially layered regimes of beauty, Morrison finally observes of Pauline: "she was never able, after her education in the movies to look at a face and not assign it some category in the scale of absolute beauty, and the scale was one she absorbed in full from the silver screen" (97). What is more, this internalization of the cinematic look' and its corresponding workings in Hollywood's star system' extends to all of the novel's female characters. For instance, the black girls Claudia and Frieda are compared by their boarder Mr. Henry to Hollywood's Greta Garbo and Ginger Rogers (Morrison 7). Meanwhile, in a neurotic attempt to raise her value on the scale of beauty and love, Pecola turns into a fetish, guzzling quarts of milk out of a cup marketed in the child star's image Shirley Temple, in hopes of a magical transformation: "she gazed fondly at the silhouette of Shirley Temple's dimpled face how cu-ute Shirley Temple was" (Morrison 12). And, " she took every opportunity to drink milk out of it just to handle and see sweet Shirley's face" (Morrison 16).
Cholly also suffers from the white gaze'. Originating in a humiliating incident in adolescence that permanently haunts, scars and emasculates Cholly by showing him his place' in a racist society and as an object of that society's sadistic, dominating gaze, the look' contributes directly to the formation of his violence and undying mistrust of all women. Morrison shows us that the pathology of the look' also applies to men of color and that the gaze of hegemonic society is driven much by reflex racism and the exploitation of erotic pleasure by two racist white men who force him to copulate in the glare of their flashlights and their voyeuristic, sadistic gazes. This dominating, sadistic look, then, becomes one more instance in a casual chain of devaluation that culminates in disaster (Pecola's rape, e.g.) for the entire Breedlove family: "Why did she (Pecola) have to look so whipped? If he looked into her face, he would see those haunted, loving eyes. The hauntedness would irritate him the love would move him to fury " (Morrison 127). Here gaze' is devastating. Yet, in a sense Cholly's crime is a redemption for Pecola because his rape suggests that she still can be looked at' and desired (though incestuously) by someone which gives her a sense of identity in spite of her being untouchably ugly.
In the meantime comes Pecola's shattering encounter with the gaze' of the dominant society. She struggles to discover whether she is a weed' or has some value or undiscovered beauty beyond her depreciated position in the scheme of society's looking relations. Thus she implicitly realizes that beauty can be created by seeing' rather than by being seen'. Similarly she redefines herself as beautiful even without blue eyes. But, Morrison holds out the possibility to be remote. Besides, Pecola experiences the ultimate negation and totally disappears. When she enters the store to buy and conform to the ideal childhood, female image commodified in the form of Mary Jane candies from the storekeeper Yacobowski, Morrison evokes the look' in one of its most detailed moments in all of her novels; when she believes that the way people observes her is more real than what she herself observes: " he [Yacobowski] senses that he need not waste the effort of a glance. He does not see her, because for him there is nothing to see. How can a fifty-two-year-old white immigrant storekeeper see a little black girl?"(Morrison 41-42). When somebody gazes at a black person, it establishes his/her identity, though as ugly and inferior. But Pecola is so hated and ugly that people do not even look at her and school children criticize one another by her name. Here Morrison constructs the circuit of looking relations as that between Master' and non-white Other', in which the Master looks upon the Other and sees an absence of humanity. In turn, the Other looks upon the Master and sees omnipotence and the negation of the self. Thus the two creates a circulating look' in which they confirm their inhuman estimate of each other and significantly, of themselves. Moreover, Pecola understands that the nucleus of the problem lies in her blackness, which "is static and dread. And it is the blackness, that accounts for, that creates, the vacuum edged with distaste in (all) white eyes (Morrison 37). Pecola defines her own world as feeble and inferior against the white place where the stare originates. So she longs for the static empty gaze of blue eyes that she sees in the smiling white face of Mary Jane candies.
Again, Eye imagery pervades the scene as the shopkeeper "cannot see her view--the angle of his vision ... makes it incomprehensible to him" (Morrison 37). To see her would be to see her as a person, to encounter her subjectivity. But to him, Pecola is nothing, and she in turn can see in his eyes that she means nothing to him. Moments like these reinforce Pecola's conviction that she is hideous. Earlier, the narrator assures us that she will never learn to see her own beauty, in part because no one else will show it to her. This touches on the theme, throughout the novel, that often one is dependent on others for feelings of self worth, love, and even one's identity. However, her encounter with racist gaze' ends with reflex self negation or impoverished sense of self, and with disastrous and irredeemable consequences for insufficient self-esteem. Ultimately she is completely isolated: nobody plays with her, her mother rejects her, her townsfolk look off' when she looks at them, her school throws her out, the MacTeer sisters avoid' her and her father fails to transcend his sin. The loved one (Pecola) is shown, neutralized, frozen in the glare of the lover's (Cholly's) inward eye.
Pecola believes that the cruelty she witnesses and experiences is connected to how she is seen'. In other words, Pecola's definition of her self-esteem is established by those who see her. This is how she sees herself: "Long hours she sat looking at the mirror trying to discover the secret of the ugliness" (Morrison 54). Through this discovery she seeks an escape into the fantasy world. Having seen white baby dolls with blue eyes loved and desired, she believes from her childhood that blue eyes would change everything: if she had blue eyes, she would look beautiful, she would have friends and be loved, her parents would stop fighting, her brother wouldn't run away, and they'd be happy. We have to consider that the standard of beauty that her peers subscribe to is represented by the white child actress, Shirley Temple, who has the desired blue eyes. Thus, gaze' acts as a pervasive force in Pecola's life. " if she looked different, beautiful, may be Cholly would be different, and Mrs. Breedlove too. Maybe they'd say, why look at pretty eyed Pecola. We mustn't do bad things in front of those pretty eyes " (Morrison 34). Pecola thinks that how we see the world is determined by eyes' color, but it is indeed related to human psychology. Hence, she appeals to God for nine years to have "pretty eyes, pretty blue eyes " Morrison 34). In fact, they are a path towards redemption. However, Pecola is strongly influenced by and obsessed with white concept of beauty and love. To repeat the issue, she believes that if she had blue eyes, she wouldn't have to stay with those people who were ugly and unloved: "As long as she looked the way she did, as long as she was ugly, she would have to stay with these people" (Morrison 39) and suffer.
Again, Pecola's desire for blue eyes', synonymous with her search for the American myth of beauty as self-virtue, is what Langston Hughes calls an urge to whiteness within the race" (Bone 1966: 4). But her illusions suffer distortions as she is subjected to varied degrees of oppressions within the community and without. Crucial in this racist preparation, as we have already discussed, is the denial Pecola endures at the candy shop by the white Mr. Yacobowski who doesn't see her ' (Morrison 36), for in his eyes these was "the total absence of human recognition--the glazed separateness " (Morrison 36). So the dandelions that earlier "made her part of the world " (Morrison 36), now "are ugly" (Morrison 37) after this encounter. She is made to look further into her ugliness by the oppressive eyes of the colored' Maureen Peal who openly reproaches her being black and ugly' (Morrison 56).
Pecola's yet another horrific encounter is with the colored' Geraldine from Mobile who had seen this little girl all her life" (Morrison 71) and throws her out for being nasty little black bitch' (Morrison 72). In fact, the appearance of Pecola reminds Geraldine's own black origin that she tries to escape. As Pecola backed out of the room, she "saw Jesus looking down at her with sad and unsurprised eyes, his long brown hair parted " (Morrison 72). Here, Jesus looks sad' because of humiliation of a human being merely for skin color upon which s/he has no control; Jesus looks unsurprised' because he is accustomed with it; and brown hair' implies that Jesus was not an European and white, rather racial gaze' suggests that He belonged to the other'.
From cultural perspective, the master people construct a standard of ethic, beauty, happiness, and project them through the media; confirming the authenticity of the white authorship: "Adults, older girls, shops, magazines, newspapers, and window sign--all the world had agreed that a blue-eyed, yellow-haired, pink-skinned doll was that every child treasured. Here they said this is beautiful, and if you are on this day worth you may have it" (Morrison 64). Even the Primer of the elementary book functions as the hegemonizing force of an ideology (focused by the supremacy of the bluest eye') by which a dominant culture reproduces (its) hierarchical power structure[s]. In fact, the dominant white culture exercises its hegemony through education in both oppressing the victim and teaching the victim how to oppress her own black self by internalizing the values that dictate standards of beauty. Similarly, Pauline Breedlove, Geraldine, Maureen Peal, and Pecola are black characters (subjected to approval of panopticon') who try to conform to an imposed ideal of feminity. They are absorbed and marginalized by the "cultural icons portraying physical beauty: movies, billboards, magazines, books, newspapers, window signs, dolls and drinking cups". Ironically, in trying to conform to the ideal of white feminity, the black female characters despise their blackness which in turn leads to self-hatred. They see themselves through the eyes of white people which W.E.B. Du'Bois calls Double Consciousness' and their worship of white beauty also has destructive effects on their own community. For example, Maureen Peal, merely a light-skinned girl at school, thinks that she is pretty and Pecola is ugly and Morrison sets up a hierarchy of skin tone: firstly, Geraldine's [a counterfeit of the idealized white family], [then] the MacTeers and at the bottom [of the social order], the Breedloves, marking proximity and distance in relation to idealized physical attributes. Maureen is treated well. Boys donnot tease Pecola before Maureen's attractive look with awe too. In these ways, Morrison identifies the politics of media and popular culture to warn us about the impact of gaze and panopticon, and our blindness to the reality.
Though most of the blacks desire to be seen' by others as they see' the whites, and so try to be identified with them as far as possible, Claudia's attitude to the white gaze of beauty is totally contrasting and subverting. The reason behind it is that, false myth of ugliness not only makes blacks feel ugly; it also constructs their characteristic of violence'. For instance, Claudia is frustrated by the society that cherishes pink skin and blue eyes and thus can never consider her, a black girl, to be truly beautiful. Therefore, her dissection of white dolls is strangely scientific; since she tries to see what they look like inside. This investigation of the dolls parallels the investigative work done by the novel, which, in its own words, attempts to discover how' social forces have combined to produce Pecola's tragedy. Besides, as a resistance to the ominous gaze' or racist ideology of beauty', her subsequent loving of black baby (of Pecola) indicates her hating of white babies. Additionally, the image of doll-dismemberment by a black girl oddly inverts and foreshadows Pecola's later psychological destruction, which happens partly because of a constructed white standard of beauty that Pecola cannot attain.
Meanwhile, Claudia is not only indifferent to white dolls along with Shirley Temple Cup, but also realizes that she hates the thing that makes Maureen beautiful: "The Thing to fear was the Thing that made her beautiful and not us" (Morrison 58). We can say that the Thing' Claudia learns to fear is the white standard of beauty that members of the African-American community have internalized, a standard that favours the high-yellow' Maureen Peal and denigrates the black and ugly Pecola Breedlove. Not only that, the narrator cum character Claudia asserts: "Dolls we could destroy, but we could not destroy the obedience in the eyes of our peers, the slippery light in the eyes of our teachers when they encountered the Maureen Peals of the world. What was the secret? What did we lack? Why was it important?" ( Morrison 57). As a child, Claudia also wonders why People admire little white girls: "What make people look at them and say, Awwwww', but not at me?" (Morrison 150).
By the time, Claudia realizes that beauty' is something learned or imposed, and accepted; it is not natural' or inherent'. The hegemonic ideology indicates that whites have not insisted blacks to wear ugliness; rather somehow they are made to wear and accept it without question and resistance. She blames the black community which adopts a white standard of beauty that makes Pecola its scapegoat. In reality, the stereotypical methodology concurs with their natural ugliness. Being ugly, Pecola becomes symbolically dumped' and an object of repulsive nightmares: "We were so beautiful when we stood astride her ugliness" (Morrison 163). All these are nothing but the outcome of the forces of gaze' and panopticon'.
Chapter III
Blindness in The Bluest Eye
In context of the theme of (metaphorical) blindness', the narrator states that "she (Pecola) would never know [or see'] her beauty. She would see only what there was to see: the eyes of other people" (Morrison 35). Such blindness to the reality and lack of self-confidence make all the Pecolas of the world victims of racism. Further, rather than granting Pecola insights into the world around her and providing a redeeming connection with other people, her blue eyes are a form of blindness. She can no longer perceive the outside world, and she has become even more invisible to others. That is why, she is worried by the fact that others will not look' at her, and she has not escaped her jealousy of what others possess. She worries that someone has bluer eyes than herself. Actually, she is blind to the fact that people now avoid her for her stigma of incest, rather than out of jealousy which she thinks.
Again, metaphorically, blindness parallels with gaze' in The Bluest Eye. That is why, Maureen's black school-fellows are blindly jealous, awed and enslaved by her whiteness'. But, to worship blindly that which is white' -- is to put your head in a noose. Indeed, those black children have been thoroughly conditioned and brainwashed by ubiquitous and subtle pro-white propaganda to despise all that are black', and to revere whatever looks white' or even whitish'. Thus, unconsciously they are justifying the white constructed racist ideology in degrading, oppressing and subordinating blacks easily. We cannot ignore the logical fact that those are mimicked (Bhabha) or worshipped who are superior in rank and the followers must be inferior (regarding genetic skin-color specialized by gaze' and panopticon' in this context).
On the other hand, whites are sometimes blind' to the sensitivity of blacks in spite of the latter's being human being. For example, during Pauline's delivery of Pecola at a hospital, "When he [old white doctor] got to me [Pauline] he said [to fellow young doctors] now these here women deliver right away and with no pain. Just like horses" (Morrison 97). This is the stereotypical representation of blacks how they are shown and seen' by whites in terms of body. Even she is compared to an animal, while being a woman of flesh and blood she must have human feelings. But she does not express it like whites: "Who say they don't have no pain? Just because she don't cry? Because she can't say it, they think it ain't there? If they look in her eyes and see them eyeballs lolling back, see the sorrowful look, they'd know" (Morrison 97). This social interpretation of medical gaze is a classic example of Foucault; that is, in hospital gaze' of a doctor identifies and treats a Patient's disease. In other words, someone's identity is constructed by how s/he is seen'.
Significantly, gaze' even constructs our religious faith. As we find in The Bluest Eye, "He [Cholly] wondered if God looked like that [blue]. No God was a nice old white man, with long white hair, flowing white beard, and little blue eyes that looked sad when people died and mean when they were bad. It must be the devil who looks like that If that, Cholly preferred him the idea excited him the strong, black devil" (Morrison 105). Actually, the images of God and devil refer to how we are made to see' the world. God is good and all good qualities are associated with whites because He [God] looks' white. In contrast, since blacks' actions resemble with devil, devil is thought to be black. As Cholly already has destructive instinct, when he comes across such image, he wants to reach it. In fact, such gaze' is a constructed issue of racism.
Even the religious agents like Soaphead Church despises dirt of all kinds and wants to see' human being in perfect form. He observes "A little black girl who wanted to rise up out of the pit of her blackness and see the world with blue eyes" (Morrison 138). After deceiving Pecola, he thinks "I gave her those blue eyes No one else will see her blue eyes. But she will. And she will live happily even after" (Morrison 144). Pecola wants blue eyes so that she can change what she sees and how others see her. For her both reasons are interchangeable because she believes that how people see her (as ugly) creates whet she sees (hurtful behaviour). But, the irony of fate is that Pecola wanted to be seen' beautiful with blue eyes, but now nobody looks' at her; not even her jealous' mother. After getting illusory blue eyes', she becomes crazy and seeks constant confirmation of their being prettier than all from her other self' out of utter depression. We can guess that her unblinking gaze' at the mirror and the sun costs her sanity and even her normal faculty of seeing' for ever. Thus her obsession with seeing' and being seen' everything according to the hegemonic ideology ends with not only her metaphorical and real blindness' to the world but also the world's utter blindness to her: "She was so sad to see. Grown people looked away; children, those who were not frightened by her, laughed outright We tried to see her without looking at her never went near because we had failed her So we avoided Pecola Breedlove forever" (Morrison 162).
Finally, Pecola turns into a scapegoat of the community in the sense that Pecola's lifelong desire to see' everything beautiful--ironically reverses into everybody's desire to see her uglier; and her desire to be seen' pretty by others shifts to the community's desire to be seen' prettier in contrast to her ugliness. She can no longer see' anybody and is seen' (with care) by anybody. Still the community needs her. Therefore, we can say that Pecola's fantasy of changing the world through gaze' in turn changes her (like some others') world with utmost hatred, isolation, negation, identity crisis, delusion, humiliation, assault, teasing, rejection, marginality, alterity, frustration and disillusionment. Thus, though the world remains the same with its racial mechanics of gaze and panopticon, Pecola ultimately falls apart. Now Pecola needs approval of other's gaze' for her being' or existence' in the commutity. But she is not seen by herself until she hallucinates an alter-ego. And the fact of her hallucination becomes a kind of outside-the -book conversation (Morrison 171).
Indeed, it is the white ideology and hegemony that finally lead Pecola to be blind to accept the reality. It is the effect of false myth of outside gaze and panopticon', the ideal way a young girl should look for, that shape blacks' psychology. In a new "Afterward" to the novel's 1993 reprint, Morrison became interested in the mechanics of blacks' feelings of inferiority before gaze and panopticon'. Morrison wonders "about Who had looked at her [Pecola] and found her so wanting, so small a weight on the beauty scale? The novel pecks away at the gaze' that condemned her" (Morrison 165). And
The assertion of racial beauty was a reaction against the damaging internalization of assumptions of immutable inferiority originating in an outside gaze. I [Morrison] focused, therefore, on how something as grotesque as the demonization of an entire race could take root inside the most delicate member of society: a child; the most vulnerable member; a female [Pecola] some aspects of her woundability were lodged in all young girls.
(Morrison 168)
Thus, gaze' in the socio-cultural context acts as the determining force of beauty' and ugliness'. And the hegemonic ideology is so deeply rooted that it is very difficult to alter or eradicate. Even today many black girls cannot survive and blindly accept the onslaught of white media-messages.
Chapter IV
Gaze in Native Son
On the other hand, in Native Son the theme of gaze' (seeing' and being seen') is prevalent less and theme of blindness' is pervasive more than those issues in The Bluest Eye. Again, like Morrison, Wright explores and criticizes the politics of media and popular culture by frequently referring to the newspaper reports, the films and the posters. In this part of the essay, I will show how popular culture and media affect and control human life by creating and maintaining their identity through (re)presentation, distortion and construction of facts to create the audience's consciousness, and motivating and encouraging the mobs. To be specific, popular culture portrays whites as wealthy, sophisticated and superior, and blacks as either subservient or jungle savages. We have already mentioned Foucault's concept that our identity is constructed by how we are seen (e.g. through the gaze' of media and popular culture). Since gaze' affects and constructs one's psychology and attitude, Wright's protagonist conforms to a great extent to how he is seen'. I will also scrutinize how almost all the characters of Wright are somehow blind' to the reality, which sustains racial antagonism, and the black and red phobia. But I will start with the functioning of gaze' leading to racial stereotypes.
In his "The Fact of Blackness", Frantz Fanon expresses his embarrassing experience while he has to meet white men's eyes'/gaze. Generally, Negros are seen' with all kinds of negative associations like animal, bad, mean, ugly, cold, shivering, savage, violent, cannibal etc. That is why, a little white boy is scared to see' the black writer as the boy says, "Mama, the Nigger's going to eat me up". Indeed, this false notion of the boy is not inherited genetically; rather it has been injected into his mind by the white people of his surroundings. Our protagonist Bigger too, is such an archetypal nigger'--a product of gaze' and panopticon'.
Throughout Native Son, Wright depicts popular culture as a major force in American racism, constantly bombarding citizens with images and ideas that reinforce the nation's oppressive racial hierarchy. And the novel's sub-titles Fear', Flight', and Fate' are also related to the ever-haunting mechanics of gaze' and panopticon' in Bigger's life. As the plot unfolds, Bigger feels watched' and controlled even when white people are not present, as if white people invade his very insides. This sense of panopticon' and foreshadowing doom is heightened by Buckley's campaign slogan: "IF YOU BREAK THE LAW, YOU CAN'T WIN!" (Wright 16). The poster showed one of those faces that "looked straight at you when you looked at it and all the while you were walking, and turning your head to look at it, it kept looking unblinkingly back at you until you got so far from it you had to take your eyes away " (Wright: 16)
Again, media and popular culture remind the (false/mythical) states of the African-American Negroes by stereotypical representation:
Bigger looked at the colored posters ... Two features were advertised: one, The Gay Woman, was pictured on the posters in images of white men and white women lolling on beaches, swimming, and dancing in night clubs; the other, Trader Horn was shown on the posters in terms of black men and black women dancing against a wild background of barbaric jungle. (Wright 32)
Gradually, such representation follows the white authority and authenticity.
Bigger is naturally curious about the white world that he cannot wholly believe exists, for he has never seen it except at the movies. It is a fantasy world filled with everything Bigger's world lacks. So, one of the ways he escapes from shame and fear is by going to the movies where he can dream and wonder at the glamour of this opulent world. He can see lush golf greens, dancing parties, happy whites, and money everywhere. He sees all these things in The Gay Woman; and by chance, he sees the communist as the movies' villain, a wild, dangerous, crazy bomb thrower; and the blacks as radically foreign and inferior savages or clownish, humble and ignorant servants. It is, in fact, because of the movie that Bigger decides to try and make a wedge for himself into the rich, tempting white world. After seeing the blonde and attractive Mary Dalton in the newsreel, Bigger is more optimistic about the job interview, and excited to be able to get close to the rich and famous' appeared in newsreels: "Was he going to work for people like you saw in the movies? If he were, then he'd see a lot of things from the inside" (Wright 35). Thus, media construct blacks' fantasy world. However, the white society that produces this popular culture, then, has control over the racial dialogue that determines the meaning of the color of Bigger's skin and hence his identity. Here we find Edward Said's concept of power, discourse and knowledge. This is the whites' politics of representing the blacks, how they see' the blacks and think, the blacks should be seen' by the entire world.
In another instance, the mechanism of panopticon' makes him afraid and angry. On his way to Dalton-house, the author meditates--"Suppose a policeman saw him wandering in a white neighborhood like this? It would be thought that he was trying to rob or rape somebody?" (Wright 46). In reality, with such prejudices the blacks are universally gazed. As we see, gaze' creates consciousness during Bigger's encounter with Mr. Dalton: "The man was gazing at him with an amused smile that made him conscious of every squire inch of skin on his black body" (Wright 47). This instance parallels with Fanon's racial encounters while staying in France. However, it gives him a sense of identity, though inferior. Subsequently, the gaze' of even a pet animal makes him "stone-still; the white cat sat looking at him with large placid eyes " (Wright 49).
Later, we come to know that false myth of gaze' that how blacks should behave--leads to Bigger's internalization of hegemonic ideology and inferiority complex. Just as blacks are identified with the image of ape':
He had not raised his eyes to the level of Mr. Dalton's face once since he had been in the house. He stood with his knees slightly bent, his lips partly open, his shoulders stooped, and his eyes held a look that went only to the surface of things. There was an organic conviction in him that this was the way white folks wanted him to be when in their presence; none had ever told him that in so many words (like The Bluest Eyes' concept of ugliness), but their manner had made him feel that they did. He notices that Mr. Dalton was watching him closely. (Wright 50)
Another outstanding example of panopticon' appears when " he felt that they ruled him, even when they were far away and not thinking of him, ruled him by conditioning [hegemony] him in his relations to his own people" (Wright 110). Then, as he pretends picking up Mary's trunk to the station, "he wanted to look back and see if Peggy was watching him, but dared not" (Wright 115). It is nothing but the surveillance of panopticon' mechanic created from his guilty conscience. But gradually The feeling of being always enclosed in the stifling embrace of an invisible force had gone from him' (Wright 142). Yet, in his later encounter, "Jan's wide, incredulous stare made him feel hot guilt to very core of him" (Wright 157). Again, before the discovery of Mary's bones, Bigger saw the men [journalists], one by one, turn and stare at him. He lowered his eyes' (Wright 194).
Chapter V
Blindness in Native Son
In Native Son, blindness caused by hatred and fear erects a dense wall of racial stereotypes for which Bigger sees' white people not as individuals, but rather as an undifferentiated "whiteness", a powerful, threatening, and hateful authority that denies him control over his own life and identity. Therefore, though he feels that wrong is being done to him, he has so deeply internalized the rules of race relations that he finds himself acting out the role he has always seen blacks assume around rich, powerful whites. Thus, Wright shows how conditioned Bigger has been, subconsciously, to play the role of a victim of inferiority complex. In this regard, it is not only the whites who see' blacks as ape, but also the blacks who see' themselves as ape and accept it without question or resistance which can be called hegemony.
Now comes the theme of blindness' to the reality in racially compartmentalized world. As recognized through Bigger's confrontation, Mrs. Dalton is not only literally blind but also metaphorically (blind). Bigger fears and hates the unending darkness of her blindness', because it symbolizes the darkness of his white enemies, specifically the psychological blindness of the entire Dalton household. The Daltons think they are friends of the blacks as they give large sum of money to black charity in the form of ping-pong tables. But Wright hints at the inability of such white liberals and philanthropists to cure a national disease (racism) by leisurely applying charity as a salve for the ugliest sores of the impoverished Southern ghetto. They are blindly ignorant about the black-experience because they see' blacks with their wealthy, happy eyes' and never inquire to find the solution. Consequently, it is beyond Mrs. Dalton's apprehension to know, or even sense or guess that Bigger is in her daughter's bedroom at 2 a.m. Because she has been shut up all her life, in her own white world. However, Mr. Dalton's implicit blindness in donating ping-pong tables and Mrs. Dalton's explicit blindness' cannot prevent Bigger from murdering Mary Dalton. Above all, whites see' him as one who might steal, get drunk, or even rape; but they would never guess that Bigger can murder a white girl. Mary and Jan are also metaphorically blind since they cannot feel Bigger's inward feelings and attitude to them. Likewise, Bigger believes that blacks, who simply accept the social order defined by the white Americans, too, are blinding themselves to the reality of their predicament.
After murdering Mary, Bigger begins to convince himself of a growing importance as he mentally views' everyone around him as being blind' and himself as being the only one who can understand himself and see' things as they really are. Then, when he meets his friends at Doc's place, he is convinced that they too are blind, blind to his rebirth and resurrection from the black world of fear. Mary and Jan are blind as they cannot feel Bigger's inside. More than that, Bigger's near and dear ones are also blind--metaphorically they are blind to what really matters in life. His mother is escaping with her way of singing about religion, Christ and love; Vera exhibits a profound fear of life in her every gesture; Bessie is always crying the Blues about working hard and getting nothing out of life, but a cheap drink of whiskey to blot out the pain of her life; and his brother, Buddy, is content with a job and living his life without a fight--all these approaches to the harsh facts of life are, to Bigger, blindness'. Just as Bigger murmurs that his self-deluded family is blind to the fact that a job at the Daltons' is not going to improve their economic condition, he too blinds himself with intense anger and rash acts of violence. However, as a Naturalist, Wright uncovers this critical issue.
Meanwhile, the impact of media-politics returns in Bigger's thought during his encounter with Mary and Jan. In this context, cartoons create red phobia by stereotypically (re)presenting communists as extremists: "He remembered seeing many cartoons of Communists in newspapers and always they were trying to commit murder or set things on fire. People who acted that way were crazy. All he could recall having heard about Communists was associated in his mind with darkness whispers on Strike" (Wright 66). Then when Jan holds his hand friendly, he thinks: "That would people passing along the street think? [surely, they would see' them as disrespectful and be furious to see' Bigger sitting with Mary] Jan and men like him had made it so that he would be conscious of that black skin he was something he hated, the badge of shame was attached to a black skin" (Wright 67). He also thinks that Jan is holding him up with pity to look' at him and be amused. Here, it is very important to note that Bigger's haunting fear of being gazed' by whites as black affects his psychology that ultimately results in adversity. Besides, he is afraid of being teased even by his black friends if they see' him at this moment. Afterwards, he dislikes Mary's looking inside of him" (80), and (in the meantime) his anger enables him to look' directly at her. It is noteworthy that being gazed' makes him afraid, degraded and subservient, while the ability to gaze makes him angry, white-hater and courageous.
It is to note that when Bigger was leading drunken Mary to her room he was afraid of Mr. and Mrs. Daltons' panopticon': " perhaps Mrs. Dalton was standing in flowing whites and staring with stony blind eyes in the middle of the floor" (Wright 82). Later, when he was trying to push Mary's dead body into the furnace, " to green burning pools of acquisition and guilt stared at him from a white blur It was the white cat and its round green eyes gazed passed him at the white face " (Wright 90). Here, his skin colour traps him in a situation that leads to fatality.
In the meantime, knowing well that the Daltons see' Jan as a dangerous Communist, Bigger hopes that they will hold Jane responsible for Mary's disappearance. Since, racially blind Daltons are unable to imagine Bigger taking any action beyond the role that they have already assigned him. Bigger subverts the racial stereotypes by using them as a form of resistance and protection against white authority. How the blacks' blindness' and whites' gaze' lead to the former's internalization of hegemonic ideology and restriction are apparent in the breakfast scene at Thomas family. Bigger thinks:
the thing to do was while they were not looking, do what you wanted He felt in the quiet presence of his mother, brother, and sister a force, inarticulate and unconscious, making for living without thinking a hope that blinded. He felt that they wanted and yearned see life in a certain way: they were blind to what did not fit. They did not want to see what others were doing if that doing did not feed their own desires there was in everyone a great hunger to believe that made him blind, and if he could see while others were blind, he could get what he wanted and never be caught at it. (Wright 102)
Wright also presents a highly critical portrait of the (blind) private investigators and police detectives. Britten is a parody of both primitive eyes' and insular, racist thinker. Bigger can perceive that the investigator must see' him as guilty simply because he is a black. In Britten's eye', reds and blacks are similar. So he approaches Bigger as "You are a Communist, you goddamn black sonofabitch!" (Wright 152). His chauvinism is also expressed in his assertion to Mr. Dalton: "Well, you see 'em one way and I see 'em another. To me, a nigger's a nigger" (Wright 154). Undoubtedly, such stereotypical prejudice is the outcome of how blacks have been gazed' for centuries throughout the world. But ironically and blindly enough, the victim's father himself does not see' Bigger as a bad boy. Wright is critical about the media for its prejudiced negative representation of and fearful propagation against reds, even without any reliable witness or evidence. So, the newspaper publishes: " HYDE PARK HEIRESS BELIEVED HIDING OUT WITH COMMUNISTS " (Wright 194). Next, "REDS TRIED TO SNARE HIM" (Wright 210). They do so only because communism goes in favour of and against their manipulation of blacks. As Max asserts: "I look at the world in a way that shows no whites and no blacks, no civilized and no savages " (387).
Similarly, the media represents Bigger (like all blacks) utter negatively (e.g., as rapist, irrational etc.) by adding fiction with distorted facts. In reply, sometimes Bigger also acts as he is seen' to act usually--i.e., violently. Therefore, he thinks He committed rape every time he looked into a white face' (Wright 214). But when the newspaper hints at his assumed sex-crime, he fears that it would excite whites to kill him in their heart' (Wright 228). However, white gaze' constructs his identity: "He was living, truly and deeply, no matter what others might think, looking at him with their blind eyes" (Wright 225). According to Max, the advertisements, radios, newspapers and movies play constantly and overwhelmingly' upon human civilization. In this way, the media and popular culture also affect and enchant Bigger psychologically: "It was when he read the newspapers or magazines, went to the movies, that he felt what he wanted: to merge himself with others and be a part of this world, live like others, even though he was black" (Wright 226). Here, it is mentionable that addressing the white judge, Max argues: "The more you kill, the more you deny and separate, the more will they seek another form and way of life, however blindly and unconsciously" (Wright 365). He also reminds the whites of their blindness' (367). But earlier, Bigger blindly identified him with stereotyped whites, just as whites automatically view all blacks with suspicion when a white girl is killed.
Wright now satirizes the pedantic journalists who are looking for an "angle" that might bring to light Bigger's "primitivism" and angst, to "prove" that the "primitive Negro" (as seen) does not want to be "disturbed by white civilization". In the newspaper's words: "He looks exactly like an ape!" his skin is exceedingly black. His lower jaw protrudes obnoxiously, reminding one of a jungle beast ... All in all, he seems a beast utterly untouched by the softening influences of modern civilization" (Wright 260). It is no surprise that the press reports are full of hyperboles, portraying a "NEGRO MURDERER RAPISST" whose "primitivism" is brought to light in countless capitalized headlines of mob-inciting rhetoric. Thus, the gaze' of white authority and press takes control over his identity once again, to demonize Bigger and terrorize blacks into submission by whipping up white violence.
To repeat, gaze' not only haunts memory, but also deconstructs and reconstructs mythical racialized identity. As for the first instance, Bigger cannot bear to look' at Bessie's face, fearing that she will look' at him accusingly even in death. And for the second instance, when Jan and Max talk to Bigger, it seems to him that (for the first time in his life) he has seen some-whites as individual human being (and vice versa); rather than merely a part of the larger oppressive force of whiteness, a looming mountain of hate'. Ultimately he also begins to realize that he has been blind to the fact that Jan and Mary are human being as well. Thus he recreates himself in his own image, rather than allow the whites to do so. Besides, the whole trial scene is a recognition for Bigger's identity's as a human being, because it confirms his existence meaningfully by making others (especially whites) conscious at least about his crime and punishment: "any eyes in the room were fastened upon Bigger now, cold gray and blue eyes, eyes whose tense hate was worse than a shout or a curse" (Wright 294). In fact, when Bigger revolts, it makes the whites see' a human being struggling for human dignity and recognition. However, now he feels that in his recognition of others, and their recognition of him, he can gain the identity (eligible for gaze') and wholeness for which he has longed. This new identity brings Bigger an image of himself standing in a crowd of race and class. But regarding recognition, even Max cannot see beyond his own conception of how Bigger was forced to retreat from reality. When Bigger tells Max that he is pleased with what he has done, Max is unable to accept this assertion and gropes for his hat "like a blind man", being unable to see' Bigger completely as an individual. Even Bigger is still defining himself by looking at the "Bigger" that the world sees'. Bigger sees that distortion and names himself as its opposite, but that has nothing to do with who he really is. Hence, Bigger's identity crisis is more of a struggle to separate his own impressions from the projections of the racist society around him.
Meanwhile, the media succeeds in their politics in the sense that because of their manipulating representation of Bigger as a murderous animal, a distorted identity, anything said in Bigger's defense falls on deaf ears of law. However, in the readers' eyes, Bigger's proud announcement that he is entering a new world' is a testament of his spiritual blindness'. Indeed, Bigger's pride of sanity and rage prevents him from seeing clearly. Consequently, his escape' is really a blind and headlong rush into the fate' that is waiting for him in the long run. Over head and ears, the distorting stereotypes and disfiguring violence of the "blindly raging" mob--all serve as testaments to America's spiritual blindness; i.e., the white America is blindly unaware of the sufferings of racism and poverty.
Conclusion
To conclude, gaze' (seeing and being seen) is a sociological practice for racial degradation and oppression. So, in The Bluest Eye Morrison challenges the Western standard of beauty and demonstrates that ideology like the concept of beauty' is socially constructed and applied for destructing the black psyche. If there were no value of appearance or gaze', there would be no concept of beauty' or ugliness' at all in Pecola's, Pauline's, Claudia's, Freida's and Geraldine's lives. Morrison also recognizes that if whiteness' is used as a standard of beauty or anything else in socio-cultural context, then the value of blackness' is diminished, and the novel works to subvert that tendency through the violent resistance of Claudia. As for seeing', Claudia scrutinizes and seeks justification for externally imposed standards. In contrast, regarding being seen', Pecola scrutinizes herself (39). Because of always seeing' herself through the eyes' of others, Pecola never sees' anything (in herself) to love. Thereon, what Claudia's telling of the story shows, but does not say, is that the internalization' of destructive hegemonic ideology and inferiority' resulting from gaze' can be avoided. In fine, Morrison tries to figure out the nature of gaze' and panopticon'; and its consequent effect on the black psychology; and thus to give some subtle suggestions for the blacks to overcome such adverse situation. And, her theory or outlook is also immensely applicable for any community of society, as the roots of gaze and panopticon' deeply lie in any society or state.
On the other hand, in Native Son the effects of gaze and blindness' pervade the physical as well as the metaphysical existence of both the blacks and the whites. Here, media and popular culture emerge as the above mechanics. And, by horribly propagating hegemonic ideology and conditioning blacks' natural inferiority, white media create, manipulate, maintain and naturalize racial stereotype, prejudice and antagonism. Moreover, blindness' to the reality prevents them from seeing' and being seen' by each other. They not only represent blacks as savage, beast, ape, violent and fearful, but also show reds as villainous, wild, murderous and rebellious to justifiably suppress, oppress, degrade and subordinate them. To Foucault, our identity is constructed by how we are seen. As a result, the reluctance and indifference of the white authority to see' Bigger and other niggers' as human being turn the latter into an embodiment of revolt for survival. In other words, the blacks (metonymised by Bigger) have responded to the (neglecting) glare of the whites according to the way (violently) the latter always guess the former to be.
Finally, the white gaze' and the black blindness' are the policy or mechanics leading to hegemonic ideology' to fulfill the power system by making the unprivileged blacks slaves or anyhow inferior to whites. Hence, by being aware of this, one should avoid the dangerous ending like self-destruction. And, in both Morrison and Wright's settings, blacks are seen stereotypically and unquestionably accepting them both fall into contempt and decay. To be more specific, regarding the racial prejudices originating from outside gaze', Pecola tries to conform to the hegemonic ideology of beauty and utterly fails; while Bigger succeeds to some extent in his resistance. Again, Pecola suffers from identity crisis, while Bigger has somehow established it. Further, Pecola's obsession to see' and be seen' differently by the world is more than that of Bigger. Not only that, Pecola lives in an illusory world, while Bigger lives in existential one. Last of all but not the least, both are blind': either physically or psychologically to the reality of the white world. To agree with Fanon's words, the fact of the juxtaposition of the white and black races has created a massive psycho-existential complexity in both of them. Finally, I would like to establish my hypothesis that both novelists have tried to deconstruct the hegemonic ideology and racially hierarchical identity constructed by gaze and blindness to reconstruct a dignified identity for the twentieth-century African-Americans.
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