Cinema in Toni Morrisons The Bluest Eye Essay -- Toni Morrison Bluest

Cinema in Toni Morrisons The Bluest EyeIn Toni Morrisons novel, The Bluest Eye, characters learn how to perform social habits 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 Mulveys article, Visual and new(prenominal) entertainments, explains films tycoon to indoctrinate patriarchal social order. This efficacy is certainly applicable to Morrisons novel. Film reinforces the Breed pick outs place in society, teaches Claudia to complete Shirley Temple and constructs women as sexual objects for pleasure. Mulveys article also examines the powerful, energetic male attentiveness. In The Bluest Eye the female gaze is constructed as dirty, unnatural and wrong. Women and children in this novel atomic number 18 relegated to the role of passive sexual objects. minor girls are subjected to the gaze of Cholly and Soaphead Church. Mulvey defines this ty pe of gaze as fetishistic scopophilia. In both(prenominal) Mulveys article and Morrisons novel film is used as an instructional tool to create identity and reinforce social and sexual practice roles. Films power to enforce social order is revealed in Paulines trips to the movies. She is drawn to the physical beauty and therefore taught to take to be beauty above anything else in society. Pauline receives an education from the movies. It was re eithery a simple pleasure, but she learned all there was to love and all there was to hate (Morrison 122). Pauline learns how to order her world though film. She is taught to love beauty and hate ugliness. Film, however, also teaches her to hate herself because of her ugliness. At first Pauline identifies with the beautiful white women she sees in the movies. ... ...so presents the idea of scopophilia and active male gaze. Morrison further examines these ideas by constructing an active female gaze. When Pecola and Cla udia experience this type of gaze they do not feel powerful, but sinful. Morrison also depicts women in the role of passive sexual objects. These women are forced to submit to the male gaze and are powerless to control it. In The Bluest Eye Morrison examines Mulveys assertions about the role of cinema, the active male gaze and the passive female. She proves cinemas ability to assign social scripts and the total domination of the active male gaze over little girls. Works CitedMorrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye. New York, New York Penguin Group, 1994.Mulvey, Laura. Visual Pleasure & Narrative Cinema. Visual and Other Pleasures. Bloomington, IN Indiana University Press, 1989. 14-26.