Bell Hooks as an Academic Person - Essay Example

Media has played a significant role in promoting stereotype thoughts into the minds of its viewers and it’s done in such an invisible and natural manner, that people cannot see it directly but accept it as a rational way of behaving with race, gender, and color. Movies are an important part of American culture and people who design them are consciously aware of the impacts on the audience. Therefore, they are promoting manipulative ideas like black for evil and white for heroism and the constant denial of feminist theory, in a sleeker manner.

      Hooks believes that “mass media was used to get women out of the factory and back into the home,” (Hooks, 2002). That the stereotype didn’t want them out, competing them; but wanted to show them as sex devices kept at home for pleasure.

White supremacist capitalist patriarchy stands for viewing life from not just one perspective like gender, race, or age but forms a wider horizon. Colonization makes a person aware of his link with a certain race and hence enables a person how the white world or the political powers, wants him to behave and deals his business around because the policy has been set by them. Racism is not produced by white people who are all around but it is a system developed by cabalists which people are following nonetheless.

Critical vigilance is required for becoming fully aware of what is around and how it is supposed to be dealt with. Literacy is the main source that can make a person proactive in a racist environment and enable him to act unbiased towards others. “Freedom and justice are connected to mass-based literacy” (Hooks, 2002). A person can only achieve freedom and justice when he is aware of his rights and the people around him are aware of their obligation towards him; as a society member. This activates the fair justice system and everybody enjoys equal rights simultaneously the responsibility to act positively.

Literacy does not mean to watch movies and learn visually only, but it comes with reading which brings thought-provoking of other cultures and new ways to decolonize. 

Nobody is capable of looking into an individual’s life directly and can ascertain the number of struggles, complexities, and loopholes; instead, movies only give a brief view of their lives.   What is not visible in the movies made on the black citizen is the feeling of being trapped in their own lives. People who make different choices regardless of their preconceived image are truly aware of the change required of them, for the benefit of all.  According to Hooks, “The issue is not freeing ourselves from representation. It's really about being enlightened witnesses when we watch representations, which means we can be critically vigilant about both what is being told to us and how we respond to what is being told.” (Hooks, 2002)