Dancing around objectification:
Where The Harlem Dancer and Invisible Man are similar in dehumanizing women dancers through diction, they contrast on how the dancer’s race affects their own situations. Victoria Merlino highlights this by comparing the different description and audience reactions between the two women. For the white women, she is treated like an item that is both equally hated and wanted. For the black women, she is described as someone who has to go along with how the audience perceives her.
When examining the differences between how each dancer is described I think its imported to understand the concepts behind the books themselves. The Harlem Dancer is a poem reflecting on the life of an African American dancer and Invisible Man is a novel that addresses many issues that African Americans faced in 1952. I think both authors excel in dehumanizing the characters, especially when you compare how Ellison’s white dancer can escape but Mckay’s black dancer can’t, highlighting the racial differences.
Intersectionality:
Intersectionality is simply the attempt to explain how categories such as gender, race, and class interact in our systematic social inequality. There are two theories to intersectionality. One is the interlocking matrix of oppression. This basically states that all these categories are interconnected and overlap. For instance, a black woman like the Harlem dancer is discriminated by both her race and gender and it can be hard to separate the two. The second is called the standpoint theory. This is when the writer is influenced by their own personal experiences, limiting their social awareness to issues.
The urgency of intersectionality:
Kimberle Crenshaw starts her Ted talk by mentioning African Americans shot and killed by the police. She immediately points out that the difference between the names you don’t know and the names you do are because of gender. She claims that the media highlights more crimes on black men than black women. This was just one of her many examples that she gave when discussing intersectionality and the importance of acknowledging it.
I think one of her strongest points was the situation that the young African American lady had in which she couldn’t work in a factory because most people where men and most of the females were white. She was facing discrimination on both gender and racism and still lost the case. Her most powerful point was the end when she showed us footage of African American women getting abused and harassed by police officers.
Bechdel Test:
The Bechdel Test is a famous method that “evaluates the portrayal of women in a work of fiction.” There are three requirements to pass this test. Basically, the requirements are that there must be at least to women that talk to each other about a topic other than a man. It is said that only about half of all films meet these requirements. This test originates from a comic strip made by Alison Bechdel that was made in 1985 and is still relevant to this day.
I think most people are informed of this test or at least have heard some form of it because it’s so relevant in today’s society and entertainment industry. I also think the Bechdel test is proof that in our society we all demonstrate the standpoint theory (intersectionality) in the sense that some of us are so used to the way films are made we don’t even acknowledge the Bechdel test, to begin with.
Question:
Is it possible that the reason the Bechdel test is still relevant to in today’s society is because we all have a form of intersectionalities standpoint theory?