Who Controls the Image? Observing the Visual Rhetoric of Black Women

Shantay Nicole Robinson

Advisor: Douglas Eyman, PhD, Department of English

Committee Members: Courtney Adams Wooten, Wendi Manuel-Scott

Horizon Hall, #4225, https://gmu.zoom.us/j/94198792032?pwd=LE7ODqsZK5xYieARKNBba4cNMJ01hC.1
November 14, 2024, 11:00 AM to 02:00 AM

Abstract:

Black women are visible in American culture now more than ever before. And scholars have taken up theorizing about the images they convey. Crystal LaVoulle and Tisha Lewis Ellison created the term “Bad Bitch Barbie” to describe some of our most famous Black female entertainers who embody corporeal performances. Seth Cosimini, Margaret Hunter and Alheli Cuenca have identified several Black female entertainers as perpetuating the Jezebel controlling image; the image was used to diminish the ethos of Black women and absolve their rapists, as Black women were imagined to be sexually aggressive and morally obtuse. Because the gazes that set their sights on Black women are now more diverse, some of the gazes can be violent. Kesha James writes about the white gaze that asserts white supremacist logics and how it can be performed by a variety of people. It is not possible to consider every individual gaze that sets its sights on Black women, but there can be some understanding of the ways Black female images are perpetuated and realized. 
 
This study aims to understand how visual rhetoric of Black women is realized by an audience of college-aged Black women. The participants looked at visual rhetoric of Black women, including stereotypical images, popular images, and visual art images. Using individual interviews and a focus group to gather their reactions to the visual rhetoric, the participants' responses were turned into counterstories with composite characters to express their experiences looking at the visual rhetoric. As they performed close looking at visual rhetoric of Black women, it became evident that there is a rhetorical resistance practice performed by employing a mediated gaze. Their attention to the rhetorical situation allowed them to resist demoralizing interpretations of the popular imagery of Black women they viewed. This study affirms what scholars, including John Trimbur, have advocated, that visual literacy needs to move down from graduate-level study to the composition classroom where first-year students can start to analyze the increasing number of visual images they are inundated with daily.