CMCstudent, Bell

I really liked this reading. I felt it was easier to understand compared to most the theorists we have been studying. I also felt while reading the article I was able to apply a lot of things bell was talking about to things around us today.

The pleasure and enjoyment in acknowledging racial differences can be seen in all forms of entertainment. In movies you can’t help but notice the dichotomy of the sexy, hard working, Latino that the young high society white male ends up falling for. She has what he yearns, the spice and adventure that takes him out of his usual element. We are never told but always assume she has more sexual experience than he does and in the bedroom could teach him more than he could learn from the girl at the country club. This is an example of “the ‘real fun’, ‘nasty’ fantasies and longing with the Other embedded in the secret deep structure of white supremacy” (366). Bell believes that having a sexual experience with the Other can be so pleasurable that status quo can be infiltrated through this pleasurably. “Other threatens to take over, consume, transform via the experience of pleasure” (327). This reminds me of the movie Monster –in-Law, starring Jennifer Lopez and Michael Vartan. Vartan, a doctor, falls for Lopez, a temp. Lopez and Vartan fall in love and are to get married. Lopez is that spice in his life. The mother in law (Lane Fonda) who is wealthy and famous hears of the engagement and flips out. She does not think her son should be marrying a Spanish temp. She is afraid she will ruin their lifestyle and will not fit in, and is determined to show her daughter-in-law just that. It is this love and pleasure of a relationship that can change fixed static conditions, identities and ultimately take over how one lives. This is what Fonda feared.

I found this next quote to remind me a lot of a reading we were exposed to CMC 100, Edward Said’s Orientalism and the exoticization of the other. Bell hook says “sexuality is the metaphoric Other” (327) Hooks believes we end up taking the Other and sexualizing it or as Said would say, “exoticize.” We then see it as this foreign thing we want to conquer, voyage, and colonize.