hooks and West - Courtney Sparling

When reading this work by hooks, I immediately thought of the most recent 2007 rendition of the classic film, Hairspray, where this sense of Otherness is celebrated across different ethnic backgrounds/skin colors. The main character is a young, out-spoken white woman named Tracy Turnblad. Tracy really celebrates the Otherness of her town's local black population who are amazing dancers/singers, yet are unappreciated and virtually unrecognized by The Corny Collins Show controlled by WYZT television station. Tracy even goes as far to proclaim that she wants to be black, which was completely frowned upon during the time period in which she lives, the 1960s. 

The interesting thing is that Tracy, as well as her white friend, Penny, are intrigued and mesmerized by the talent and differences that the black students at their school bring to the table. The white students are more uptight and bland, sticking to the basics, while the black students put their own twists on dance moves and style. 

We see at the end how the Otherness becomes accepted by the show and how little Inez (black) steals the hearts of all the viewers as she dances with passion, so differently than what had been presented on television before. The color of her skin and the way she dances (differently than the white dancers) make her unique and therefore she becomes interesting and desirable to the rest of the white audiences watching on television. 

The reading of West's work was also an interesting piece that discussed race. It differs from hooks piece in that it proclaims that, "The common denominator of these views of race is that each still sees black people as a 'problem people'..." The article talks about the upheaval event that happened in LA back in 1992 where 36 percent of people that were black were arrested. 

Blaming black people for the riots in LA

A main idea that I got from this reading was that of constitutive elements, in referring to the black peoples' purposes in American life. They are not recognized in society as additions nor defections, but just elements that we live with. This also connects with the idea that in the political atmosphere in which we all live in, images rather than ideas dominate.