Review of Bell Hooks: Reel to Real: Race, Sex and Class at the Movies

Bell Hooks was the pen name of Gloria Jean Watkins (1952 -2021). Hooks was a black American scholar and activist who published more than 30 books on feminism and racism and the intersectional overlaps between race, sexism, and class structures. Watkins, over a career of roughly forty years in higher education, taught English, ethnic studies, African and Afro-American, and women’s studies at universities across America, including a period at Yale.

As a writer and activist Hooks addressed racial issues from a black female perspective, but she also penned a series of books discussing black male life experiences including their relations with masculinity and finding love. Hooks wrote Real: Race, Sex, and Class at the Movies in 1996, a period in American history marred by racial violence and discrimination. It was also a period when some progress was beginning to be seen, black politicians and mayors were being elected, and black playwrights and movie directors were being recognised. Hooks' monograph is couched within these political and social occurrences. My review looks at the first chapter.

Hooks begins the chapter quoting Stan Brakhage “Film must be free of all imitation, of which the most dangerous is the imitation of life.” (Brakhage in Hooks, 1996) to emphasise that movies are not expected to mirror the realities of the world that we live in. However, she continues to state that for a short time during our watching most of us are drawn into the fantasy, referring to this as either suspension of disbelief or submission. She further posits that a film's overall effect, whether intended or not, is one of education and information.

            “Whether we like it or not, cinema assumes a pedagogical role in the lives of many people…” (Ibid, p.2)

Hooks criticises the academic thinking of the time that popular art cannot contain subversive or revolutionary messaging. Here she leverages semiotic theory that the messages intended by the producer/director rely on the perspective of the viewer and that the message may be lost or changed due to the life experiences of the recipient, however, the intended messaging remains and “does not change the terms of the film”. I believe that Hooks suggests that academic reading of films is often mediated by their life experiences and the intended messaging is lost to them.

Further into the chapter Hooks refers to the work of the American filmmaker Spike Lee, referring to as often homophobic and misogynistic. Criticism that Lee shrugs off, declaring that he is just “documenting life” (Ibid, p.11) Hooks admits to writing more critical essays about Lee’s work than any other filmmaker. She leverages the undesirable aspects of his work at the end of the chapter to underline her messaging, which she eloquently summarises in the line:

            “Movies do not merely offer us the opportunity to reimagine the culture we most intimately know on the screen, they make culture” (Ibid, p.12)

ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA, 2024. Bell Hooks American Scholar [Viewed 30/10/2024]. Available from: https://www.britannica.com/biography/bell-hooks

HOOKS, B., 1996. Reel to Real: Race, Sex and Class at the Movies. Abingdon: Routledge

KNIGHT, L., 2021. bell hooks, author and activist, dies aged 69 [Viewed 30/10/2024]. Available from: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/dec/15/bell-hooks-author-and-activist-dies-aged-69