Looking for the Other: Feminism, Film and the Imperial Gaze

What happens when white people look at non-whites? What happens when the gaze is returned?Looking for the Otherresponds to criticisms leveled at white feminist film theory of the 1970s and 1980s for its neglect of issues to do with race. It focuses attention on the male gaze across cultures, as illustrated by women filmmakers of color whose films deal with travel. Looking relations are determined by history, tradition, myth; by national identity, power hierarchies, politics, economics, geographical and other environment. Travel implicitly involves looking at, and looking relations with, peoples different from oneself.

E. Ann Kaplan is Professor of English at Suny, Stony Brook.