Current Forum: Session 2: Film Language in Classical Hollywood Cinema	Read 14 times 	
Date: 22-Jan-2001 06:50:29	
Author: MCKAHAN, JASON G. <jgm8530@garnet.acns.fsu.edu>	
Subject: Omission and the Gaze 	
 [Remove]	
		
       In pictorial representation, the positions of seeing and power relations are always interrelated. Seeing images, as Mitchell argues in Iconology, has always been a discourse of the power to make people see things in particular ways and in particular relationships. This is why there has been a continual attempt to tie image into nature, so as to detour the skepticism of 
those who don’t agree with the images offered to them. Bazin spent a great deal of his career arguing in favor of realism in film, which seems to me another way of naturalizing images. The 
fact that Citizen Kane was shot in a studio under controlled circumstances did not undercut its realism for Bazin. It either did not occur to Bazin or perhaps he did not agree that his 
epitome of realism, Citizen Kane, is merely a construction of images which prop up whiteness in American cinematic ideology. In Citizen Kane, this agenda is carried out through the omission 
of non-whites and the privilege of the white gaze.  The most difficult racism to tackle, argues James Snead, is the practice of omission. Omission refers to the avoidance of non-white actors in film, something which white Americans overlooked in their conception of the real. Within a society so highly segregated, it seemed impossible to picture any other subject than a white one. Bell hooks remarks how non-whites always noticed omission (how could they not?) and how omission formed one more basis for seeing non-whiteness as abnormality and ideological incorrectness. Hooks writes in Black Looks, “To stare at the television, or mainstream movies, to engage in its images, was to engage its negation of black representation.”  Some critics took it further – they criticized these images as subconsciously racist and sought to construct an  independent black cinema. 
       Concerning Snead’s observation on the difficulty of omission, I find it beneficial to approach the matter from the other end when possible - usage. These black roles primarily consist, as 

most films of the era, of musicians and servants. Because Citizen Kane is primarily about omission and the presupposition of a white spectator, the scenes where black actors are present 
are very telling. Particularly powerful is the suppression of the black male gaze, in which the eye-lines between black men and whites rarely align. The black marching band at Kane’s 
party enters and leaves the frame, but we continue to hear music as the dancing girls come out. Although the matching of eye-lines suggests the phallocentric gaze of the white men in 
the room, the black men are placed out of frame and do not participate. There is one close-up of a black band member, but his eyes are closed. 
       The reciprocal gaze is more acceptable for black women, as is evident from the scene where Kane and Emily go to Susanne’s apartment. A black maid opens the front door and smiling at Kane, says, “Come right in Mr. Kane.” Of course, this is constructed to show that Kane is no stranger to Susanne’s apartment. Yet one also detects that because of the social and sexual relations in white dominated society, the black female is more often the subject of the white male gaze. She becomes the hyper-sexualized woman, or in this case, the asexual mammy/maid stereotype.
       In contrast, the black sweeper on the street later that night looks at Kane, but Kane does not reciprocate the look. This actor is metaphorical in his role as he sweeps the mess in front 
of the campaign office, as compared to the mess of Kane’s failure in politics and marriage that must be swept up. 
       The “musical black” trope reappears when Kane and Susanne go to the Everglades. Again the band singer is symbolic of Kane’s marriage as he sings, “It can’t be love.” The gaze is 
suppressed by placing the black band in the foreground and the white crowd behind them, with both groups looking towards the camera.