The adinkra symbol called “duafe” contains a revealing dual-layered message. The first layer of this symbol means wooden comb, and is associated with feminine beauty qualities. The second layer of this symbol is a visual message, in the the symbol icon itself is a representation of the item used to enhance beauty. This wooden comb is also known as an afro pick, a pick, or an afro comb in the Black community, and its use represented a liberation from Euro American beauty restrictions in Black hairstyles. In the history of visual representation, Black women have been the passive recipients of representational images; they were placed on the visual auction block to be seen, redefined, and then made invisible by Euro Americans through distorted images and stereotypical caricatures. I contend that many Black women choose to be liberated from the restrictions of Euro American beauty, and thus they are blamed in the choice of moving from an unmarked or generic representation to a more supposedly radical one, that is racialized and visible. It is this dichotomy of being perceived as neutral or non-threatening as compared with being seen as different or ethnic and thus non-conformist that confronts Black women continuously.

Feminist film critics often focused on gender as the site to critique the lack of women’s subjectivity, voice, and expressive roles in cinematic endeavors (Mulvey, 1975; Rich, 1978; Mayne, 1985; Welsch, 1991). Because of this theoretical basis, psychoanalysis becomes a method used to interrogate the male-as-subject gaze of cinema (Walker, 1981; Byars, 1994; Silverman, 1996). Attributing the cinematic ‘gaze’ as being male-inscribed only offered an alternative reading to a female gaze that took woman from the object position (Cohan and Hark, 1993) and placed her in the subject position (Mayne, 1993), often without interrogating the presence of race. Some resist using the psychoanalytical methodological basis, identifying it as being centered upon the Eurocentric view of the white, middle class, nuclear family (Pribham, 1988; Spillers, 2003). The location of the body as a physical manifestation of the subject-identity without cultural inscription can be attributed to the imposition of gender as a primary factor of identity (Butler, 1990). Bordo (1999) candidly admits that in her early endeavors in assessing masculine and feminine roles she was “utterly oblivious to racial differences” (208). A multitude of voices from an edited collection attest that “African American feminists and other women of color... demonstrate that all bodies are not treated equally” (Bennett and Dickerson, 2001, p. 4). This single-minded focus led to the gender issue being critiqued as an ideological position that “reinforce[d] white middle-class values, and...ke[pt] women from seeing other structures of oppression” (Gaines, 1986, p. 177).

hooks (1996) offers an “oppositional gaze” to the cinematic gaze. This concept did not seek to replace white women with Black women in the subject position, but functions as a critical gaze “wherein representations of blackness [that] were stereotypically degrading and dehumanizing coexisted with a critical practice that restored presence where it was negated” (199). Bobo (1988) argues that, “a Black audience through a history of theatre-going and film-watching knows...more [as] an unconscious reaction to and defense against racist depictions of Black people...to filter out that which is negative and select from the work elements we can relate to” (101). These audiences reconstruct meaning by interrogating the message presented and filling in the gaps in the presentation, thereby privileging a different set of meanings.

The complexity of life in the sociocultural context is the focus that Gibson-Hudson (1994) suggests acknowledge the need for Blacks  to understand themselves through confrontations “intrinsic to growth and inner strength” (376). Other critical cinematic examinations show the complexity of Black lives and lived experiences that fragment the dominant culture’s cinematic interpretations (Larkin, 1988; hooks, 1992; Diawara, 1993; Dyson, 1993; Russell, 1995; Everett, 2001; Antonio, 2002). These examinations enable individuals to “eradicate prescribed images of self [as] they forge their own unique self-definition” (Gibson-Hudson, 1993, p. 376). Gibson-Hudson notes that the development of personal skills is necessary for empowering self-identity, and argues that “[s]isterhood and female bonding become important ingredients for [sociocultural] survival” (376-7). Willis (1994) argues that in order to look at and reclaim our selves, we must be in control of the communication about the representations, in order to “describe experiences that are shared within the African American community” (xi).