Bell hooks: Cultural Criticism and Transformation

These videos of Bell Hooks’ “Cultural Criticism” series were very appealing to me. Specially where she started talking about the celebrity Madonna. Interesting thing was the very way she started her career portraying herself as a feminist representative. Later in her career how she seems to follow the very old fact of culture where everybody is chasing the dollars. I don’t know much about Madonna personally. I am not really aware of most of the US superstars, movies. Reason would be I just came here last year. Also I have not seen most of these movies these videos talked about. I can speak here on the experience I have had in this last year or what I have previously seen and on the bases of these videos.

I agree with bell hooks say about Madonna that she is trying to use sex appeal to make money as quickly as possible. The question whether the character and actions of Madonna represents that of feminist icon? In my opinion no, definitely not. She is an extremely wealthy woman but still she is giving negative comments what bell hook referred as going on the right side to make more money. This now just symbolizes greed and not feminism. Madonna is now like any other superstar who does only what is the demand of this very pop culture. Also nowadays other female superstars are using sex appeal to make money but they do not refer themselves as a feminist icon.

Media definitely leaves a solid impression on a person’s mind. The picture of oppression they show mostly is male domination and white supremacy. These images leaves an impression on us in our very early age about what is wrong and what is right, even before we are able to make a true comparison between right and wrong, good and bad. Media plays a very big role but mostly in my opinion a negative one.