Morrison, T. (2007). The bluest eye: A novel. New York: Vintage International.

-The main novel will be used as the primary point of reference in the essay. I will use the pop cultures references/symbols in the book to draw connections to my main question of how the message of white narratives in the media affects the black protagonists in the book.

Werrlein, Debra T. “Not so Fast, Dick and Jane: Reimagining Childhood and Nation in the Bluest Eye.” MELUS, vol. 30, no. 4, 2005, pp. 53–72. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/30029634. Accessed 15 Nov. 2020.

-This article talks about so many historical pop culture references and their implications in the book that will make it very helpful in my own essay. An important part of this article is how it connects Pecola’s view of her own ugliness to the character of Peola in Imitation of Life. It also goes into great detail about her affinity for Shirley Temple. 

Vasquez, Sam. “In Her Own Image: Literary and Visual Representations of Girlhood in Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye and Jamaica Kincaid’s Annie John.” Meridians: feminism, race, transnationalism, vol. 12, no. 1, 2014, p. 58+. Gale Academic OneFile, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A365688777/AONE?u=cuny_hunter&sid=AONE&xid=d1f1dab9. Accessed 15 Nov. 2020.

-This article also talks in great detail about the representations of Shirley Temple and Imitation of Life in the article. It talks alot about Claudia as well as Peculia, as it explores Claudia’s outlook on the world around her and how Morrison uses her to convey a message regarding white imagery in media. It also mentions the clark doll study. 

Wall, Cheryl A. “On Dolls, Presidents, and Little Black Girls.” Signs, vol. 35, no. 4, 2010, pp. 796–801. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/651034. Accessed 15 Nov. 2020.

-This article brings the conversation about The Bluest Eye to a more present day lens. The writer reflects on the election of President Obama and the announcement that dolls will be made of his two daughters. The writer connects this to the significance of dolls and imagery in Bluest Eye and hypothesizes if this would make a true difference to Pecola or Claudia. 

Hyman, Ramona L. “PECOLA BREEDLOVE: THE SACRIFICIAL ICONOCLAST IN ‘THE BLUEST EYE.’” CLA Journal, vol. 52, no. 3, 2009, pp. 256–264. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/44325476. Accessed 15 Nov. 2020.

-This article goes into great detail about Pecola’s character and how she turns to the white imagery around her as an escape from her own community betraying her by casting her as “ugly”. It states how Pecole turns to the white image of beauty as a pathway for her own beauty and compares her to modern black children that seek validation from a community. It makes a strong argument for why Pecola turns to these white images for beauty and also to effectively escape from her community. 

Bergner, Gwen. “Black Children, White Preference: Brown v. Board, the Doll Tests, and the Politics of Self-Esteem.” American Quarterly, vol. 61, no. 2, 2009, pp. 299–332. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/27734991. Accessed 15 Nov. 2020.

-This is an in-depth look at the clark doll study and it’s possible implications on self image in black children. It talks about the original study, as well as other recreations in years after, to make conclusions on what these studies imply on the way black children have viewed themselves throughout history. 

Stewart, Jacqueline. “Negroes Laughing at Themselves? Black Spectatorship and the Performance of Urban Modernity.” Critical Inquiry, vol. 29, no. 4, 2003, pp. 650–677. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/377724. Accessed 16 Nov. 2020.

-This article talks about the relationship between cinema and black viewers as its audience. It talks about the often harmful characterchures of black people portrayed in cinema and the reason why some black audiences may turn blind eyes to it. It also interestingly connects the character of Pauline, with her love of cinema, because of the way that she uses the white reality in cinema to escape her own reality. 

Claudia Rankine transcends her writing from just text with visual additions to her “situations”. What the videos do for these situations that Rankine is describing, is put us in the world that she is talking about, as if we are there experiencing these situations for ourselves. What these situations essentially seem to be are events that Rankine has chosen to put a spotlight on that can be connected to the overall theme of the modern racism and discrimination that black Americans face. These events are instances where Rankine can shine light on the reader’s previous perception of it and show it through the lens of the victims.

In the first situation of the text, (but the third of the videos), Rankine chooses to write about Hurricane Katrina. What drew me in about the text was how little I was when this hurricane actually happened, this made many of the alarming things Rankine talked about in the text completely new to me. She uses CNN’s coverage of the hurricane to give a sense of the confusion, the outrage, and the heartache that was being experienced as essentially thousands of people, a majority black and poor, were left with little emergency aid. Her decision to use words from a CNN coverage is interesting because she essentially creates a textual montage of the event as it happened. It also shows how these televised figures were aware of the blatant indifference of the federal government to those that were stranded as they speculate about how FEMA thought going to them “wasn’t safe”. It also shows the victims of the hurricane in their own words as they say that they were forgotten about.

The addition of the video to this text was a completely moving experience for me. The video is a montage like too, it layers a weather graphic of the hurricane with images of the hurricane victims. I think the video adds to the ideas that Rankine expresses in the text and it opened up my eyes to the line of thinking that Rankine goes through in the text. It starts with just the weather graphic of the hurricane as it going over New Orleans. This drew the question: what is the use of these weather graphics? Usually they are to predict the hurricane and its route and although it’s unclear of this graphic is before or as the hurricane was hitting, I think just the fact that these graphics are used for that already says something. It said to me the symbolism for it in the video could be that the hurricane, to some extent, was predictable in where it would land. I looked into this and actually found an article that solidified this idea, which talks about top weather agencies predicting, rather accurately, the potential catastrophic hurricane and its path that devastated New Orleans even though the federal government stated otherwise.

After coming to terms with that being the reason why the video chooses a weather graphic, the second element of it is the pictures of the devastation. Now that Rankine and Lucas tell us that this is something predictable, and the lack of emergency personnel preventable, they show us the people that Rankine is talking about. The countless photos of black Americans that were left stranded, walking through waist level waters, or on top of their roofs, waiting for some form of help. Looking at those photos, it’s hard to feel like you can imagine these photos taking place in a more white, and/or, rich neighborhood. This is where the video ties in the same conclusion that is Rankine’s text. She repeats multiple times the phrase “I don’t know what the water wanted”. The first time answering it with: “It wanted to show you no one would come”. I think that beautifully summarizes the message of this heart wrenching situation; it shows a federal government’s indifference to a poor, black neighborhood in an extreme time of need. It leaves you with, what I think is a main message of Citizen overall, which is the harsh reality of our modern, systematically racist society.

Morrison, T. (2007). The bluest eye: A novel. New York: Vintage International.

Werrlein, Debra T. “Not so Fast, Dick and Jane: Reimagining Childhood and Nation in the Bluest Eye.” MELUS, vol. 30, no. 4, 2005, pp. 53–72. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/30029634. Accessed 15 Nov. 2020.

Vasquez, Sam. “In Her Own Image: Literary and Visual Representations of Girlhood in Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye and Jamaica Kincaid’s Annie John.” Meridians: feminism, race, transnationalism, vol. 12, no. 1, 2014, p. 58+. Gale Academic OneFile, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A365688777/AONE?u=cuny_hunter&sid=AONE&xid=d1f1dab9. Accessed 15 Nov. 2020.

Bump, Jerome. “Racism and Appearance in The Bluest Eye: A Template for an Ethical Emotive Criticism.” College Literature, vol. 37 no. 2, 2010, p. 147-170. Project MUSE, doi:10.1353/lit.0.0108.

Wall, Cheryl A. “On Dolls, Presidents, and Little Black Girls.” Signs, vol. 35, no. 4, 2010, pp. 796–801. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/651034. Accessed 15 Nov. 2020.

Hyman, Ramona L. “PECOLA BREEDLOVE: THE SACRIFICIAL ICONOCLAST IN ‘THE BLUEST EYE.’” CLA Journal, vol. 52, no. 3, 2009, pp. 256–264. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/44325476. Accessed 15 Nov. 2020.

Bergner, Gwen. “Black Children, White Preference: Brown v. Board, the Doll Tests, and the Politics of Self-Esteem.” American Quarterly, vol. 61, no. 2, 2009, pp. 299–332. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/27734991. Accessed 15 Nov. 2020.

Stewart, Jacqueline. “Negroes Laughing at Themselves? Black Spectatorship and the Performance of Urban Modernity.” Critical Inquiry, vol. 29, no. 4, 2003, pp. 650–677. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/377724. Accessed 16 Nov. 2020.

I used mostly Hunter Libraries OneSearch and JSTOR to find these articles. I searched through multiple databases JSTOR was the one that was really giving me a lot of results for the terms that I was searching for. I specifically searched for articles that had the terms “the bluest eye” and “the imitation of life” together so I could find more people that talk about that reference that is mentioned in Werrlein’s article. I also replaced that reference to other pop culture references in bluest eye like “Shirley Temple” and for more broader articles I simply replaced those specific terms with “children”, “media”, “racism”, and “imagery” (all of these going along with “the bluest eye”). In my research I found many people talk about “the clark doll study” so I also independently searched that with “representation” and tried to find more articles that linked this to the Bluest Eye. I think in the end I chose the articles I thought fit the most with my research topic of the effect of white narratives and representation in media on black children and how that message is portrayed in The Bluest Eye.

How does the white narrative imagery and lack of diverse representation in the media the children in the Bluest Eye consume effect their formative views on themselves and the world around them?

The first image seen in Citizen is a street sign that says: “Jim Crow Road”, and a lot can be told about the way that Rankine uses images in text just from that very first image. Using images in text is a very tactical thing for a writer to do, I know as a reader when I flip a page and see an image my eyes look at immediately at that image first before I continue to read the text. When realizing this, I searched up some reasonings on why this is the case for me and in that I saw there is evidence to believe this is a case for a majority of readers. There is a study that is cited by numerous articles about how we perceive vision in text that states the human brain processes images 60,000 times faster than text and 90 percent of information transmitted to the brain is visual. Rankine cleverly uses images throughout her text because as readers we are drawn to it first and we process that image before we even read her text. The images in many cases are indicative of the theme or message of what she is talking about, a great example being in the case of the street sign, therefore aiding to make her message in the text clear. 

The sign is a huge indicator of what she talks about in the whole first section of the text because of the significance of it. Rankine talks about many instances in her life as a black woman where she has seen what modern racism looks like, and felt it in ways that echo the words of Hurston and Ellision. She wonders if her teacher “ever actually saw her” at the end of the first page which echoes the theme of invisibility shown throughout Ellison’s Invisible Man. The second instance she talks about is she feels “confused” or conflicted when a close friend confuses her for their black housekeeper: “You never called her on it (why not?) and yet you don’t forget.” That line is important in the text because it shows this gesture actually hurts the narrator and sticks with it, even though to the close friend it is nothing to even address. I think this is indicative of modern racism in 21st century society, where many white people are convinced that there is no such thing as racism anymore. Many people think we’ve moved on, they don’t think to address these acts that might still indicate that there is racism ingrained on a subconscious level and that racism is still seen throughout our society, albeit maybe only showing through more “subtle” ways. I say “subtle” because from white society’s perspective they may appear subtle, but to the other side, to black people who live in this modern society, acts like this are more blatantly seen in their perspective.This brings me back to the image that is seen right before we read about these stories, that image is a representation of the racism that still lingers in society. It’s a sign that is a blatant reminder to the Jim Crow era of history, and it stands regularly in this town. The first thought that occurred to me while looking at that sign was it must be seen as something blatantly disrespectful to any black person that sees it while not even given a second thought by the rest of the white people that use that street every day. Which directly correlates to the stories of the text, proving that Rankine used this image to foreshadow this message. 

I believe that using images as a way to solidify her ideas is not the only reason why Rankine chose to do this, though. This is because using images also creates a multimedia text that feels relevant to modern day society. This furthers her point that she is speaking about racism in the 21st century. She is making it clear, to those that may not see it, that this is racism that is occurring today. In an age of social media, Rankine used those to draw our attention to her message, to place herself in our modern world filled with visual stimulus, and as a way to directly address a society that is increasingly acting blind to the mere existence of racism.