Eating the Other and Animal Nature

For this week’s blog post I am focusing on the ideas of “Eating the Other.” As I was sitting on my couch being tormented by my roommate’s love for E! News I could not help but tune in to try to find something to blog about this week. I was fortunate enough to actually find something worth blogging about. For once E! News gave me something to actually think about instead to just rolling my eyes at the rich egotistical people on the show.

On E! There was an entire segment on Rhianna’s new scandalous photo shoot that portrayed her as a sexy and dangerous powerful woman. However, I took something different from this. After reading Bell Hook’s article about “eating the other” I saw this once again as an example of portraying African American Women as sexual beings with animalistic traits. This photo shoot was just another way of White culture eating the culture of African American women. Therefore while trying to find Rhianna as a risk taker it is just another way of showing African Americans as animals. IN CMN 102 we talked a lot about how African Americans are portrayed as animals in media and I think this is a prime example. Now with the information provided by Bell Hooks I just see this as another way people can devour African American sexuality by making it look animalistic and risky. Eating the other becomes easier when you feel that you have something to gain from it, such as risk that leads to experience.