“It’s My Body and I’ll Show It If I Want To”
47
The door opened. He stepped inside. My life changed. The
first thing I saw was a man who moved like an animal, an
incredibly beautiful self-confident, jet black man with the satin
skin of a panther. .. His presence was so mesmerizing, his
whole bearing so unashamedly sexual, that I was totally
overtaken by the moment.. . . I must have crossed and
uncrossed my legs a hundred times as he went around the
room saying hello. Finally, it was my turn (5).
Carroll remembers how she and Poitier would stay up an entire night laughing
and talking and making love (122), but Carroll wrote no explicit language about
the lovemaking.
CarrolFs narration charges Poitier with animal eroticism and
magnetism. The striking particulars of the scene operate as sexual metaphors for
the female genitalia and sexual intercourse: "The door opened” (vagina); "he
stepped inside” (sexual intercourse); "my life changed” (orgasm). Carroll’s
emphasis on Poitier’s physiology is interesting in view of the foundation of
Poitier’s screen success. During America’s integrationist period (replete with the
continued lynchings of African American males), Poitier represents to
Hollywood and to White America the safe, controlled, and intelligent Negro—a
necessary paradigm to quell White fear of Black male masculinity. In essence,
Poitier’s controlled cinematic image gives the film industry a safety net against
the virility of the Black male. But what are we to make of Carroll’s references to
Hollywood’s Black darling in tenns of animal imagery? Even though her
references immediately bring to mind the historical incantations that the Black
male is but a savage, brutal beast, Carroll nevertheless subverts Poitier’s muted
screen persona; she cloaks him in sexuality and sensuality, within and against
racial stereotype. In a way, Carroll’s gender and race privileges her to situate
Poitier in such a vigorously sensual manner. The specific image of a panther
attributed to Poitier symbolizes a virile apd erect big black dick, present for
Carroll’s visual and, more specifically, personal gratification.
The Preminger and Poitier portraitures invert Laura Mulvey’s exemplar
that outlines female film spectatorship as "active/male and passive/female.”
Mulvey asserts, "[t]he determining male gaze projects its phantasy on the female
figure, which is styled accordingly. In their traditional exhibitionist role women
are simultaneously looked at and displayed, with their appearance coded for
strong visual and erotic impact so that they can be said to connote to-be-lookedat-ness” (62). Instead, Dandridge and Carroll enact bell hooks’s "oppositional
gaze,” whereby the Black female spectator affirms agency in the experience of
looking, hooks declares, "[sjpaces of agency exist for black people, wherein we
can both integrate the gaze of the other but also look back, and at one another,
naming what we see” (248). The authors’ written "I” (eye) enables Dandridge
and Carroll to perform as desiring subjects rather than as desired objects. The act
of Black women looking back and naming what they see empowers them as
agents of the gaze. Dandridge preempts authority from the powerful White