The Power of Society

"You looked at them and wondered why they were so ugly; you looked closely and could not find the source.  Then you realized that it came from conviction, their conviction.  It was as though some mysterious all-knowing master had given each one a cloak of ugliness to wear, and they had each accepted it without question.  The master had said, 'You are ugly people.'  They had looked about themselves and saw nothing to contradict the statement; saw, in fact, support for it leaning at them from every billboard, every movie, every glance.  'Yes,' they had said.  'You are right.'" (Morrison 39).

This passage, I believe, is the most important passage in The Bluest Eye because it explains why the Breedloves are ugly.  They are not physically ugly, but since they believe they are, people consider them ugly.  The "all-knowing master" who has given them the "cloak of ugliness" represents how white society has created this beauty standard that is impossible to live up to.  The movies, magazines, and all other sources of entertainment depicted only whites, creating a standard that you had to be white in order to be beautiful.  Since the Breedloves could not find anything to contradict this statement, they believed it to be a fact.  


A similar situation happened in The Avengers to Bruce Banner, otherwise known as the Hulk.  When Banner's heart rate gets too high, he turns into the Hulk.  When he is the Hulk, he doesn't have control over himself and can cause a lot of damage.  Because of this, society views the Hulk as a bad thing that needs to be contained.  This causes Banner to hate the Hulk side of him and to wish it wasn't there.  The Hulk is not a bad thing, he ends up saving the day at the end of the movie; but since society deems him as terrible, he ends up believing it just like the Breedloves did.  Tony Stark, however, does not view the Hulk as a terrible monster.  He, in fact, views him as an asset.  When Tony compliments him on being the Hulk, Banner accepts the compliment very lightly because he doesn't believe it.  Tony manages to convince Banner by the end of the movie that the Hulk might actually be a good thing.  That is the difference between Banner and the Breedloves, Banner had someone to convince him that society is wrong to make him believe that the Hulk is a bad thing.  Maybe if the Breedloves had their own Tony Stark, things would have ended differently.