Worldbuilding through the Black gaze

Added: 2026-05-11

[00:00:00]Remember Marie Lavau, the voodoo witch from my favorite season of American Horror Story, Coven? Remember her? She was best known for her physical control with voodoo dolls, resurrection from the dead, and the power immortality.

[00:00:19]She was that badass that everyone knew not to [ __ ] with in case you tried her, of course. bringing an analytical approach to the character of Maria Lavo and how she was portrayed outside of viewing her as more than a character.

[00:00:36]Bringing an analytical approach to her, she was more than poking and proddding into dolls to get control of people and perform these dubious acts.

[00:00:48][clears throat] She was a healer.

[00:00:50]Practices of voodoo or hudoo views from the west have just shaped this warped mindset of how we're supposed to interact with such practices or lifeways. I I'm really interested or I'm very passionate about world building through the black gays. I want this video to be about reassessing how we view certain aspects in front of us that have been so normal. Reassessing how we view those things in order to build more uplifting worlds for ourselves by ourselves.

[00:01:34]We witness fictional characters like Marie Lavo and the like who are portrayed in this decisive manufactured way to induce certain thoughts. Um the goal of these thoughts are of question and I will prompt you to think of on your own what these thoughts could be but specifically within our community.

[00:02:01]Once upon a time there was a beautiful woman by the name of Yaya who looked into the waters of the ocean and there she saw her own reflection and she said, "Who is that beautiful woman?"

[00:02:22]I thought that I was the prettiest thing that the world had ever seen.

[00:02:29]There came that rumbling in her belly and it grew and it grew and it grew till it exploded.

[00:02:40]And before her stood thousands of beautiful women.

[00:02:48]Who are you beautiful women?

[00:02:53]I thought that I was the loveliest thing that the world had ever seen.

[00:03:00]And the women looked deep into the eyes of Yeaya. And there they saw their own reflections and they said to her, "You are.

[00:03:14]We're just you.

[00:03:30]Hey. [music] In this video, we'll be discussing world building through the black gays. This video is an inspiration for myself and hopefully for others for how we can start to view and build our lives as worthy, build our worlds as worthy, where our black asses are uplifted and represented, where we're the mere reflections of our spirituality. We are the walking embodiment of God consciousness.

[00:04:18]Let's get into world building. What is world building? When I research the term world building, I get back results for building fantasy or fictional worlds.

[00:04:33]The gagging part is we have the power to make those fictional worlds real within the course. The aspect to world building was to view the ways in which we use aspects to shape our worlds and further shape our views of ourselves within such worlds.

[00:04:57]>> Where you going to go when we start a revolution? Who side are you going to be on? Are you still going to be on your knees begging for us jobs?

[00:05:05]>> I will I will as Mr. Meek say he wouldn't die standing on his feet rather than down on his knees. I will die standing up for God regardless to any circumstance.

[00:05:15]>> Okay. Have God ever told you to let this white man rule you like he is?

[00:05:21]>> Well, young man, you you force must be born again. God is a spirit.

[00:05:25]>> I'm born again. I ain't got to be born again. See, I was born in a new generation. You could brain your mother could have brainwashed you, but can't nobody brainwash me. I'm ready. It's going to take young boys like us to uh win the revolution.

[00:05:39]The white peoples realize today that they was wrong for enslaving the negative the great mass. May May I finish? I waited. Why? If if you so if you so militant and so intelligent, why don't you keep your mouth?

[00:05:52]>> I'll tell you why, Ron Mitchell. Because I'm sick and tired of you standing up there on a television camera, a black man with a white heart and a white face.

[00:05:59]You're a black Anglo-Saxon. You disgrace to the race to stand up about a white man loving you. Ask me Med's wife. Ask the the pairs of the three civil rights workers in Mississippi. Ask Jimmy Lee Jackson's mother. Understand? Ask Grace Weasel's five children who was shot in the head because he's riding with a black boy in the car. You stand there and talk like a unmitigated fool.

[00:06:17]>> I thought you were more intelligent. You know, >> I'm intelligent enough that I don't want to listen to your dribble.

[00:06:21]>> May I finish expert?

[00:06:23]>> I find this clip extremely powerful. We view the complexities of the perceptions of worlds being built within this clip alone. On the one hand, we have these two young men eager to know why our spiritual power has been placed into the hands of someone else.

[00:06:50]Someone else being God and the Christian church. They want to know where our power has gone, our collective conscious power, and how we can get it back. On the other hand, we have a black reverend, a black Christian reverend trying to appeal to why these young men should view Christianity as a practice as part of their spirituality. We hear him. He says God is a spirit. I just think that's super powerful. And I feel like that is like a main aspect that causes people to argue and it causes the confusion. Is he trying to say that God as we know it know him as we know her? As we know her, was he trying to say that God is within us? That God lives within us? That we are God?

[00:07:50][music] As students of the course, we were encouraged to hone in on worldbuing tools or techniques that tied in close with our themes of world building. I chose to hone in on text as rituals. I want to better explain text, movies, videos, books, different posts you come across on Instagram, conversations that you've exchanged.

[00:08:35]Viewing text as rituals. This is a very important aspect to the themes across this video. First of all, let's deconstruct how we view ritual and what ritual is. I feel like there's such a negative connotation around what is >> people performing rituals like every other day you hear on Instagram, well my for you pages and timelines. Oh, it was ritualistic and it was a ritual.

[00:09:11]It was bad. Uhuh. She performing rituals. Marie Lavo, she was portrayed as performing rituals, poking and proddding into them voodoo dolls, getting people to do what she wanted.

[00:09:23]Even recently in the media, we heard about Beyonce and Tina Noles having rituals within the gumbo that Tina made serving to people, putting people under spells because she did a ritual. Like I want us to think deeper about what rituals could mean once we start to engage with how we live our everyday lives, everyday practices we have, things we watch, things we take in as knowledge, as ritual, we start to view it differently and sort of like its sacredness.

[00:10:05]So a question that I have with this worldbuing device or technique is what is something that is ritual to you? How is it highly valuable and ritualistic to you at the same time?

[00:10:28]>> [music] >> The other aspect that I chose to hone in on for this video is expedient. It's more so of placing our minds within the setting of wholeness and emptiness at the same time. What I'm thinking of really deeply right now in relation to expedient means is how you're black.

[00:10:57]You're black as [ __ ] And you're born into hostile environments, a hostile environment in general because of your identity, because of how you're perceived in this world. You're born into a world. It tells you every day you're not meant for it. The use of an expedient device or devices shifts that whole frame. It places you in the world that you feel that you were meant to be in. The uplifting representational world. It it really might sound crazy like I'm just like oh powerful and divinity but no like you genuinely have the power that's literally placing yourself into the world that you want to create or have created or will create. We are the walking embodiment of God consciousness.

[00:12:01]>> Conclusion.

[00:12:04]I was black yesterday. I'm black today.

[00:12:08]like tomorrow. Thanks, >> [music] >> I just don't know how I feel sitting back like this.