Monday, March 22, 2010
What is Precious?
Some will tell you it is a harrowing story of physical and sexual abuse, of un-sufferable cruelty and malicious parenting. However, my spin is that Precious is a movie about the resiliency of being human and the opportunity for hope to creep into those tortured places of our spirit and dare to take root. I feel the need to remind folks that abuse (especially sexual abuse) is rooted in power and control aka oppression. The sex act is the form of oppression. Yes, it’s uncomfortable to witness imagery of incest and rape and yes that imagery may resonate with our own feelings of vulnerability and helplessness. No one wants to feel like their life is out of their control. Few want to be reminded that others live in worlds where very little of their daily life is happy or hopeful. It ain’t a feel good movie dammit. Some folks I know got caught up in the incest and the imagery that is conjured up in flashback scenes in the movie. Some white folks I know say they were traumatized by the film due to their own issues and discouraged others from seeing it. For me this response speaks volumes of racial and social nuances that alienate them from the overarching theme of the movie. The family history of abuse is what happened to the character Precious in her journey to be whole. Correction, the abuse is one of the things that happened to this character- she did have some other experiences too. She learned to read and write. She learned to speak her truth even when others did not want to hear it. Even when the consequences for speaking her truth alienated her from everything she knew, this character dared to cling to hope despite the gritty reality of her circumstances. It ain’t a feel good movie. Yet, this character learned that “straight up lesbians” are real people with intelligent conversation in spite of what her mother said about “the homos”. To my white sisters and brothers that were paralyzed by the sexual oppression in the story, your failure to witness depravity and recognize Black folks ability to rise above despair means that you can never truly appreciate Langston Hughes’ truth when he wrote “life for me ain’t been no crystal stair…and sometimes going in the dark where there ain’t been no light”. This movie says to me that the human spirit can endure such atrocities, a personal holocaust if you will, but you take a person’s ability to breathe when you deny them the space to dream about a different reality. If you want to a feel good movie, see the Blindside with Sandra Bullock. And if you can bare to witness beauty even when it’s not pretty, watch Precious and then talk to someone about it. You know my porch.
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I saw Blindside, and though I love Sandra, I didn't feel like the movie moved anything in me. Honestly, I was more moved by Avatar. Precious, made me want to be more considerate of the circumstances that people may come from. It made me want to be more Empathetic and less judgmental, with my Republican self.
ReplyDeleteThe thing that disturbs me the most is that as a greater community, black, white, purple green, homosexual, heterosexual, academic, from “the block, and any other category we find it necessary to label those around us for “proper” identification, WE have dropped the ball. In 2009 we were given a rare opportunity to explore pertinent issues that plague our communities. Poverty, sexual abuse, incest, HIV/AIDS, illiteracy, and teenage pregnancy were nicely packaged in the “safe” form of Hollywood film. Instead of exploring the rose that grew out of concrete, as my brother Tupac Shakur put it, we focused on the how “raw” and “inappropriate” some of the scenes were; witnessing the sexual abuse and exploitation of this innocent child made us feel uncomfortable. In response to the film, airtime wasn’t used to protest the injustices and inequities of public education. HIV/AIDS activists didn’t use the movie to enhance their public awareness campaigns. And with much disappointment in my heart, as much as it hurts me to my core to admit it, the persons who I personally counted on to engage in a meaningful conversation around this precious gift (my highly educated sistahs in medical school, those brothahs who run in afro-centric circles and consider themselves “conscious” and “rooted,” family members who have personally experienced the cycle of sexual abuse within the Black family) refused to acknowledge the hard hitting reality depicted on the screen. Rarely does an opportunity present itself for communities to view themselves, outside of themselves, without feeling “exposed.” This time it was televised, however unfortunately, we have missed the train for the revolution.
ReplyDeleteDid you hear about the rose that grew from a crack in the concrete?
Proving nature's law is wrong it learned to walk with out having feet.
Funny it seems, but by keeping it's dreams, it learned to breathe fresh air.
Long live the rose that grew from concrete when no one else ever cared.
Tupac Shakur
-EB