Soon after it’s release, the film Precious, despite being a darling of critics, international film festivals and several award shows including the Oscars elicited a quagmire of controversy from the black community. The verbal lynch mob was actually an echo; it harkened back to rumblings that followed the 1985 release of The Color Purple.
Precious and The Color Purple, (which had more onscreen violence shown than latter) both suffered from the same deafening stop-bashing-the-black-man chorus. But since both these films were adapted from books written by black women maybe the bigger question should be; why do some black men continue to rape, physically and emotionally abuse their daughters, wives and girlfriends? These stories far from represent the black male race in its entirety—our modern heroes now stretch from Civil Rights icons like Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, to trailblazing sports figures, groundbreaking actors, music innovators all the way the to The White House. Not to mention all our day-to-day heroes—the countless nameless and faceless amazing fathers, brothers and sons who reside in our communities around the world. But the horror stories starring the other kinds of black men do come from somewhere— they come from truth. Sapphire and Alice Walker didn’t just pull these male tales out of thin air.
The critics of Precious found a whole new cavalcade of complaints to pile on this latest brave, truthful work of art. They include but are not limited they having a problem with a scene featuring the protagonist, a dark-skinned black woman, eating a bucket of fried chicken, and also that this same dark skinned woman had a light skinned baby and that all light skinned characters were saviors in the film, while dark-skinned folks had problems. Then there was the issue that the film ‘still’ didn’t have a happy ending, paraded poor images of black men in film (see my The Color Purple/Precious comparisons above) and perhaps the worst offense of all— it had the stamp, endorsement and backing of executive producers Tyler Perry and Oprah Winfrey. [Insert: horrific organ music here.]
I’d like to take my angel’s advocate fork, and punch a few holes into this criticism, because for me it’s done. Speaking as dark-skinned black woman who likes fried chicken (and I can’t be the only one) I say what’s the big deal? (And nonspoiler alert: that film moment is fully put into context because of the scene that precedes it.) And speaking as a dark-skinned Mom with a light-skinned son (again, I know I’m not the only one) I realize that because of genealogy our varied shades can and now will produce any hue under the rainbow in future generations of my family thanks to my son’s white Polish Jewish grandfather and his West African Nigerian grandfather. As for the angelic light-skinned folks v. the clueless darkies? Personally, I was more offended by this trend in all of Oscar Micheaux films and hate to say it as I might, one of my personal all-time favorites movies, Carmen Jones. Mo’Nique, Perry and Winfrey have another thing in common other than being in the entertainment industry—they are all sexual abuse survivors. So obviously, they were all strongly attracted to the material in Precious. And that ending was the happiest one that could exist for an HIV-positive, illiterate teenager with two children; she positively changed what she thought of herself and her place in the world, which is just the ammunition you need to ultimately change your life.
Films like Precious and The Color Purple are problematic for black folks. They are cinematic mirrors that force some of us to witness the parts of our blackness we don’t want to see. I too am guilty of harboring this same shame—I wasn’t a huge fan of the hues of the black experience spotlighted in Baby Boy or Hustle and Flow. But at the end of that downtrodden rainbow, even I had to admit their stories still deserved to be told.
The story of Precious, based on Sapphire’s Push, was a typical urban tragedy that was given the full art house, European cinema-style, indie treatment. With its innovative film stylings, strong ensemble cast and breakthrough lead performances (Gabourey Sidibe’s strong, suffering yet vulnerable turn as the title role and Mo’Nique’s scarily evil and nearly insane performance as Mary Jones) Precious felt more like a documentary than a work of fiction—it was the perfect trifecta of beauty, pain and poetry.
There was no difference between the protagonists Randy in The Wrestler (played to Best Actor Academy Award nominee perfection by comeback kid Mickey Rourke) and Clarice Precious Jones in Precious. They are the stories of downtrodden, forgotten outcasts and underdogs. The themes in Precious resonated so positively and strongly with international critics and audiences because the film’s themes of incest, sexual abuse, poverty, ignorance, and illiteracy—are universal ills that affect all cultures here and worldwide—they are not specific to the black experience. Anyone who thinks otherwise is buying into racist stereotypes. Case in point: following a screening of Precious, Mo’Nique came face-to-face with crying Asian man who confessed to her that, ‘he was Mary Jones’ in his family. Mo’Nique begged the man to get help by way of therapy.
Despite the bashing Precious took from a few in its own community, perhaps in the end its filmmakers and its stars have gotten some redemption from the entertainment industry. Director Lee Daniels has been tapped to helm the upcoming Martin Luther King biopic, Selma. Geoffrey Fletcher made Oscar history by becoming the first African American screenwriter to win the the award for his screenplay adaptation. And after building a career on the backs of mostly C and D list films, BET talk show host Mo’Nique, now an Academy Award winning actress will surely be on the short-list of actresses receiving A-list scripts. Thankfully, Hollywood has now earned itself another rare precious commodity in the industry: a twenty-something young actress of color in Ms. Sidibe, who will next star in the Showtime series, The C Word and the film, Yelling To The Sky.
The filmmakers of Precious and its stars created a work of art, made a truthful, entertaining statement and created a ‘show’ so there can be more and future ‘biz.’ And black, white or other creating inspiring, groundbreaking entertainment that has the capacity to make more green is the ultimate goal and game of Hollywood.
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