CO-PRODUCED BY OPRAH WINFREY and Tyler Perry, the awkwardly
titled Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire is this
year’s feel-good-by-feeling-bad Oscar bait: a relentlessly sordid bit
of ghetto tourism that invites audiences to wallow in unimaginable
misery for 110 minutes, only to emerge from their cinematic journey
more enlightened, more aware, more… human. (Thanks,
Oprah!)
Precious (Gabourey Sidibe) is a 16-year-old black girl who’s
borderline illiterate and lives in poverty with her physically and
verbally abusive mother, Mary (Mo’Nique). And she’s fat. (Euphemisms
need not apply—the boldly cast Gabourey Sidibe doesn’t have a
“pretty face,” nor is she “curvy.” She’s the fattest woman seen
onscreen in a non-comedic role in recent memory.) Precious is so fat,
in fact, that you might not notice she’s pregnant—it’s her second
child, both the result of being raped by her father.
When Precious isn’t being raped by her dad or dodging the frying
pans her mother throws at her head, she’s being bullied at school. She
takes refuge in glittery daydreams of stardom, but it isn’t until she’s
accepted into an alternative school—where a kindly teacher (Paula
Patton) takes an interest—that her life starts to turn around.
It’s a predictable cinematic trajectory, distinguished largely by
Precious‘ willingness to articulate the sordid details of its
character’s life.
That the acting is terrific may come as a surprise, considering the cast: Mariah Carey plays a take-no-shit social worker, Lenny Kravitz is a gold-hearted male nurse, and comedian Mo’Nique (The
Parkers, Welcome Home Roscoe Jenkins, Phat Girlz)
rages across the screen as Precious’ violent mother. The film’s best
performances, though, come from the ragtag group of girls in Precious’
new school, who infuse the often-melodramatic script with irreverence
and liveliness.
The film’s been lauded for its uncompromising depiction of Precious’
wretched situation, but it’s worth considering why, exactly,
Precious spends so much time mired in the sordid, brutal details
of its protagonist’s life. Sexual abuse and incest are realities, and
there’s no reason why art shouldn’t confront them. But when pop culture
addresses them (and Precious, with its against-all-odds
cheerleading and music-video casting, is very much a pop-culture
commodity), the results deserve scrutiny. The dividends of a rape scene
should not be an audience emboldened or titillated by a brush with the
“real.” Precious‘ triumph is not that it gives voice to a victim
of domestic violence and sexual abuse—humanity’s innate prurience
guarantees an audience for those details. No, Precious‘ real
success is on a smaller scale: It makes a sympathetic protagonist of a
poor, fat, black girl. Whether director Lee Daniels & Co. could’ve
achieved the same result without invoking a level of abuse that would
make a sympathetic protagonist out of Hitler, we’ll never know.