by Jess W
A Movie All Feminists Should See:
The author of the award-winning 1996 novel that inspired the recent film Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire can no doubt best explain the stoic, hardened look on her protagonist’s face: “I wanted to show that this girl is locked out by literacy. She’s locked out by her physical appearance. She’s locked out by her class, and she’s locked out by her color.” Precious is everything that Hollywood isn’t, and the film’s gritty realism constantly reminds us of her place in the food chain. Pregnant for the second time by her father, who later dies of AIDS, and living with a jealous, chain-smoking, and violent mother, played with unrelenting violence by the comedian Mo’Nique, Precious is constantly being told that she is fat, stupid, and worthless. Without detailing the various abuses she wordlessly endures from peers and adults, suffices to say that the narrative unfolding under the helm of director Lee Daniels cannot be described as adversity; rather, Precious has been so beaten down that she resignedly endures without surprise; it’s a matter of survival. The fact that she never asks why, never questions her treatment, is a testament to how profoundly it has been embedded in her sense of self.
Even her name, however, (“I go by Precious,” she insists) reveals that Precious is also a figure of almost impossible longing: not just for a white boyfriend with “nice hair” and a normal life, but for color, flair, beauty of which no one can rob her. Her fantasy life, to which she (and the film) hastily escapes during particularly scarring moments, both shows us the expanse of Precious’ imagination and how far she falls from it; one particularly devastating moment shows her reflection in the mirror as a thin, blonde white girl. For the largely white middle class audience, who may walk away from the film feeling a nagging sense of privileged guilt about complaining over parking spaces on their way in, the mirror as a site of fantasy and deep unhappiness will ring true across the class ladder. Much of Precious’ life is impossible to fathom, but the girl in the mirror seems to remain the universal symbol for American women of what we are not.
With an almost exclusively female cast, the profound ways that women create, love, and destroy one another becomes a central subject of the film. Daniels’ portrayal of the blossoming friendships between the girls in Precious’ G.E.D. class is nuanced and incredibly moving; their support for one another isn’t without judgment and rarely politically correct—sometimes you don’t know whether a comment will spark a laugh or a fistfight—but it is ultimately the redemptive element of the film. This redemption avoids the exaggerated clichés of inner city black women raised up in most Hollywood films. At the film’s close, after all, Precious is still HIV-positive, living in a half-way house, and caring for two children.
While I can’t complain about their performances, especially the rousing physical work of Mo’Nique, I was perplexed by Daniels’ choice to reach so high on the Hollywood star ladder. Mariah Carey, Sherri Sheperd (currently on The View), and Lenny Kravitz co-star in a film that consciously defies Hollywood convention and contrivances. It seems too appropriate when Precious tells the social worker played by Carey, “I like you, too, but you can’t handle this shit.” The true star here is newcomer Gabourey Sibide, whose impassivity betrays both the element of survival in Precious’ inhibition, and the etchings of desire constantly flashing across her eyes. While I wish this tour-de-force actress the best, I will be interested to see what kind of work she has in film after this; can a plus-size black woman carry a film that is not centered on her story of rising from the abuse and poverty of the ghetto? Could Sibide become the kind of Hollywood ideal that she idolizes, and, should she miraculously achieve that kind of status, is it ultimately affirmative or constricting? The film made me wonder about whether the ideal itself or the tendency to idealize (or both) is the problem for female self-image in this country, particularly as far as Hollywood is concerned.