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Today I saw Lee Daniels' film Precious, based on Sapphire's novel Push. I enjoyed it very much. I was afraid it would be just too painful--it's the story of an abused overweight 16-year-old who was raped by her own father and is now offered a chance to attend an alternative school and a way out. The film was dark but there were glimmers of light and hope, and the movie ends relatively positively while not explaining away or ignoring all the pain and horror that existed in Precious's and her mother Mary's life. The mother is portrayed by Mo'Nique, who does a fabulous job. Mariah Carey is utterly unrecognizable as the social worker. The teacher Ms. Rain was perhaps too optimistic and perfect, but occasionally I have met such people.
I watched the film because I'm interested in the representation of rape. This example fits into the most common category I see now, which is incest and child abuse. That type of rape evokes an unambiguous response in an audience, that if one rapes a child it must clearly be wrong. I found that to be true here, that when Precious's teacher and her social worker discover she's had two children by her father, they are appropriately horrified. Yet her mother Mary presents a common alternative viewpoint: she accuses Precious of having lured her boyfriend away, even though she had just described how the abuse began when Precious was 3. Victim-blaming occurs even where we think it's impossible.
What affected me the most in this movie wasn't the sexual violence but the cycle of abuse and desperation, and the sense that meddling white middle-class people will never be able to understand or fix these problems. When Precious comes into contact with middle-class lifestyles, it's jarring. Taken on her own, I can pretend she lives in some alien world. To see her world as continuous with my own is radical. But it's also paralyzing. Precious says that Ms. Weiss can't help her, that it's more than she can handle, and we can see it's clearly true. The social worker is in over her head, dealing with a woman who had been manipulating the welfare system for years to sustain a toxic home environment. The only solution for Precious is to get out. What solution is there for Mary? What happened to Mary years before to make her so desperate for love on any terms and so bitterly, violently resentful when she feels it's been taken from her?
It astonishes me that I can feel sympathy for this beastly woman, and yet I do. I think that's the beauty of the movie. No one is totally a monster. No one (except Ms. Rain) is totally perfect. There are no easy answers.
I watched the film because I'm interested in the representation of rape. This example fits into the most common category I see now, which is incest and child abuse. That type of rape evokes an unambiguous response in an audience, that if one rapes a child it must clearly be wrong. I found that to be true here, that when Precious's teacher and her social worker discover she's had two children by her father, they are appropriately horrified. Yet her mother Mary presents a common alternative viewpoint: she accuses Precious of having lured her boyfriend away, even though she had just described how the abuse began when Precious was 3. Victim-blaming occurs even where we think it's impossible.
What affected me the most in this movie wasn't the sexual violence but the cycle of abuse and desperation, and the sense that meddling white middle-class people will never be able to understand or fix these problems. When Precious comes into contact with middle-class lifestyles, it's jarring. Taken on her own, I can pretend she lives in some alien world. To see her world as continuous with my own is radical. But it's also paralyzing. Precious says that Ms. Weiss can't help her, that it's more than she can handle, and we can see it's clearly true. The social worker is in over her head, dealing with a woman who had been manipulating the welfare system for years to sustain a toxic home environment. The only solution for Precious is to get out. What solution is there for Mary? What happened to Mary years before to make her so desperate for love on any terms and so bitterly, violently resentful when she feels it's been taken from her?
It astonishes me that I can feel sympathy for this beastly woman, and yet I do. I think that's the beauty of the movie. No one is totally a monster. No one (except Ms. Rain) is totally perfect. There are no easy answers.