A Critique of Lee Daniels Film PRECIOUS: Colorism, Poverty Porn as a Filmic Narrative of Passive Ethnocide
Last night I went to see the film "PRECIOUS" directed by Lee Daniels at the BAM (Brooklyn Academy of Music) Rose Cinemas with my U of Mich friend & mentee Aja Wood (@alwaysaja). Twitter mate @JessieNYC asked me to share my critique. Really love the community of intellectuals tweeting about race, racial justice and social inequities. It's a richer community than on FB imho.
"PRECIOUS" AS POVERTY PORNAnyhow, last night I sent out a tweet and status update about going to see "Precious" which prompted this FB comment from my Michigan grad school buddy who is a professor in poli sci, an activist, and a great dad:
Ahmad Rahman
After you see Precious I wonder whether you'll have a similar critique about colorism and the poverty porn of black degradation.
November 28 at 8:21pm
I replied:
Kyra Gaunt
Will let ya know, Ahmad. Luv your designation of "poverty porn". Totally get that.
November 28 at 8:27pm ·
This morning I wrote:
Kyra Gaunt
Ahmad, the polarity of colorism between [light-skinned] "helper/savior" figures vs. [dark and ugly] "ghetto moms" like Precious and her mom was striking and questionable. [Casting is not color-blind when it comes to black actors and too often we overlook the selection process in the end]. The one welfare woman of similar hue [as Precious and her mom] was negative compared to Carey's character whom screenplay invites us to have compassion for. Really considering the "poverty porn of black degradation" critique. It's valid. Not sure the payoff of the film is worth the cost relative to black degradation. Black ppl as well as whites, both younger members of the audience in Bklyn (BAM) last night, were laughing through the prism of stereotypical baby mama language. Hard to separate comic caricatures like Martin Lawrence's Shanana and the variety of miscreants that symbolize black motherhood on TV and in film (even Ma Dear/Tyler Perry) from images that invite our compassion for a lifestyle that is a harder reality and hard pill to swallow for most middle class audiences.
November 29 at 8:21am
Kyra Gaunt
Not sure I liked the film as a vehicle yet really impressed with the acting in the film. Just tired of blacks winning Oscars and Oscar nominations for "life-like portrayals" of ghetto mamas, lifers, and dictators (the only black film or media worth watching on British Airways to and from Europe last week as LAST KING OF SCOTLAND. Great performance, but white character still rides off into sunset (bruised but free from tyranny).
November 29 at 8:23am
Kyra Gaunt
November 29 at 8:53am Just looked up bio on director Lee Daniels. He's also director of Monster's Ball. While Halle Berry won Best Actress for her role in that film, I had a similar critique of the representation of a black "ghettoized" mom. Hated the scene where she's slapping the boy saying "You so fat! Fat! Fat! Fat!!!"The acting in Precious was much more rivteting ... See Morefor me. All this leaves me wondering if we can escape the discource of interracial redemption as a, if not the, primary trope of box ofc success. We have so little representations of ethnic redemption within black community (Antwone Fisher by Denzel Washington which shlda been a contender for Oscar) but there seems to be so little popular support in film industry for those narratives.Can count on Morgan Freeman for such portrayals. When is he going to direct!?? Still Precious is black directed, produced and acted and it's a start. At least it ain't a comedy or a sitcom.
FURTHER REFLECTION:
I've been teaching anthropology and black studies in the last two to three years. Teaching my first course in racism this semester and confronting white supremacy in subtle first hand ways with students of all ethnicities and nationalities. (50% of Baruch College's graduating classes are 1st generation immigrants and our school has students from over 121 countries). In my anthro course, distinguishing between genocide and ethnocide came up again on the quiz about race and ethnicity.
ethnocide Destruction by a dominant group of the culture of an ethnic group (http://bit.ly/4WWiBD)
We all, like my students, overlook the impact of ethnocide. In some ways it might be worse than genocide--living with the destruction of your own learned ways of thinking, feeling, believing and behaving. Dead but surviving. So much of the films about black life, so many rap songs sanctioned in Congressional testimony by record label execs like Doug Morris in Sept 2007, are justified as cost-beneficial but rarely examined from the standpoint of ethnocide. I really got present to the impact of ethnocide from Wade Davis on endangered cultures | Video on TED.com http://bit.ly/4CYISh. Precious is a valuable, viable and valid portrayal of one aspect of welfare life. But there are more whites on welfare than blacks or Latinos but we rarely if ever see representations of them in Hollywood convincing (i.e. lying) to the welfare worker about their interior worlds and the subquality of their subsistence. Yes, I am weary and leary of the lack of context, the persistence of laissez-faire racism that offers its own form of discrimination in the ways we DON'T see racism as general patterns of group relations and ideology BETWEEN whites and others not just within minority groups. As Mary Jackman (1994, 119 quoted in Bobo 2009, 157) argues we should focus on analysis of attitudes and ideology on group-level comparisons to uncover the "structural conditions" hidden behind our view that "individual actors" are free agents. Jackman says they are not. Individual stories are not individualized acts. They must be read within a historical frame, a sociological frame and particularly in relation to other groups in ways the disrupt what we already think we know, in my opinion. The LATimes wrote that "Precious could start a new trend of black movies that are more individual-oriented and inward-looking" http://bit.ly/5wK6gy For us, this is perhaps one of the most dangerous slippery slopes to foster as a new trend. Individuals will once again be blamed for gaps in socio-economics. Their behavior and use of language will not be seen as a reflection of the vulgarity of the poverty that seems as inescapable as thinking when it rains it's going to be a bad day. To no longer factor in a long view of history, a wide view of class politics, the spectrum of colorism and white superiority, and ultimately a devastating legacy of ethnocide in media, housing, banking, and much more would be a sign of how individuals we consider "black" are prone to being unloved, unworthy and devalued not just in their own families but throughout society and in the world. Every nation has it's "black" class devalued, denigrated and for whom little daily compassion is available. But the distance in a film - how precious.
Posted by Kyra D. Gaunt, Ph.D.
