“Irresistably Inspirational!” is what the DVD cover of the movie Precious said. All I can say to that is
First, I must say that Mo’Nique definitely deserved the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress. Her ultimate performance when she describes why she was so abusive to her daughter is riveting, and almost makes a monster of a character sympathetic, or at least understandable. Gabourey Sidibe as Precious was less impressive to me, but I think her character was meant to be stolid and inhibited, so good job there as well.
But as for the story, I think you would have to go to Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle for a more unrelenting tale of misfortune piling up on misfortune to an unbelieveable degree. I’m not naive enough to think that there aren’t people who lead such unbearable lives, but this is teetering on the absurd.
First, I cannot believe that Precious could get to high school and get good grades, having a math teacher say she is his best student, and yet still be so totally illiterate that she cannot recognize the letters of the alphabet. Okay, poor schools may just give passing grades for doing nothing more than showing up in class, but such a pupil’s grades are not going to be good.
And really, naming your child Mongoloid? I suppose it was a nickname because that name would never be allowed on a birth certificate. Even so, would a victim of abuse really do that to her child? Seems more like a writer’s gimmick to me. See, this girl is so messed up, that this is what she calls her baby. Please.
Don’t even get me started on saddling her with HIV. That was the most tacked on plot development I’ve ever seen.
The skills necessary to process numbers and make calculations can be acquired independent of literacy and it is not unknown in societies were there isn’t a high level of literacy for there to be people who can process major calculations in their head, but not be able to read. Also the math teacher may also consider her his best student if she is the one that gives him the least amount of trouble. I found Precious inspirational because unfortunately I have encountered too many girls too similiar to her. At least rgw movie ended with her making the first steps to a better life.
Okay, first off, I hate this movie. I can think of several movies I hate more and have ranted about annoyingly hereabouts, but *Precious *is up there.
Second off, you’re dead right about the contradiction between Precious being both a great math student and utterly illiterate. I’ll grant that she might be much, much better in math than in Egnlish, but not that she wouldn’t know the alphabet. How’d she ever handle word problems?
That said, I do understand why some persons call the movie inspirational. The basic notion I think is that Precious, by not being entirely broken by her horrifying life, achieved a victory simply by not giving up.
It’s not unbelievable to me that a child could have the legal name Mongoloid. I’m annoyed by stupid names too, but I can’t think of a state in the US in which the parents (really the mother) doesn’t have the final say in what to name a newborn. For that matter, I don’t think the government OR the hospital should be able to gainsay the parents’ choice. This isn’t France, and it’s not the state’s fucking business.
Really? So, if I want to name my baby Shithead, the state would be perfectly fine with it, and issue a birth certificate with that name without blinking.
I wouldn’t be able to get that on a personalized license plate, but naming my baby that would be a sacred right.
I think perhaps that this has never come up, because no parent has actually tried to name their child Mongoloid. So the legalities are untested.
OK, it has been a long time since I saw the film, but I never thought the baby’s actual name was Mongoloid! They just called it that because it was disabled and Precious’s mother probably thought it was funny.
It has been along time since I’ve seen it but one of the more powerful scenes was between the caseworker and a woman hurrying to work outside. I forget who she was, but the context was the mother knew about the sexual abuse her child suffered at the hands of a teacher, but allowed it because she works all the time, the father left, and he was the only parental figure she was able to provide for her child.
My description of it sounds awful, but the scene was so moving I pitied the mother.
You have met too many girls like Precious? May I ask where? I have been in some hard ghettos, and I have worked in some hard outreach programs, and I have never met anyone with all of the burdens they piled on Precious in that movie. I have discussed this before on these boards, but I found Precious to be absolutely rubbish and bordering on exploiting some white people’s ideas about what they think goes on in the ghetto.
Houston, Texas; Chicago, Illinois; and New York, New York. Well, possibly not with ALL the burdens Precious had combined in a single indivisual, but certainly enough of them often made worse by having more than hard problem condition. Incest pregnancy with ongoing physical/sexual abuse seemed to be the most common combination. With incest pregnancy, ongoing physical/sexual abuse, and narcotic substance addiction problem coming in a very close second. The only real difference between many of those girls and the character Precious was skin color. Most of the girls in trouble I have dealth with have been white or Hispanic.
Oh! Ok. Sure, incest pregnancies and shit like that. Ok. I thought you meant you knew girls like Precious. She had WAAAAAYYYYYYYYYYY more than that going on. I thought you meant you knew girls LIKE Precious.
You haven’t meant girls with ALL of her burdens because these people do not exist. It’s as though someone asked of a focus group, “Please list some examples of troubles facing inner city youth,” then after the responses declared, “Great, I’ll use all of them. Aaaaand Oscar!”
Wanna know what’s really uninspirational? The sequel (yes, there is one) begins with- MAJOR SPOILER- Precious dying. (The main character is her orphaned son.)
It’s almost as if Sapphire is intentionally going for the most Over-the-Top melodrama she can envision.
