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Why hasn't “Precious” received “The Color Purple” treatment?
Given its celebrity fanfare and feminist themes, is Lee Daniels’ Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire, a 21st-century The Color Purple? Or is it Native Son in drag?
Lee Daniels’ second film, Precious, fared quite well last weekend. Despite its soft release in only 18 theaters, Precious pulled in a remarkable $1.8 million, suggesting that on average, each theater made $100,000 off its showing. Even my brazen attempt to see the film in Times Square on Sunday night resulted in my having to purchase a ticket for Monday morning, because all four of the remaining shows were sold out in Harlem and Union Square.
With its mostly positive critical reviews and its popularity among African-American audiences, Precious, for all appearances, has struck gold. In many ways, the cultural phenomenon that has become Precious harkens back to the financial success of The Color Purple, Steven Spielberg’s 1985 adaptation of Alice Walker’s 1982 novel of the same name. A year after its original release date, The Color Purple, which also boasted a strong openinghad made almost $100 million.
However, unlike the favorable reception that has greeted Precious, The Color Purple sparked great controversy about its negative portrayals of African-American families, and, in particular, African-American men. Given their explorations of the similar themes of incest, teenage pregnancy, illiteracy and colorism within the African-American community, why has Precious received so little backlash?
Mainstream publications such as the National Review and The New Yorker lampooned Spielberg for deviating from his standard scripts of blockbusters. Newsweek critic David Ansen pronounced Spielberg’s effort to be “the first Disney film about incest.”
Yet, according to film scholar Jacqueline Bobo, the biggest and most enduring criticism toward both Walker and Spielberg came from a maelstrom of African-American men who charged that the film’s treatment of its black male characters was demeaning and racist. On a special episode of The Phil Donahue Show, fellow talk show host Tony Brown declared that the movie was "the most racist depiction of black men since The Birth of a Nation and the most anti-black family film of the modern film era." In the journal Film Comment, Spike Lee argued that Hollywood chose to turn Walker's novel into a movie precisely because Walker depicted black men as "one-dimensional animals."
Ironically, despite the fact that Precious is repeatedly raped and impregnated twice by her father, there has been little criticism about the negative representations of African Americans aimed at either Sapphire, the author, or Daniels, the director. While Armond White’s online review describes Precious as “an orgy of prurience,” and Slate’s Dana Stevens calls it “poverty porn,” most of the reviews have been laudatory. Gabourey Sidibe, who plays the heroine, and Mo’Nique, its villain, have received universal acclaim for their performances. (With The Color Purple, Whoopi Goldberg, Margaret Avery and Oprah Winfrey were all nominated for Oscars.)
So how we do we explain these radically different receptions of the films? The answer lies in their differences. Unlike The Color Purple, the male characters in Precious take a back seat to the woman, which neutralizes the potential for the sort of backlash that surrounded The Color Purple.
A.O. Scott notes in his New York Times review: “There are virtually no men in this movie. Precious’ father is glimpsed briefly in flashbacks of his assaults on her, and in the fantasy sequences that provide escape from her pain, Precious hobnobs with handsome boys, but otherwise the only male character of significance is a hospital worker played by Lenny Kravitz.”
The focus of Precious’ pain centers on her relationship with her abusive mother. In doing so, the film does not make the same formidable critique of patriarchy that The Color Purple does. While we are repulsed by the incest narrative, there is no Pa or Mister. who governs over Celie with an iron-fist. In his place is Mary, Precious’ cruel, welfare-dependent, African-American mother, whose very presence in the film conjures up stereotypes about deviant black motherhood that bloomed during the Reagan era in which the film is set.
As filmmaker Aishah Simmons also points out, while the film innovatively highlights the reality of mother-on-child violence, audience members can only wonder if “the film is much more palatable to digest because darker brown skinned, overweight black women, especially single mothers, are so demonized in society.” Why, for example, did Tim Disney’s American Violet, a film set in the same Reagan era, starring Alfre Woodard, about single African-American mother unjustly incarcerated for dealing drugs, receive so little attention this summer? It is true, as literary critic Erica Edwards notes, that the vitriolic Mary seems more similar to Vera Thomas, the abusive mother in Richard Wright’s Native Son, and is void of empathy. It is a decidedly unsympathetic portrayal. Much like the 2004 film, The Woodsman, which Lee Daniels produced, Mary’s pathology has little history, her psychosis, no diagnosis. It risks reinforcing Cosbyseque stereotypes about black maternal deviance.
But, Precious also achieves another feat, for it consistently and brutally reminds us that far too many children—Tyler Perry, Lee Daniels and Oprah included—are victims of sexual, verbal and physical abuse. While some critics see Precious as the corrective of The Color Purple, it does so by replacing the racism of the segregated South with the benevolence of government institutions, focusing on family and neighborhood violence without a consistent challenge to sexism. And yet, despite these reservations, I left the film with a none-too-subtle reminder that incest, sexual assault and domestic violence remain the “invisible” hot-button policy and social-justice issues of our time. In this way, the lack of backlash surrounding Precious might owe more to The Color Purple than we care to remember.
Salamishah Tillet is an assistant professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania and co-founder of the non-profit organization, A Long Walk Home, Inc., which uses art therapy and the visual and performing arts to document and to end violence against underserved women and children.
Comments
When I saw what Precious was about - it was deja vu. Once again, a white-financed film the portrays blacks in a negative light has received accolades and talks about Oscars. What disturbs me is how some of us willing go to these films, accepts its premise, and enrich those who which to show us in any way the choose. I wrote more about this in my blog:
say-no-to-precious.blogspot.com/
this is an excellent analysis!!!
sexism and colorism rule all arenas
and "american violet" exposed a prison industrial complex that is far too real within obama's rabidly elitist agenda...
many see precious as fictional distraction
and truth is always stranger and more censored than fiction
kudos!
alicia banks
eloquent fury
I agree with most of what you said, but understand ALL living souls chase the paper. The "wild man" rapper, he wants paper too and if "the man" tells him that the check is bigger if he (the rapper) calls his sisters ho's and b*tches --so be it. Lot's of blame to serve around. I'm not mad Vince, just disappointed. It's not cute just because it's accepted. I love rap, hip-hop, neo-soul, jazz and many other genres of music. I can't do anything about a rap star running a credit card down the crack of a woman's ass, but I don't have to like it okay?
So... if "the man" got anything to do with it and I KNOW he does, who in the hell is the real villain here? The funder or the performer? How about the consumer?
As for the slavery movie, I too say the more graphic the better. The only thing lost with that approach is that young ones shouldn't watch it. I'm a parent who is sensitive about exposing my children to disturbing imagery before they can emotionally handle and understand the content. Personally, I pray that someone will be brave enough to do the Harriet Tubman story in my lifetime or any other compelling story from the pages of African American history.
Could you imagine a breakthrough performance like Mo'Nique did (for a abusive mother) in an heroine like Tubman--wow!
I found your post both troubling and mostly incoherent.
I'm troubled by your blanket condemnation of black motherhood based purely on your limited experience as a teacher. It's time for black people to stop doing this. Whenever a negative black image garners media attention why are so many black people willing and eager to extrapolate that negative image as a representation of blacks as a whole? We don't do this when it comes to positive black images (e.g., Barack Obama, Michelle Obama, Marian Robinson). If it's a positive image they're always the exception rather than the rule. I think so many black folks are prone to do this kind of black condemnation because too many of us have internalized the racist negative stereotypes of our white supremacist culture to the point that we believe it ourselves.
Why don't we do this for white people or other racial groups? There was a rash of white women in the news for killing their children and claiming a black male assailant was the perpetrator. We didn't suddenly call into question white women’s' motherhood. Every single school shooting massacre we've seen in this country has been perpetrated by a white boy or group of white boys and their parents appeared to be clueless. Yet again this didn't call into question white parenting at-large. The vast majority of serial killers are white males, yet this doesn't reflect negatively on whites as a whole. There have been several high profile incidents of white female school teachers having sex with their under age male students -- no outcry about the loose of morals of white women in general.
Let's stop making blanket condemnations of black people whenever the media spotlights something negative within the black community. The same familial dysfunction happening in black families is happening in every family across the board. Let's deal with it without throwing the net wider than it is or casting unproductive aspersions on the group at-large.
I'm curious to know how you are defining "deviant black mothers." What do you mean in using that phrase?
I asked the same thing and found no evidence that Precious is based on a true story. The novel from which the film was adapted was written by a performance poet/hippie/exotic dancer who goes by the name of Sapphire. You can read about her on wikipedia.
Even if it was based on a true story (which I highly doubt) it is still an artistic representation. As I stated before, there is a deliberate market for "art" that hyperbolizes the suffering of people of color. Mainstream America eats it up. They find images of our pain and turmoil "life-affirming." This is what explains the success of explicitly violent/misogynistic gangster rap.
I understand that people are concerned about domestic abuse, but we should all know by now that stereotypes in the media of black men as sexual predators have a long history. Performers and artists (Kara Walker included) who attempt to "reclaim" these racist stereotypes are just trying to make a name for themselves and earn a living by being provocative. They do this because they are misguided and lost. At least that's the only explanation I can come up with.
Let's be honest: the film Precious is not about empowering the black community or liberating the untold stories of domestic violence victims. Actual victims of abuse are in no way helped by watching an obese black teenager get raped by her father on a movie screen while pigs feet boil in a stove pot. This film is about satisfying the tortured demands of the confused, ego-driven, sado-masochistic American psyche.
Get a clue!
Sorry I can't speak about the movie The Color Purple, it came out before I was born. I had to read the book in high school and I thought it was corny and lame. Never felt like wasting my time/money on the film.
as a family member advocating for family and as a school teacher. Whereas Black Women who have come of age since the post-Civil Rights era are not a monolithic archetype, they are not the heroic figures that need constant protectionisms of public empathy that people argue that they need. When working with Black Children who are chronically deficient and ignored and not wanted, we tend to still pity the mothers when the mothers are the lifelines that created the problems by allowing the problems to exist.
It is so politically incorrect to really criticize Blacks about our resistance to evolve that others who are not Black are rather mute rather than be openly expressive about their disdain and frustrations watching us not tackle the obvious...our Black Women who pathologically raise generations of dysfunctional family members. We have yet as a people taken on our own collective cultural pathologies but we want people to honor us and revere us when they can't. Their value systems can make up the false sincerity that we expect them to feel and obligate.
I know SEVERAL Black Women who live in shame for being at peace with hating the pathology their mothers and other Black Women in their family allowed of their mothers to execute as the family culture rendering upon them and their siblings but people try to shame them for being at peace with not excusing it like the status quo does in pitying Black Women/Mothers that are deviant and get no help nor are truly punished for the pain their children have to wrestle with their adult lives. I have witnessed too many people who are so messed up because of their Black Mothers because Black Society keeps excusing these women that they don't know any better or whatnot.
The handholding and making excuses only support the pathology's agency to exist as a norm. Yet, people will want to excuse the ignorance not realizing they continue to literally license the ignorance to continue.
And then we wonder why others don't warm towards us. It's not rocket science. We all carry the blame for things we don't do but because we look the same, we carry the burden of ownership. In cases where most Black Women who demonize but are self-approving of their actions are the same women who don't understand the residual by-product of their appropriated beliefs and defenses.
Could it be contributed to the fact that the Color Purple was almost 25 years ago. Is it possible that we've actually grown a little and that there might be a little less denial and resistence (in the black community) to the little dark dirty cultural laundry secretes that we are famous fo avoiding? Also, isn't it possible the Precious is simply a better film than American Violet,
"So you're saying there's no audience for a historical drama set during slavery?"
No. It would do good if it's done right. I'm just saying that they're not going to green light a black holocaust/slavery flick at a time when they are trying to sell us on post racialism and cut us off from our elders. Me personally, I would make the film extremely graphic, heartless and cruel to remind the youth about the struggle we came from. The violence would attract the audience alone but it would be fact. truth is more stranger than fiction.
"Don't forget the misogyny in the rap culture."
I'm HIPHOP till I D.I.E.! Because that's how I grew up, a black boy lost... Even if I stop liking rap one day, I am hood and I am always going to remember that experience.
Did you peep that graffiti on the Berlin wall?
Yeah, we touched hoods from all over the world!
But of course the man got a hold of it, bottled it up, sold it and got his money. But no doubt! It is misogonistic because rap has always been a young wild man's sport. And the man exploited that...
The funny thing is, you always hear uncle tom house negros complaining, but you never hear them complaining about the very top of the food chain...
Now ask yourself this . Why would Oprah feel better about catching some ignorant young rapper off guard on her show and then peppering him with tough questions instead of her going directly to the source: Doug Morris CEO of Universal, Jimmy Iovinine Interscope records, and Lyor Cohen Warner Bro.???
Because she knows that those guys will call up their fellow jewish mafia members at ABC and cause trouble for her and slow up her money. No B.S.
This is why I say that there is no such thing as a "black elite." Elitism implies that you have power. They are subordinate to their white counterparts and they are scared of their own people on the ground.. All they do is say: "Look at those ignorant hood negros over there."
Last time I checked, elites impose their wilI over the rest of civil society... If these people can't even impose their will over negros that they find so embarrassing... Then they are not elite.
We are being groomed to hate each other. Don't forget the misogyny in the rap culture. So you're saying there's no audience for a historical drama set during slavery? Or just a historical drama with an AA lead? I don't know, some have been very successful, Hotel Rwanda, Cry Freedom, A Soldier's Story etc.