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The release of Precious in 2009 was epiphany for me. Months before it hit theaters I found the trailers for the film riveting; Mo’Nique was unrecognizable, and just who was the lead actress? She was so refreshingly un-Hollywood.  Plus the quick cut flashes of Lenny Kravitz and The View’s Sherri Shepherd piqued my interest and made it a must-see film for me.

So when it finally came out, I was surprised the controversy it elicited mostly from the black community. The verbal lynch mob was actually an echo; it harkened back to rumblings that followed the 1985 release of The Color Purple.

Both Precious and The Color Purple, (which had more onscreen violence shown than Precious) suffered from the same deafening stop-bashing-the-black-man chorus. But since both these films were adapted from books written by black women maybe the bigger question should be; why do some black men continue to rape, physically and emotionally abuse their daughters, wives and girlfriends? These stories far from represent the black male race in its entirety-our modern heroes now stretch from Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, trailblazing sports figures, groundbreaking actors, music innovators all the way the to The White House. Plus, not to mention all the real-life heroes-the countless nameless and faceless amazing fathers, brothers and sons who reside in our communities around the world. But the horror stories starring the other kinds of black men do come from somewhere- they come from truth. Sapphire and Alice Walker didn’t just pull these male tales out of thin air. But I digress, because that’s a whole other topic and essay.

The critics of Precious have found a whole new cavalcade of complaints to pile on this latest brave, truthful work of art.  They include but are not limited to having a problem with a scene featuring the protagonist, a dark-skinned black woman, eating a bucket of fried chicken, and also that this same dark-skinned woman had a light-skinned baby and that all light-skinned characters were saviors in the film, while dark-skinned folks had problems. Then there was the issue that the film ’still’ didn’t have a happy ending, paraded poor images of black men in film (see my The Color Purple/Precious comparisons above) and perhaps the worst offense of all- it had the stamp, endorsement and backing of executive producers Tyler Perry and Oprah Winfrey. [Insert: horrific organ music here.]

I’d like to take my angel’s advocate fork, and punch a few holes into this criticism, because for me it’s done. Speaking as a dark-skinned black woman who likes fried chicken (and I can’t be the only one) I say what’s the big deal? (And nonspoiler alert: that film moment is fully put into context because of the scene that precedes it.) And speaking as a dark-skinned Mom with a light-skinned son (again, I know I’m not the only one) I realize that because of genealogy our varied shades can and now will produce any hue under the rainbow in the future generations of my family thanks to my son’s white Polish Jewish grandfather and his West African Nigerian grandfather. As for the angelic light-skinned folks v. the problematic clueless darkies? Personally, I was more offended by this trend in all of Oscar Micheaux films and hate as I may to say it, one of my personal all-time favorites movies, Carmen Jones. And finally because Mo’Nique, Perry and Winfrey have all admitted to being sexual abuse survivors they were strongly attracted to the material in Precious, hence their participation in the project.

Films like Precious and The Color Purple are problematic for black folks. They are cinematic mirrors that force some of us to witness the parts of our blackness we don’t want to see. I too am guilty of harboring this same shame-I wasn’t a huge fan of the hues of the black experience spotlighted in Baby Boy or Hustle and Flow. But at the end of that downtrodden rainbow, even I had to admit their stories still deserved to be told.

The story of Precious, based on Sapphire’s Push, was a typical urban tragedy that was given the full A-list, art house, European cinematic, indie treatment. With its innovative film stylings, strong ensemble cast and breakthrough lead performances (Gabourey Sidibe’s strong, suffering yet vulnerable turn as the title role and Mo’Nique’s scarily raw, evil and almost insane performance as Mary Jones) Precious felt more like a documentary than a work of fiction-it was the perfect trifecta of beauty, pain and poetry.

For me, there was no difference between the protagonists Randy in The Wrestler (another one of my all time favorite films) and Clarice Precious Jones in Precious. They are the stories of downtrodden, forgotten outcasts and underdogs. The themes in Precious resonated so positively and strongly with international critics and audiences because the film’s themes of incest, sexual abuse, poverty, ignorance, and illiteracy-are universal ills that affect all cultures here and worldwide-they are not specific to the black experience. Anyone who thinks otherwise is buying into racist stereotypes. Case in point: following a screening of Precious, Mo’Nique came face-to-face with crying Asian man who confessed to her that, ‘he was Mary Jones’ in his family. Mo’Nique begged the man to get help by way of therapy.

Despite the bashing Precious received from a few in its own community, perhaps in the end, the film’s director and its stars have gotten some redemption from the entertainment industry at large. Lee Daniels has been tapped to direct the upcoming Martin Luther King biopic, Selma. Now in the middle of the award season, Mo’Nique has already racked up Golden Globe and SAG Award wins for best supporting actress. And after building a career in movies mostly on the back of C and D list films, the comedienne and late night talk show host will definitely be on the short-list of actresses receiving A-list scripts from now on. Thankfully Hollywood has earned itself another rare precious commodity in the industry: a twenty-something young actress of color in Ms. Sidbe, who will star next in the film Yelling To The Sky. And with the high probability that Precious will garner a handful of Oscar nods next month, I’d say the filmmakers and its stars achieved their goal. They created a work of art, made a truthful, entertaining artistic statement and created a ’show’ so there can be more and future ‘biz.’ And black, white or other creating inspiring, groundbreaking entertainment that has the capacity to make more green is the goal and game of Hollywood.

This story is filed under: Entertainment, Tracking Shot

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