Precious

If the decidedly grim Brothers Grimm were born in post civil rights/third world population explosion-America and had lived and written their characteristically macabre stories today, the resulting works may have bore a striking, equally discomfiting resemblance to Precious: Based on the Novel “Push” by Sapphire aka Precious (2009), a less than supernatural but far bleaker modern ghetto fairy tale that even the imaginative Grimm brothers couldn’t conjure up. Directed by thoroughly self-obsessed black queer Lee Daniels, and based on the original, largely autobiographical novel “Push” by aberrosexual negress Ramona Lofton using the Afro-typically ostentatious moniker, “Sapphire”, Precious is a starkly realistic, and at times horrifying slice of life work about the turbulent and thoroughly disturbing adolescent years of a morbidly obese, fried chicken lovin,’ 16 year old mother of two, that delivers to the audience not only a brutally candid depiction of “traditional” (post-1960s) inner city American Negro life in 1987 (which remains unquestionably about the same, if not worse, today), but also renders a scathing, inadvertently incriminating portrayal of black culture, indeed reminiscent of similarly crafted “victim” genre films which seek to elicit pity and compel empathy from the viewer but ultimately serve to only further alienate and disgust the audience (in much the same way that certain films by queer auteur Rosa von Praunheim, specifically It Is Not the Homosexual Who Is Perverse, But the Society In Which He lives (1971), sought the same sort of effect in offering a sympathetic, yet ultimately ruinous representation of hot-blooded homos). Indeed, with its rampantly chilling depictions of keepin’ it in the family incest (namely father-on-daughter rape resulting in pregnancy and daughter-on-mother assisted masturbation), flagrant welfare abuse, sickening scenes of family violence, fried chicken thievery and grotesque gorging of soul-sucking soul food (attention all ebony expansion porn/feeder enthusiasts—this is the film for you!), and a general sense of hopelessness that might render anyone suicidal, not least of all the racially-conscious white viewers largely funding debauched lifestyles like those depicted in the film only on a much grander scale, Precious, while classified as a drama, is wholly deserving of a slot in the top ten horror flicks of the last decade.

 Sixteen-year old Claireece “Precious” Jones (played by Gabourey "Gabby" Sidibe, of half-Senegalese extraction, who resembles a rather less malnourished rendition of the prehistoric hominids one might expect to see at the politically correct Man’s Ancient Ancestors exhibit at the Smithsonian) is decidedly down on her luck. A seemingly resigned and unusually docile, yet typically plump ebony lady growing up on the mean streets of Harlem in 1987, long after the “renaissance” ended, and pregnant with her second child—the father of which is, quite shockingly, her very own father who repeatedly rapes her as graphically depicted in the film—(her first little one, a chromosomally-aberrant toddler lovingly dubbed “Mongo,” was also conceived via Precious’ own daddy, is currently being raised by its great-grandmother, and is largely utilized as a cash cow for welfare checks for Precious’ mother) Precious indubitably spends much of her spare time engaged in escapist polarized fantasies and daydreams—either about being white (she often stares into her bedroom mirror and sees the visage of a pretty, thin blond teen gazing back at her and daydreams about moving into a suburban neighborhood with her uncharacteristically attractive Aryan, presumably liberal, do-gooder math teacher) or, on the contrary, being some sort of fag-fetishized illustrious Aretha Franklin-like ultra black diva of soul singer who rides off into the sunset on a motorcycle with her divinely mulatto “light-skinned boyfriend.” But reality hits Precious hard and fast, often quite literally in the form of her ironically named mother Mary (played by much loved black actress Mo’Nique in perhaps her most epic and dramatic role to date) beating her upside the head with a frying pan or remote, or whatever other object is readily available at the moment within the confines of their section 8 high-rise apartment (that is—when she isn’t forcing Precious to prepare some of the most disgustingly decadent soul food ever seen in a film—collared greens seemingly sautéed in lard, deep fried chicken, etc., which her mother subsequently forces her to gorge upon as they sit and watch TV each night as a means of ensuring her daughter becomes fatter and fatter). Indeed, upon finding out that Precious is pregnant for the second time, Precious’ stereotypically Jewish New Yorker school principal shows up at her apartment and implores her to begin enrollment at an “alternative” school—seeing that her pregnancy places her in danger of failing—to which malicious mother Mary flagrantly responds that Precious should just drop out, that she thinks she is “too good for the welfare,” and she’s basically a triflin’ ass ho for letting some white (Jewish) bitch stop by their apartment (as this is perceived as a threat to Mary’s incoming welfare checks). In spite of her mother’s vicious words, and the fact that her life is basically totally fucked up beyond repair not even 30 minutes into the film, Precious somehow maintains some semblance of hope and optimism (aided perhaps by her vivid imagination and escapist fantasies, which the director very amply unveils to the viewer throughout the film) and decides to enroll in the alternative school. 

 After brazenly walking off with a large bucket of fried chicken from a local “chicken and trout” style shop (her mother won’t give her any money, not even after she is presumably forced to assist her in masturbating in one particularly nauseating, yet thankfully unseen scene wherein she sickeningly summons her daughter to “come help mama out”) in order to feed both herself and the growing appetite of her gestating brother/child, poor, penniless Precious voraciously consumes its contents on her way to the alternative school where she becomes acquainted with her new teacher (incidentally, right as she is regurgitating all of the half-digested fried chicken into the school bathroom’s trashcan), a lipstick lesbian of mixed race origin who calls herself “Blu Rain,” along with a motley crew of contrasting yet equally ghettofied American and Islander negros and Hispanic females that one comes to expect in today’s inner city America—among them a hardened black butch (perhaps the most feral and menacing of all the lesbian subtypes imaginable), a petulant Puerto Rican or Dominican who instigates fights (and is subsequently thrashed and throttled for her transgressions by a suddenly and surprisingly pissed off Precious after calling her fat), a Jamaican negress who is hardly intelligible, and a prissy and popular black chick who likes to be in the spotlight at all times. As Precious continues her studies at the school, she slowly but surely learns how to read and write, albeit still at an elementary level, and in spending a significant amount of her time with “Mizz Rain” and her new ghetto girlfriends, Precious’ self-esteem is greatly elevated and she starts to feel hopeful that her life will truly change for the better. At the behest of school administrators, Precious meets with a social worker of ambiguous racial origin, Ms. Weiss (played by the annoyingly orgasmic singer Mariah Carey of black/Venezuelan/Irish origins who, quite interestingly, replaced Helen Mirren who was originally sought for the part) to discuss the horrific physical and incestuous abuse she has suffered at the hands of her mother (and the repeated rapes by her very own father by whom she is currently pregnant). Shocked by such arrant allegations, Ms. Weiss and Blu Rain strongly suggest to Precious that she consider relinquishing her son to an adoption agency immediately upon birth, such that both he and she can go on to lead relatively normal lives. In characteristically Negro fashion, Precious vehemently refuses, even though she knows that her son’s impending birth will very adversely affect any positive prospects for her future.

 Following the birth of her son, whom she bestows with a rather Afrotastic name, Abdul Jamal Lewis Jones (and who was lovingly attended to at birth by assumed homosexual, “Nurse John,” played by Lenny Kravitz, another individual of mixed origin being both half black, half Jewish—suggesting something of a theme to the film), Precious brings the baby home with her, only to experience perhaps one of the most epic scenes of violence and abuse in the film in which mother Mary flagrantly drops the newborn infant to the ground (after kindly asking Precious if she can hold him), and upon Precious’ stealthy exit from the debauched home with her screaming, presumably injured little brother/son, Mary exacts further damage by trying to drop a TV on Precious’ head from within the stairwell of their high-rise section 8 tenement. Just narrowly avoiding the heavy projectile with baby Abdul in tow, Precious finally vows to herself to never speak to her mother again and winds up living in a halfway house. Following this highly traumatic incident, Precious makes a vain attempt to move on with her life by continuing her education and trying to raise her son in as nourishing and loving of an environment as an unwed, teenaged black mother raising her own brother/son possibly can, but inevitably, mother Mary re-enters Precious’ life to deliver perhaps the most foreboding, despairing news that she could possibly hear—that her father, a black brother presumably of the depraved “down-low” persuasion, had contracted the HIV virus and subsequently died from complications of AIDS (and probably quite quickly, as was the case in the early days of “gay cancer”). Either immediately choosing to deny the implications of her father’s death or altogether failing to connect the dots, Precious implores her mother to be tested. Precious is finally punctuated with further abject misery and horror with the discovery that Precious is indeed HIV-positive (baby Abdul, quite miraculously, is not). The tragic ghetto tale ends on a terribly bittersweet note with Precious continuing to attempt to improve her condition, but the shocked audience is certainly left to wonder: who could reasonably go on with their languishing life in any plausible way being essentially illiterate and morbidly obese, after having birthed two children by her own father, and winding up HIV-positive? Perhaps I am looking at the film strictly through the lens of my own mind and existence as an individual of an entirely different racial constitution, but surely by now, I would have taken my own life years prior seeing the bleak hopelessness of the situation, but this of course suggests the inherent, quite obvious differences between blacks and whites. 

 Admittedly, I find most Hollywood-made, modern horror films to be rather contrived and clichéd, and while Precious is by no means a true horror film, the fact that it very accurately portrays such debauched and disgusting lifestyles, which are encroaching ever and ever closer upon the lives of those that very painstakingly seek to avoid blacks at all costs (via mass white flight, sending one’s children to expensive private schools, and living in bedroom communities, all of which have risen quite staggeringly in recent decades), does qualify it as a horror film in that will certainly stir the primal fears and render nauseated the few remaining racially conscious whites in America (for the remainder of whites who are thoroughly deracinated, the film will have achieved its goal, in that it will likely make them all the more sympathetic to the plight of their hapless, helpless negro neighbors and darker hued soon-to-be son-in-laws). Furthermore, another interesting aspect of the film that the director did not really touch upon in the audio commentary was the ongoing theme throughout Precious of mixed race individuals, namely Blu Rain, Nurse John, and Ms. Weiss, being perceived as “guardian angels” or “knights in shining armor,” whereas the darker blacks are depicted as either the most depraved, sadistic and cruel, or altogether helpless, if not stupid and totally incapable of managing their lives or registering the future consequences of their present actions. One cannot help but walk away from the film pondering if this was some subconsciously directed effort on the part of its creators, seeing that if they were to be frankly asked about it, they would likely deny any such characterization of the film’s decidedly darker complexioned cast. And what’s all the more frightening to ponder about Precious is the fact that while a large subset of the white population continues to distance itself in every way that it can from the burgeoning multiracial dystopia that grows insidiously within America’s bounds (and within Europa as well), the very powerful influence of a certain minority of “cultural distorters,” continues to pervert and twist the natural inclinations toward monogamy, marriage, and motherhood such that more and more younger whites find the lewd and lascivious lifestyles as depicted in Precious to be decadent, glamorous and at least in the present moment, intensely pleasurable, such that the contrived and tiresome tunes of Lil’ Wayne and Kanye West can induce just about any Kim Kardashian idolizing teenage girl in the Midwest to go weak in the knees at the prospect of being impregnated by the nearest black buck only to have the resulting unfortunate offspring raised by her aloof and misguided parents (and who any typical white man will never touch again, with the exception of the occasional wigger cuckold).  Indeed, only in a mixed up (both racially and figuratively) and warped world such as we see today in America, and along with the the countless nations the country has hijacked and subsequently culturally colonized, where the meaning of words, as well as morals, have been totally reversed, could a film as conspicuously crude and grotesque as Lee Daniels' coming-of-age flick be titled "Precious," as the protagonist is not even a girl an incestuous bisexual welfare queen mother could love, let alone an ostensibly homosexual mulatto on a motorcycle.

-Magda von Richthofen zu Reventlow auf Thule