I did not want to see this film. An obese black girl raped by her parents, cursed at, infected with H.I.V. who struggles to read. I see Precious everywhere. In "Do or Die" Bed Stuy mothers yell at children as if stabbing them with words or yank them around like dolls for not hurrying. At night, in the whispered talk between friends, I hear of bodies opened by the hot hands of fathers or mothers who hit their kids for being loud or antsy or for being the weight in their lives they must carry alone.
Months ago I was in bed, adrift in half-sleep when a scream shot out. I dashed to the window. The next building is close enough to finger the dust off its ledge. Inside a girl begged whoever was hurting her to stop. I hollered, “Where are you?” Her screams were cut. I called the police. Soon two cops jingling with badges, keys, guns jogged up the stairs. I guided them to the window. They peeked out then went down to the next building. In minutes they came out, got in their car and drove away. A month later the girl was screaming again.
I didn’t want to see Precious because the language used to interpret her pain can become abuse itself. The significance of pain comes from how we read its cause, its effects and its cure. When European ships hauled slaves across the Atlantic the few who freed themselves testified to the horror. Olaudah Equiano told of crushed bodies in the cargo. Frederick Douglass told of whippings that cut scars into the soul. But whether the author wrote of the Middle Passage or the American plantation their imagery was violent and in it black people were damaged but the cause was always slavery and the cure was its end.
Pre-Civil War images like the dark fat mammy, the lazy drunken coon, kinky haired picaninnies, the lewd Jezebel or the obedient Uncle Tom circulated like floating lenses to train the vision of whites to see blacks as happy in the care of their masters. In Daryl Scott’s Contempt and Pity we learn how after the smoke of war cleared, conservatives flipped the images of blacks from child-like servants to animal-like deviants. They cited black crime or illness as proof that without slavery blacks would destroy themselves or the nation. Again the imagery was violent and black people were damaged but here the cause was freedom and the cure was slavery.
Each generation born on the color line has inherited black damage imagery. Marcus Garvey used it, Malcolm used it, Martin used it but for each of them the cause was the institutional racism that is the cultural echo of slavery. I use it to. Many of us on the Left do but warily brush shoulders with conservatives like Charles Murray of The Bell Curve, Dinesh D’Souza, Shelby Steel or James McWhorter where the cause is the innate deficiency of the black body or the internal pathologies of black culture. Using those images is like talking with a razor in the mouth. It cuts too easily and too wildly. And more often than not, we are being asked to wave our pain around because no one else is allowed to.
As the Civil Rights Movement pushed wave after wave of black folk into the American mainstream it became less accepted for whites to use it. Yet the generations deep, historically resonant appetite whites have for black damage imagery is never filled. So it’s become profitable for black artists, Hip Hop specifically, to sell black pathology and it’s become painful for black critics to watch helplessly at it happens. What is at stake are images that conservatives use to scapegoat black people in general and black men in particular.
So when Alice Walker’s The Color Purple was published in 1982, she was accused by critics like Prof. Trudier-Harris, Ishmael Reed, bell hooks and Louis Farrakhan of collaborating with white supremacy. They thundered that she demonized black men, portrayed them as brutes and hence helped justify white contempt. They warned us that as long as black men are scapegoats for white anxiety we will never learn the truth about our nation, a truth Jesse Jackson made plain in his 1988 Democratic Convention speech, “Most poor people are not lazy. They are not black. They are not brown. They are mostly White and female and young. But whether White, Black or Brown, a hungry baby's belly turned inside out is the same color -- color it pain; color it hurt; color it agony.”
But pain and hurt and agony is colored in America in order to displace white anxiety on to blacks who in turn rightly fear this spectacle. Words kill, images can destroy because they underwrite the racial social contract we silently sign our names to. Black damage imagery sells Hip Hop, sells news headlines, sells fear, sells harsh laws, sells death penalties and after the selling is done we are surrounded by so many monstrous reflections of ourselves that we begin to think they are real.
The national appetite for black damage imagery means being poor defines blackness and being angry at this defines the black middle and upper class. So when Precious came out, inevitably critics like Ishmael Reed in Counter Punch, Armond White in the New York Press or professor Melissa Harris-Lacewell in The Nation accused the film-makers of collaborating with white supremacy.
All I knew was I didn't want any more shit in my head. Most my friends said the same but we felt that itchy curiosity that always wins out. While shopping; I bought a boot-leg copy from an African brother, left it in my bag and when I got to school next morning, saw it while rooting around for chalk. Class began. Everyone had glazed eyes from all-night caffeine-fueled writing that is the end-of-the-semester college ritual. “Are we going to learn today,” I asked. “Or will you waste time dawdling?”
Row after row of eyes stared at me. “I said we’d begin democracy in class and you have the vote. My preference is we review for the final exam. The better prepared you are the better your grade. Or…,” I reached in my bag and pulled out the Precious DVD. Row after row of hands shot up, waved, snapped fingers, someone in the corner mock-howled like a wolf. “Christ, will anyone vote for final exam review,” I pleaded. They calmly stared at me and a student sitting mid-row said dryly, “The perils of democracy professor.”
I laughed, put in the movie in, pressed play and sat in the dark, grading papers. The movie flickered on their faces and slowly their eyes hardened. When Precious was being raped and escaped into a glowing fantasy world one student squirmed, bundled her notes and said “We can turn it off now.” The class said no in one voice. They stared at Precious as if she carried their secrets for them and what happened to her happened to them. When she struggled to sound out a sentence, they held their breath until she reached the last word. When she wrestled her mother and fell down the stairs; they yelled “Run!” When her mother sat in the social worker’s office and confessed that she forced Precious between her legs, they sunk into silent horror and looked away.
At the end I flicked on the lights, stood in front of the class and saw Precious had become a symbol for their pain. The room felt thick as if filled with unspoken secrets that could not be put back inside.
I breathed in the anxiety and shaped it, “I can feel that the movie brought a lot. Many of us here have dealt with at least one wound that Precious struggles with. Some of you have been abused physically or mentally or sexually. Some of you have been homeless. Some born into poverty. Some addicted to drugs. Some taunted for being black. Some for being big. So it’s easy to see yourself in this character which is why Precious works but the main goal of the movie is to know that if you’ve been hurt it’s not your fault. Like Precious, tell your story. Confront the cause of your pain and free yourself from it.”
The flow passed through me back to them and they nodded. A young black woman in the front said, “I went to see it. People was so ignorant, laughing at her, cracking jokes. I couldn’t even watch the movie.”
“I was worried folks would act up,” I scratched my eyebrow. “I think its nervous laughter. It’s too close to them and they make fun of it to hide from the truth.” Her eyes slimmed to moon-like slivers as she said, “People are scared of themselves.”
The next class, again the vote, again Precious, again the hardened eyes, again the pain gushing through faces but at the climatic fight one of my best students began a large braying laugh. She was thick, chocolate colored and fell off her seat until everyone began trying to hush her but she laughed on and on as Precious was being beaten by her mother. Finally I said, “Is that nervous laughter?”
After class, I YouTubed a video of Katie Couric interviewing Sapphire, the author of Push the book on which Precious is based. In the 1980's she worked in crack-era Harlem, as a family mediator. She listened to abused children as around her people quietly died from a disease the world would later know as H.I.V. Sapphire lived in two worlds, Harlem and the middle-class Downtown art scene where no one believed her stories of life Uptown. So she wrote, furiously, a hundred pages of an angry political novel when a small illiterate voice poked in. Sapphire let it grow and the character Precious came to be and in her was condensed the lives of those thrown away kids. Like Frederick Douglass and Equiano before him, Sapphire went to the origin of black damage imagery which was the testimonial of those in pain.
Maybe that’s why it pulled my students so powerfully, many of them have been damaged in the same ways but unknowingly hide shared secrets. As for Sapphire, the kids she knew and taught soaked her with their grief and it came gushing out; she was simply the channel. Again in that way she resembles the first slave narrators who wrote to give voice to those they loved but lost when they escaped to freedom. Like the slave narrators, the self stands in for the people.
Yet unlike many real thrown-away kids, the character Precious survives. It’s one girl’s story and critics accused Sapphire of ignoring the system. Yet everyday people don’t see the “system” they see each other and if you want to show the "system" you have to show its scars on the body. When critics accuse her of using black damage imagery that gives whites the pleasure of voyeurism, of displacing anxiety we should turn the dialectical wheel. Should victims of systemic oppression not show symptoms of it? Is black on black crime not one of them? Is it not true that the powerless often attack those weaker than they? Why can't we say that this happens with us to? Men attack women. Mothers attack children. Memories attack the present. How can we heal if we can’t see how we hurt each other?
Precious works because people identify with her. My students followed her as if watching their own shadow. I saw that shadow two days lager, when I took my mom to dinner for her birthday. We drank until a warm glow loosened our faces. Her voice flashed like a light inside scenes of her youth. I saw her picking her hair into an Afro, mud-dancing at Woodstock, acting off-Broadway and then I saw her run from home, Grandma saying “I tried to abort you” and Grandpa saying “I’m not wasting money on you to go to college. You’re just going to get pregnant.” She stopped and shook her head to get their voices out of her mind. I rubbed her back and realized as parents get older they drop their secrets into our hands.
As she caught her breath, I remembered a scene from the movie where the mother stood on the stairs and blasted Precious with insults, “You’re a dummy. Don’t nobody want you. I should’ve aborted you.” I looked at my mother and thought of her as a child hearing those same words from her parents and how she carried those voices inside her long after they died. I looked at her and realized before I was born, she was a young girl who someone may have heard in the next building screaming for help.
Comments
Incredible! I feel its hard to talk about this, very hard but you do it! Incredible!
Barbara Bush enjoyed the movie,too. Had a reception for it in Houston. Wrote a review in
the latest Newsweek. Her son is a former drunk and cocaine addict. Her husband was responsible
for the invasion of Panama, which led to the murder of 3 thousand civilians not to mention the
death of thousands as a result of the support for the Contras, who also brought cocaine into
the ghettos.Her daughter in law sold weed in college and killed a man. So the Matriarch of
a dysfunctional family is saying that all black men are incestors. So "Carl" in "Precious"
is America's new Willie Horton.By the way, Sapphire was in on the lynching of the
Central Park 5. They were innocent. That's how she gained $500,000 from Alfred Knopf. Why
don't you ask her to give some "Precious" money to the families of these boys who were lynched
in her poem,"Wild Thing?" Do you think that Hollywood will ever do a film about incest in
the ethnic group to which Sarah Seigal belongs. The woman who put up the money for this
Nazi film
Ishmael Reed didn't lead any charge. The most scathing comments about "The Color Purple"
were made by Toni Morrison,Michele Wallace, bell hooks, Trudier Harris- all black women!!
You should read these comments instead of going along with the gossip! Alice Walker
criticized Steven Speilberg for his interpretation. Now that "Carl" of "Precious" has become
the new Willie Horton ( See: Barbara Bush's review of the movie in latest Newsweek), do
you think that someone will do a "Precious" about the ethnic group to which Speilberg and
Sarah Seigal who put up the money for this Nazi film? Moreover, do you have any views
about Sapphire making $500,000 as a result of her aiding in the lynching of the Central
Park 5 as a result of her poem,"Wild Thing?" These kids grew up in jail. They were innocent.
Now that she's rich should she try to make amends to their families?Just asking
One more. I just examined the profiles of your staff. Really shows the racism of the white
progressive movement that your paper would endorse "Precious," which includes the
kind of stereotypes that you'd find on any KKK website. I attribute this to the white feminist
takeover of the progressive movement, women who when they look at domestic abuse
can only see black, but are silent about the domestic abuse of their fathers, uncles,sons,etc.
you ought to be fucking ashamed of yourself for endorsing this Nazi film.
Check out Reed's screed on counterpunch here:
http://www.counterpunch.org/reed12042009.html
I think the author Nic Powers did an excellent job on the review and looked at multiple angles of black victimization. It even includes some personal revelations from the writer. The film depicts the harsh realities that some poor blacks live, but is not a stand in on its own. Precious lives a horrible life unlike most African-Americans but I think it is Nic's point that there is some appeal to African-Americans who can sympathize or empathize with the character. Nic wrote this review in large part geared at African-Americans.
On the other hand, Reed's points about the "white feminist takeover of the progressive movement" is worthy of a few essays. The stretch that Precious is a "Nazi film" is straight out of Sara Palin's book.
Dear Prof. Reed,
Wow I’m star-struck. I’m honored that you read the piece. A friend and mentor, Prof. Louis Chude-Sokei who teaches at UC Santa Cruz introduced me Flight to Canada fifteen years ago. I gobbled it greedily. I didn’t know it was possible to do that with words. After that I was on the Reed train and read Mumbo Jumbo, your critical essays and poetry. So although it’s forgone that I’m going to argue your points; I’m grateful for your influence on my life. Thank you, Prof. Reed for making me laugh my mask off.
Okay, let’s get to it. Your first point is you did not lead the charge. If I read you correctly your concern is that such language paints your critique as isolated male resentment. So it’s vital in the article to show powerful and knowing Black women who also share your criticisms of the movie. Fair enough. The facts are clear. Prof. Trudier-Harris severely critiqued the book in her article “The Color Purple: On Stereotypes and Silence” in Black American Literature Forum Vol. 18. Num. 4 (Winter 1984). In her book “Invisibility Blues” Prof. Wallace did critique the movie but not the book. Prof. bell hooks in “Writing the Subject: The Color Purple, Reading and Racism” pointed out it flattens of history. Couldn’t find the Toni Morrison quotes but I trust you. So I’ll re-edit that sentence to include them so it doesn’t seem so lop-sided.
Okay, your second point is “Carl” from Precious is the new Willie Horton. I’ll use a structural-functionalist analysis, in which we look at cultural norms, behaviors and traditions as parts working in a total system. Just so we’re clear, the system I’m analyzing is white supremacy. A movie review has two functions one implicit one explicit. The explicit purpose of a review is to tell if the narrative works, does it flow, does it set believable conflicts, build to a climax and resolve them. The implicit purpose is to legitimize narratives that promote the interests of the ruling class. Let’s look at “Carl” from Precious and the Willie Horton political advertisement used by the 1988 Bush campaign against Democratic candidate Michael Dukakis. For those who don’t know, “Carl” was the shadowy father who rapes Precious. Horton was a felon in Massachusetts of which Dukakis was governor. Horton was let out on weekend furlough and raped a woman. Bush made TV ads using Horton to scare voters that Dukakis would let black rapists out on the streets.
Prof. Reed, if I understand you correctly, “Carl” and Horton both are variations of the Brute caricature, the image of Black men promoted by Southern racists after the Civil War to justify lynching and imprisonment of men of color which you parallel with Nazi policy. The role these images play is to support white supremacy by re-invigorating the Brute in the American mind. It’s been used in Birth of a Nation, in justifying Emmett Till’s murder, in Native Son, in the seemingly countless New York cop shows. In your view, the implicit role of movie reviews of Precious is to re-legitimize the Brute image with a Black stamp of approval from Sapphire, Tyler Perry and Oprah.
Here’s where I think you trip up. “Carl” and Horton are at different points and trajectories in the Cycle of Violence. Horton was the Brute image used in by the Conservative sector of the ruling elite in an electoral contest. The goal was to evoke white fear, get in office, gut social programs, turn back Civil Right’s gains and all of these led to renewed oppression of working poor in general and black people in particular. The point and trajectory of Horton is top to bottom, divide and conquer. Now this is one in a series of white supremacist violence, including crack and cocaine sentencing disparity, stop-n-frisk policy, lopsided globalization that leads to decades of underemployment that William Julius Wilson maps in, “When Work Disappears.”
If you look at it dialectically, white supremacist violence will do what force always does. It will shape what it has acted on and in this case it has acted on and shaped to a degree black culture. We see it in the glamorization of violence in Hip Hop, the marketplace for the Brute caricature; we see it in our disproportionate incarceration rate, we see it in our 70% single-mom families, in the high black male murder rate.
Unfortunately this is where “Carl” comes in. He is a fictional character in a novel written by a sister, herself sexually assaulted, who in Push combined the stories of children who’d been abused. She is testifying to what oppression has done to some of us. Her “Carl” is a Brute image but it’s because some of our brothers have been shaped into brutes. Her image of “Carl” reflects her experience and what she heard and saw in her students. It reflects the experience of a lot women I’ve talked to who said they felt relief when they could see the hidden parts of their lives on-screen. “Carl” is a reminder that when we don’t fight against oppression we often turn on those weaker and they, being the victims of the weak are nearly completely invisible. The male violence, the child abuse, the homophobia, the many "Carls" we know are effects of institutional violence on black people.
Sapphire’s “Carl” is at the bottom of the Cycle of Violence but looking at it dialectically, every force has a counter-force. Against the silence, Life, beautiful, greedy Life wants to grow. Sapphire's art is part of the Life, that need to be conscious and to re-claim power. “Carl” could be a shocking force, a sight in the mirror, forcing us to see how we look to those we hurt because we have been hurt ourselves. It could be the beginning of a healing. Yet because of Sapphire’s class position (Downtown art-scene, literary agents) the Brute image of “Carl” moves up the pyramid of power and can be used by the ruling elite to justify the same racist social policies that created him.
I say all that to make clear, “Carl” and Horton may look the same but their mutual authors are different (Bush Campaign/Sapphire) the roles in their narratives are different (to scare white voters/to make pain visible) and to fuse them together doesn’t help us. When we can’t admit that institutional racism has misshapen us, we condemn ourselves to a stoic silence that saps our strength instead of freeing it.
So instead of repeating ad nauseum one reading of Precious, that's it's a tool of white supremacy, try acknowledging the painful experiences it shows are also a product of it. Many women need to have their pain acknowledged without being made to feel guilty for betraying the race. When that happens we can start fighting it together.
Ok, I’m tired. Last two points quick. Sapphire’s Wild Thing poem? It’s a good poem, not great but good. Apologizes too much. My rule as a writer, don’t judge the character just be it. Wish it was a general poem on violence but as a poem on The Central Park Five, she should’ve apologize by now, maybe with a poem titled "How Self-Righteousness Can Get You In You Trouble". I think you could write a poem on that to Prof. Reed.
Last point, the white Indy staff, not all white and to measure the racism by staff profiles is stupid. Of course we have our moments. Sometimes they say something ignorant and I roll my eyes. Sometimes I say something ignorant and they roll their eyes. Then we go have beers and laugh it off. While we’re laughing we are of course secretly planning to promote the genocide of black people because, you know, we’re Nazis!
Right. Maybe the Nazi thing was a stretch. I've examined Nazi material and
though their image of the black male as a rapist is frequently drawn i've
never seen one of a black incestor. It took Sarah Seigal, the money behind
"Precious," not Sarah Palin, to do that. I also see that your magazine is close
to Democracy Now. I remember Amy Goodman's take on Kobe's criminal
hearings. It wasn't that his accuser had lied and that the D.A. knew it,What
did Amy conclude from this lynching? "Now women will be reluctant to
come forth with charges of rape"). God. Don't you miss the Old 1930
Left with their corny solidarity songs. The people who defended the
Scotsboro boys.
(this D.A. ordered T-Shirts that showed Kobe hanging). Will some of the
women on your staff ever write an article about domestic and child abuse
in the Jewish community, here and in Israel? I read Lillith and the feminists
there say it's being covered up. (It was a big topic when I visited Israel
for the first time in 2000.0Will the "white men" who weigh in on
"Precious" do it? Will they let you?Thanks for your balanced response, but
when Barbara Bush and Indy agree on something shouldn't we be
concerned? You and she say that 'Precious" is everywhere. Check out
the book Julius Streicher The Anti Semitic Editor of Der Sturmer. This
is the kind of charge made against Jewish men in Nazi film and newspapers.
They were creating Precious among Aryan women. This got them sent to
the camps.
"When we can’t admit that institutional racism has misshapen us, we condemn ourselves to a stoic silence that saps our strength instead of freeing it.
So instead of repeating ad nauseum one reading of Precious, that’s it’s a tool of white supremacy, try acknowledging the painful experiences it shows are also a product of it. Many women need to have their pain acknowledged without being made to feel guilty for betraying the race."
Best parts of Nic Powers' response.
Right, but why is it that the brothers are always symbols of universal cruel treatment of women
in film, stage and literature. And the vague responses to the challenges i've offered in
debating this film- which at one point advocates sterilization and praises work fare- demonstrates
why people like Palin are always running over these progressives who've never been able to
come to terms with their racism. In fact black women of the type who agree with me about this film
(See:Jill Nelson's blog) have been complaining about white feminist racism for over one hundred
years ( See:Black Abolitonist Women by Lee), and the white men who love Precious are
hypocrites.A SUNY study reports that 90% of the white women interviewed said that they
had been abused, or seen their mothers and daughters abused.The author said that she
was surprised because they were products of "stable middle class households." Why doesn't Indy deal
with that?
Dear Prof. Reed,
Sorry for the delay. I re-edited that sentence about who led the charge against The Color Purple to be more accurate.
Your first point is that black men are universal symbols of cruel treatment of women in film, stage and literature. The problem with such a claim is it’s easy to make but hard to answer. It’s rhetorically smart as it puts the person questioned in a near impossible position of having to answer without doing the exhaustive research. I’ll take a short cut. As you point out in your article “Black Pathology is Big Biz” most crime is committed by whites and so I would point out, is most media in the U.S. In other words, there are many images of white men being cruel being produced and consumed. I could go into a tedious list but just look around and you’ll see most villains are white in the media. Also, the imagery of black men is no longer monolithic. Pres. Obama aside, the class representations of black men have widened.
Still I don’t want to dodge the core issue. Historically we have a pyramid of power where small ruling elite lives off the wealth produced by the majority and within that majority are a black minority used as a scapegoat. So yes, the Brute caricature is a vile image used to disguise the true source of violence. If I read you correctly, Precious fits into that tradition. I differ. It’s not so simple. The mistake you make is assuming there is only one way to read Precious. Yes, it can be read by whites to justify their racism but it can be read by black people as a reflection of the damage the system has caused in us. The question is one of intent. My reading of the intent behind Push the book and Precious the movie is to give a voice to people made invisible or unredeemable by our system.
I did see the film again and did not see anything advocating sterilization. Also the one conversation about work-fare, is explicitly an argument against it. Precious is sitting by the window. She and her classmates work out how much she would get if she worked as an on-call nurse versus welfare and going to school. They all agree she should stay on welfare until she can finish school. Precious says, “I want to work but I want to finish my schooling first.” So it’s actually the opposite of what you assert. The film does not advocate work-fare at all.
In a prior post you write “do you think that someone will do a “Precious” about the ethnic group to which Spielberg and Sarah Siegel who put up the money for this Nazi film?” It seems you’re saying that no one would put up money to make a movie showing Jews in the same dire circumstances as Precious. More so, you accuse Spielberg and Siegel, both Jews of producing a Nazi film which is insulting and Anti-Semitic.
First American Jews do not have the same history in the U.S., no Middle Passage, no slavery and have after World War 2 been able for the most part to move into the white mainstream. So it’s obvious they would not have the same poverty rate (although Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty in NYC reports it rose from %7 in 1991 to %13 in 2002, so much for the myth!) and subsequent pathologies that are caused by racism and generations long exploitation. In the U.S. racism against black people has been the primary channel of social frustration, paranoia and anxiety. So to the degree that Precious is a film that reflects the problems of the Black working poor caused by institutional racism, you won't find a "Jewish" Precious.
More importantly, each minority is repressed by a historically specific ideology. The imagery used against Jews and Blacks are very different. So imagine a theater backdrop and on it plays the standard Anti-Semitic racist images, greedy bankers, puppet-masters etc. If you had Jewish actors on stage acting out the Precious screen-play with incest and abuse; it wouldn’t have any resonance because that’s not part of the oppressive ideological tradition used against them. It would just seem the odd plight of an individual family.
Same thing with Black folk, if you had a theater backdrop and on it was projected the Mammy, Coon, Brute, Jezebel caricatures and black actors re-enact some screenplay about loaning money at high interest rates or manipulating media to trick people, it wouldn’t resonant because that’s not part of the oppressive ideological tradition. It would be read as the story of an individual family.
So the question is has there been a Jewish Precious? Are there films which investigate the degree to which social stereotypes have damaged and shaped Jewish identity? Just a glance at Jewish cinema and we see the answer is yes. We see movies that examine the mentality behind their persecution as a religious minority as well as self-criticism of internalized Anti-Semitism, of religiously driven sexism and persecution of Palestinians. We see this in A Gentlemen’s Agreement, Yentl, Schindler’s List, Pi, Borat, Waltz with Bashir and Taking Woodstock. When you suggest that Jewish film-makers don’t criticize their own culture you’re wrong. When you suggest they are in cohorts with white supremacy you invoke the same racist logic you decry. It’s hypocrisy.
Finally to suggest that the Indy doesn’t focus on abuse in white household because the white women on the Indy staff are racist is sheer bullshit. Read the fucking Indy.
If you don't think that Jewish writers are capable of creating Nazi stereotypes of blacks check
out David Mamet's film," Edmund." In a Jewish magazine called Tablet, there's an article about
Jewish film makers stereotyping Jewish women!! Historically. Also, I cited a book about
stereotypes of Jewish males in the Nazi media .If you took the time to read the book instead
of pleasing the 'progressives' at Indy, you'd find that they're consistent with those in "Precious."
Also, how do you respond to the complaints of Jewish feminists who say that the abuse of
some Jewish women by some Jewish men has been covered up? I can send you a biblography.
Has Indy written about this? Send me the article Ireedpub@yahoo.com. I don't expect Amy
Goodman to do it. She's more interested in torture at Gitmo than in torture in New York
juvenile facillities. See today's Times.
i'm just writing off the top of my head and you all are much more intellectual than me so i'm not even going to try and compete.. plus i'm from california and we are all there is a goofy optimism that has influenced me... i was reading bell hooks because she is one of my heros that's still alive...
This article on Precious increased my understanding of the loaded gun of "black damage imagery". it helped me understand a funny feeling i had when i told my black friends that i loved it... everyone was making fun of how slow precious spoke in the film... they loved it too, but i think me loving it had different meaning. i'm mixed cuban/sephardic jew/white.... my consciousness is growing, but the "race suggestions" I inherited did justify oppressive systems... I was presented with these images without context or an incorrect or edited list of reasons that blamed or made people into poor pathetic wretches.."black damage imagery" was one of those tools... i know mr reed wants there to be made a movie of the incest of jewish men - i know a few real life stories it could be based on... but the way i see it i think it would be awesome if any movies were made about any incest stories period! i would love to see films about all types of incest - damn it's everywhere and totally cross cultural, yet no makes films about it... also i pray more movies are made from personal testimony perspective.... or the journey of healing... from the point of view of being inside and looking out... if any movies are made about redemption.... because i look at hollywood and even avatar that all the lefties are getting excited about.... even that film is very external and interpretive... to me that is a typical male/dominant approach to characters... like "let me tell you what this phenomenon about"... the interpretation puts less at stake, it protects you in your separateness.... instead of showing someone's feelings, struggles internally, empathically going thru a circumstance.... maybe "precious" is an interpretation in the sense that all movies interpret reality.... but i cried when i saw it, not for her, but for me.... not because a man (let alone a black man) hurt me... but that i had been hurt period. and i was deeply angry and f'd up by it.... but my past doesn't determine me... that movie gave me hope that i could teach myself more... i had responsibility to rise above my past and my history... that if no human being valued my life, god or some universal force did love me... and i could tap into that love force... that i could find bits of god shining thru in the world... in my teachers, friends and other people... in books and people who went thru the same thing...
that's my point...
Well looky here. Ishmael Reed -- so far removed from the notion of black suffering that he was able to write a glib parody of the slave narrative (Flight to Canada) -- is now shocked that there are Preciouses in his midst. Mr. Reed, I respect your passion but you need to get out into the real world a lot more. Try teaching an adult literacy class or volunteering in a homeless shelter or prison ministry. You may learn something from the Preciouses of the world. They exist and deserved to be heard. I am Black; I can relate to Precious, and I am not alone in how I feel.
As they say on the Gerry Springer Show,"You don't know me." I've done all of the things
that you mention and more. I taught adult literacy for three years at Second Start in Oakland,
and have contributed to homeless shelters.As for my glib," Flight To Canada," it's been in
print since 1976.Speaking of Canada, my new book is out from a Montreal publisher in
April: "Barack Obama and the Jim Crow Media,the Return of the Nigger Breakers," now
available at Amazon.com
Hi, I'd like to ask out of pure interest from reading this piece, what is your most simple interpretation of this movie?
Funny how you failed to respond to the last 2 sentences of my post: The Preciouses of the world exist and deserved to be heard. I am Black; I can relate to Precious, and I am not alone in how I feel. Still trying to keep us invisible, are ya?
I for one am sick of the "oppression olympics" on display here. Human solidarity, in spite of all our differences, is our only hope. Does anyone really believe we can fundamentally change society if this continues? Divide and conquer is the beloved tactic of the ruling strata of this hierarchical society. A new era of potentialities is opening for overcoming the divisions among the oppressed if we can but seize it. Mr Reed, despite the tremendous respect I have for his early work and his always provocative comments on race in America is sadly rendering himself irrelevant--like Amiri Baraka he is becoming a relic of an different era. A new anti-racist, indeed, a Third Reconstruction movement is desperately needed to seize the opportunities of this era and especially to reach the younger generation who are hungry for change.
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