Thursday, August 26, 2010
Sunday, May 16, 2010
Precious
This is a blog that I started in March and I thought I posted but evidently it was only saved to drafts.
I had wanted to vlog about this but I have other stuff to upload and my memory card is full. I only have about 30 min to finish and revise this so it is kind of incomplete. If I think of anything else, I will amend it with a later entry.
Someone from Norway said that they never could have written Precious. My cousin's husband is from Sweden and we were talking about the movie after he saw it and he came to a similar conclusion. I really don't think that anyone from a welfare state could have done a movie like Precious. So I've been getting pretty postcolonial in my outlook so I've been borrowing a lot from that discourse.
The crux of the entire film is a culture that only exists for the purpose of elites to strip mine when needed. Contingent colonialism is the only reason why Precious and Mary are even allowed to survive. That kind of things can only exist in a country where large parts of the population are placed in a state like that. Scandanavian nations don't abandon people. The film depicts a community where the members are nonhuman for all intents and purposes. But what are they exploited for? The industry is gone so there is no cheap labor need. But they are not parasites. A parasite is an organism not capable of independent function. There is no function they have that is not independent as any pretense of a community was taken away over decades. They are turned in to nonentity pseudo-parasites by larger systems. Anyone who says that America is the greatest country in the world needs to look at places like Harlem, Detroit and Alabama Village. Look at our infant mortality rates but break them down by race, class and region. I admire Precious for being one of the only popular films to put this truth in the laps of white viewers and I condemn any white viewer that can not receive this. Every white person holds a collective responsibility for this. There is not a black man in prison who is not there because of the things white people are guilty of. There was not a single person who died of AIDS in the 80s who was not metaphorically infected by white Reaganite conservatives. Call it white guilt if you want. I would rather call it white truth. If you voted Republican or made a negative comment about poor blacks, you are Precious's father. The reason his face was never shown was that it could only be a white one.
For all the things that I loved about the film, I had a severe problem with the ending. I would have loved the film had it ended maybe twenty seconds before it did. That ending has Precious taking off in to a world that loathes her and her mother a broken monster. The problem was that the last scene had an air of triumph. The ending of this film could not have been any less triumphant. Precious is a poor black woman with little formal education and HIV. She will be dead within five years. The kids will end up with Mary and the abuse will continue.
What I struggle with here is what can be done to stop this. Is white people stepping in to help really any different than white people stepping in to perpetuate systemic rape? Does the black community really have the resources to address this problem without white help? I have no idea what the answer is and that scares me. The problem is severe enough that something needs to be done but a solution that is culturally insensitive, short term and patchwork is doomed to fail. I want to get recommendations from people on what to do. I know that I write comic books but celebrities and artists seem to be the only people that can influence opinions in contemporary America.
I had wanted to vlog about this but I have other stuff to upload and my memory card is full. I only have about 30 min to finish and revise this so it is kind of incomplete. If I think of anything else, I will amend it with a later entry.
Someone from Norway said that they never could have written Precious. My cousin's husband is from Sweden and we were talking about the movie after he saw it and he came to a similar conclusion. I really don't think that anyone from a welfare state could have done a movie like Precious. So I've been getting pretty postcolonial in my outlook so I've been borrowing a lot from that discourse.
The crux of the entire film is a culture that only exists for the purpose of elites to strip mine when needed. Contingent colonialism is the only reason why Precious and Mary are even allowed to survive. That kind of things can only exist in a country where large parts of the population are placed in a state like that. Scandanavian nations don't abandon people. The film depicts a community where the members are nonhuman for all intents and purposes. But what are they exploited for? The industry is gone so there is no cheap labor need. But they are not parasites. A parasite is an organism not capable of independent function. There is no function they have that is not independent as any pretense of a community was taken away over decades. They are turned in to nonentity pseudo-parasites by larger systems. Anyone who says that America is the greatest country in the world needs to look at places like Harlem, Detroit and Alabama Village. Look at our infant mortality rates but break them down by race, class and region. I admire Precious for being one of the only popular films to put this truth in the laps of white viewers and I condemn any white viewer that can not receive this. Every white person holds a collective responsibility for this. There is not a black man in prison who is not there because of the things white people are guilty of. There was not a single person who died of AIDS in the 80s who was not metaphorically infected by white Reaganite conservatives. Call it white guilt if you want. I would rather call it white truth. If you voted Republican or made a negative comment about poor blacks, you are Precious's father. The reason his face was never shown was that it could only be a white one.
For all the things that I loved about the film, I had a severe problem with the ending. I would have loved the film had it ended maybe twenty seconds before it did. That ending has Precious taking off in to a world that loathes her and her mother a broken monster. The problem was that the last scene had an air of triumph. The ending of this film could not have been any less triumphant. Precious is a poor black woman with little formal education and HIV. She will be dead within five years. The kids will end up with Mary and the abuse will continue.
What I struggle with here is what can be done to stop this. Is white people stepping in to help really any different than white people stepping in to perpetuate systemic rape? Does the black community really have the resources to address this problem without white help? I have no idea what the answer is and that scares me. The problem is severe enough that something needs to be done but a solution that is culturally insensitive, short term and patchwork is doomed to fail. I want to get recommendations from people on what to do. I know that I write comic books but celebrities and artists seem to be the only people that can influence opinions in contemporary America.
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
New Blog
This is my personal blog.
I have the other blog for professional stuff.
This is my place to talk about personal things and rant and rave about politics and other things of that sort. Expect more angry blogs here.
I have the other blog for professional stuff.
This is my place to talk about personal things and rant and rave about politics and other things of that sort. Expect more angry blogs here.
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