Everyone’s A Critic

At best, the majority of critical response to Precious has been problematic. Nearly every review of Precious begins with a long list of the titular character’s social disadvantages. These sentences are almost unanimously punctuated with something to the effect of “incredibly overweight” or “morbidly obese.” When coming from the pro-Precious corner, this type of language rings harsher, because it invokes a sympathetic and concerned, yet pathologizing stance. The resulting effect is that critics who may feel as if they are championing the placement of plus-size characters in mainstream filmmaking via praising plus-sized actresses, are in fact further distancing themselves and their beloved medium of focus. Meanwhile, in real life, actress Gabourey Sidibe, whom they almost unanimously praise, must deal with the (potential) internalization of such judgmental language.

Gabourey Sidibe inPrecious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire (Lee Daniels Entertainment)

Perhaps most vicious of all was, not surprisingly, New York Press critic Armond White, who likened the film to Birth of a Nation, and Gabourey Sidibe to a hippopotamus. In his critique of the film, like other less caustic reviews, he accuses director Lee Daniels of playing to, and perpetuating, a liberal white fantasy of a stereotypical black experience. Obviously I disagree with this, but what is further frustrating is that his list of  “Excellent recent films with black themes” includes none other than Norbit, starring the notoriously homophobic, deadbeat dad Eddie Murphy dressed in a fat suit. Exactly whose fantasies is he engaged in?

It is true that Precious and PUSH traffic in some fairly poisonous stereotypes (the scene where Precious steals a bucket of chicken is fairly over-the-top). But as queer filmmakers who use camp, and black filmmakers who have worked in the Blaxploitation genre of filmmaking know, stereotypes can be a point of recognition that leads to a point of departure. Historically, the stereotype has also functioned as the lone instance of cinematic representation and thus, even in its most ridiculous manifestation, elicits identification in the underrepresented viewer (see “Black Looks” by bell hooks or The Celluloid Closet by Vito Russo). From this backdrop, Lee Daniels effectively pumps radical potential into the detrimental language of stereotypes. He does so not by attending to or fabricating their polar opposites, but rather by offering a complicated skewing of their potency as all-encompassing and essential. In Precious, the stereotypical signifiers remain on the surface, but they coexist with deeper, more complex modes of humanity that cannot be summed up in flat cinematic short-hand. Within this bold re-direction, the stereotype no longer functions as a repellent, or a stunted summation of one’s otherness. Rather, it pushes the audience in and out of identification with the subjects of the film, ultimately resulting in an even richer identification, and into the radical potential for subject positions that do not fit easily into a stereotype/anti-stereotype binary. Challenging though the results may be, what appears to be de facto difference becomes multifaceted empathy, in the film and, hopefully, beyond.