The Precious Debates: Stanley Crouch, Sheril Antonio, and Howard Stern Debate if the Oscar Winning Film is “Pathology Porn”

I am confounded as I try to make sense of film scholar Sheril Antonio and noted Black public intellectual Stanley Crouch’s debating the merit of what I see as the pseudo-monster movie Precious.

And yes, I called that “cultural” document a monster movie because what is Precious, if anything, but monstrous?

First random thought: did Stanley Crouch’s defense of this film surprise you?

Second Random thought: How well will the movie Precious age? I predict not so well, as I suggest that it will be a 21st century version of Gangsta’s Paradise.  Like Ishmael Reed and others, I too assert that Precious is “pathology porn.” Most important, I also suggest that Precious is part of the black pathology, black female suffering is by its very nature a noble enterprise, that is all in vogue as a counterpoint to the ascendancy of Michelle and Barack Obama. Black Camelot must be undone–and I would so love to write the book on the symbolism and power of that image–and films such as Precious, along with Tyler’s Perry “art”– are one of many broadsides against the Obamas’ effort to present a dignified portrait of Black Respectability.

Not to be overlooked, many critics are quite disgusted by noted shock jock Howard Stern’s daring to comment on the movie Precious and its star Gabourey Sidibe’s health and weight issues. I submit that Howard is saying what so many of us are thinking in private…at least many of the black and brown folk with whom I pal around with. There is something horribly wrong with Precious, and doubly so with how so many people of color–and interestingly enough some white conservatives–have flocked to it as some type of exemplary “art” (and its star as offering an “alternative” beauty and health standard for women of color):

In total, Precious is both literally and metaphorically unhealthy and should be critiqued as such. I have neither read nor heard anything to dissuade me from that position.

I must ask: In our analysis of Precious, who is playing whom? Are Tyler Perry and Oprah Winfrey playing all of us for fools? Alternatively, while black folk in film may no longer always be Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies and Bucks (to borrow a title from Donald’s Bogle’s noted book) are people of color somehow liberated and freed by the pathos that is Precious? Or is Precious a new/old form of typecasting prison?

Most provocatively, what do audiences see in Precious, and its similarly problematic twin Blindside–a film that won Sandra Bullock an Oscar for a movie that featured a “magical negro”–who white folk save from an unwashed, tragic, and sad origin amongst the ghetto underclass?