Ryan Patrick Broderick
Ryan.Broderick@gmail.com
@Ryanhatesthis
Not since ‘The Birth of a Nation’ has a mainstream movie demeaned the idea of black American life as much as ‘Precious,’ Full of brazenly racist clichés (Precious steals and eats an entire bucket of fried chicken), it is a sociological horror show.
Worse than Precious itself was the ordeal of watching it with an audience full of patronizing white folk at the New York Film Festival, then enduring its media hoodwink as a credible depiction of black American life. A scene such as the hippopotamus-like teenager climbing a K-2 incline of tenement stairs to present her newborn, incest-bred baby to her unhinged virago matriarch, might have been met howls of skeptical laughter at Harlem’s Magic Johnson theater.Jesus.
It’s written Sapphire.
It’s directed by Lee Daniels.
It’s produced by Tyler Perry.
It’s produced by Oprah freaking Winfrey.Do the Obamas have to walk into the Rose Garden and say they enjoyed the movie? Do you need Coretta Scott King to climb out of the grave and give Precious two thumbs up?
What kind of a pedigree do you need in order to trust a narrative?
When The Color Purple debuted the African-american community collectively lost their shit. No one came with ten miles of a script with an African-american theme. Whoopi Golbgerg says that for a decade the only black actors who could get a job in Hollywood were her and Eddie Murphy.
When is it going to be okay to make a movie about lower-class African-americans?
It will never be okay to make one about them but one about whitey being a redneck, KKK member who fucks their sister? well that’s perfectly fine.
I thought they made a movie about Biggie Smalls last year.
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