Unfortunate, and Spike's right. I'm not saying there doesn't need to be change, but I'm saying Monique deserved her Oscar and nothing you say will diminish that, nor did the whole thing need to be written where Precious became a Rhodes scholar and Mary was saccharin sweet and supportive. It was a story that stood on its own feet.
Once again we must agree to disagree here. Clearly our different life experiences and world views lead us to very different conclusions regarding this movie. The objection for many of us simply put, is due to the overwhelming negative historical and present day portrayals, such movies as Precious, even when based in limited reality and shedding light on tough sociological issues, furthers the perception of the sole African American experience as one that is low, base, dysfunctional, broken, poverty-stricken, ect. Images and words are very powerful, and can have a huge impact on the collective psyche of people both within and without the African American community, thus making the tangible results of such portrayals VERY real to those of us who have to overcome them on a daily basis. Such an onslaught of negative imagery just about everywhere one looks is why those like myself and others rail against these kind of films, even when they may contain important issues. These are very important, very real, issues that have been researched and debated for ages.
In Dr. Earl Ofari Hutchinson's book "The Assassination of the Black Male Image" he does a brilliant job of detailing the root causes, historical genesis, and ongoing examples of the concerted, insidious, and institutional image destruction of the Black man by past and present media forms, both within and without of the Black community.
His conclusion as to how to combat this reality, is nothing short of sheer brilliance in my opinion, from page 169;
- "The first step in the racial stereotype self-clensing process is to be aware of what you say and do.
- The second step is to become a talking, walking, thinking, and most importantly acting anti-stereotype and role model around family, friends, in organizations, in your place of business, and at school.
- The third step is to get involved in church, civic,
political, PTA, fraternities, sororities, associations, rites-of-passage, and mentoring programs and anywhere else where you can set a positive example of excellence and achievement.
These are only suggestions. But if we take one or more of them they will go a long way toward countering the self-hateful, self-destructive, and ultimately self-defeating images many Americans have of Black men and many Black people have of themselves."
This is exactly how I live my life everyday, and why I cannot and will not support movies like Precious.
Alice Walker's point was not how terrible black men are, and she praises black men in her writing. You don't get to be poet laureate by talking about how wicked and wayward black men are. That makes me sad to think that would turn you off from reading one of the greatest writers of our time, karmacoma. 
