printThe following excerpt is from this week’s WND.COM column, “Precious Or Grotesque?”:
“….What is so grotesque about the film ‘Precious’ is not the actress—who seems pleasant enough—so much as the film; the fiction, the yarn it spins and the emotions it calculatingly elicits. ‘Precious’ is intended to tug at every single sentimental fiber in a person’s being.
Mired in the misery of Harlem, the ugliest, fattest, most abused and tormented young girl is kicked about some more after spending earlier formative years as the ugliest, fattest, most abused and tormented child in the world, born to the cruelest most craven parents ever, who—although they don’t sacrifice her in a ritual murder—make up for this show of restraint by beating, impregnating, and infecting their daughter with HIV. …
“‘Precious’ … is a gratuitous orgy of pornography, pathology, and sentimentality. It is extreme fiction aimed at exaggerated emotion.” …
THE COMPLETE COLUMN IS “Precious Or Grotesque?”
Do read my libertarian manifesto, Broad Sides: One Woman’s Clash With A Corrupt Society.
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I’d be interested in hearing your takes on The Hurt Locker and Avatar, both great films IMO despite their pitfalls
Ilana you are so right. I don’t think “grotesque” adequatly described it. In many ways, but more subtly, the movie AVATAR is even more grotesque as a supposed caricature of the USA. This in spite of the historical fact that the USA WAS the most benevolent, free, and generous society ever created on Earth. Obama is rapidly and with extreme dedication, making sure it can never be that way again.
I think that the sending the message to young, impressionable black kids that if they dress and talk “ghetto” that they will get ahead is most definitely not a “perfectly good one.” If even 1% of aspiring rap artists are able to support themselves through their music and 1,000,000 attempt only 10,000 will achieve their goal leaving 990,000 disadvantaged youths that primarily speak ebonics making it that much more difficult for them to get good jobs and succeed. If rapping were just a way to make a living I would agree with you but the fact is that it is much more of a lifestyle choice than being an author, a columnist or almost any other profession. Just because rapping makes a few people very rich does not mean that the message is acceptable or “perfectly good.” In the army about half of my coworkers were black and grew up in disadvantaged neighborhoods. Too many of them didn’t realize the value of education and were drawn in by a more glamorous lifestyle. While I think being in the army is honorable and something to be proud of, I don’t think most of them would have voluntarily chosen that profession if given an alternative.