Movie Review: Precious

Thursday after finals a group of social workers decided to go see Precious. As I sat down to watch the movie, all the reviews from other people came to mind. I immediately thought I was going to be crying for days and that when I left the theater I'd be asking why. The total opposite happened.

The first thing that opened my eyes was when Precious said, "i remember hearing one day that a successful journey started with one step."It made me feel that somewhere in her fucked up like she encountered someone who expressed to her that it didn't have to be like that. During the movie I felt as though maybe Precious knew all along that she wanted to bust her momma out for the crap she was doing but she needed someone she trusted to do that. When she came in contact with her "social worker", that seemed to be the person she trusted. She had been lying to so many people but in her eyes this "social worker" was going to be the person to save her.

However, what did bug me was how all the people that were trying to help Precious was light skinned (there's nothing completely wrong with that) but in this movie it depicted that dark skinned people were those who were trying to harm Precious and light skinned people where the ones who would save her (this view was first mentioned by @cthagod, when it was brought to my attention I couldn't believe it so I sat waiting on one dark skinned person to help her). Precious herself kept saying, "i want a light skinned boyfriend." I couldn't get past the fact that we are still not treating people like people. Within our own black race light skinned is good and dark skinned is bad. Why is that? And somewhere deep inside me knew that I was the only one out of the six of us that was thinking this. But, when I got home I thought to myself...there was a dark skinned person who helped her, there were numerous. The students in her class, they made her feel welcome they made her feel like she belonged. FRIENDS are the ones who help you the most whether they know it or not, and that was enough for me.

There were a couple of parts that made me cry and some parts where I just couldn't believe what I was seeing. But all in all, the movie didn't really move me. Maybe i've watched too many movies, read to many books, watched too much Lifetime, or came across too many people who have had the same problems Precious faced. But, it didn't move me. I didn't leave the theater with a new outlook on things. I was the same person I was when I walked in. Yet, my counter parts didn't seem to be the same people. One of them walked out the movie and stated, "After you heard what Precious' mother disclosed do you think you're strong enough to be a social worker, will you be able to hear what she says and not cry?" One by one they answered her and they all said they'd be fine but you could hear the uncertainty in their voice.

Then I started to think, can we ever hear too much of anyone's story and not feel some sort of way about it. Are we not suppose to cry? Or will it be like in Precious' case, as social workers if we cry our client then decides that we aren't strong enough to handle what is before us. In many cases if you cry you're seen as weak, not being able to handle what has been dealt to you, or you're just too damn sensitive. So my question to you is,

When is it okay to cry?