Not Everyone Thinks "Precious" Deserves Oscar Consideration

Armond White calls it the ‘Con Job of the Year.’

This review of 'Precious: Based on the Novel "Push" by Sapphire' directed by Lee Daniels and starring Gabourey 'Gabby' Sidibe, Mo'Nique, and Paula Patton goes a little like this... SHAME ON TYLER PERRY and Oprah Winfrey for signing on as air-quote executive producers of Precious. After this post-hip-hop freak show wowed Sundance last January, it now slouches toward Oscar ratification thanks to its powerful friends.

And ends like this...

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. Black audiences would surely have seen the comedy in this ludicrous, overloaded situation, whereas too many white film habitués casually enjoy it for the sense of superiority—and relief—it allows them to feel. Some people like being conned.

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