First of all, Sapphire's Push is not urban fiction--that description alone let me know that Stevens doesn't know much about the book or the movie; an excerpt of Push was featured in The New Yorker, of all places, back in 1996 or thereabouts. Push is bona fide literature--it's not like Sapphire is Eric Jerome Dickey or Zane or Iceberg Slim...

As for the movie, I saw it at a premiere and I couldn't believe how off Stevens was about it; poverty porn is when a movie or book capitalizes on the audience's lack of experience with poverty to somehow give the audience the false feeling that it has been immersed in it, and suffered through it, and has somehow done something about it, just by seeing the movie or reading the book. "Precious" is nothing like that; there is no way you can watch this movie and think you are changing anything.

At best Precious's situation is only managed, not resolved; the teacher gives her a lessons in how to live with dignity, teaches her to express herself and not be afraid of learning, and the words to put her story down on paper, which eventually yields Precious's one triumph, to know the cage she's been put in, and that she can never truly escape it; it is too late for her, as it is for innumerable others who are born black and poor and who suffer abuse. That is the reality; some don't make it.

Even the description of the meat in the pot was off; when I saw that shot, I did not think of her father treating her like meat: after all meat is already dead. I saw it immediately as a metaphor for incest and poverty, all aboil and cooking (I believe they were hamhocks) a stew of non-nutritious grease and fat. The point of that shot was to show that here is something sub-carnal, sub-human,and poisonous. There is another scene in which her mother punishes Precious by making her eat the meal Precious prepared for her; it is not Precious's own gluttony, but her mother's that dooms her—a gluttony on so many levels it's Dantean…

Now that Precious is pregnant by her father and actually needs to eat real food, she can't because they don't have real food, only fat masquerading as food—which is the truth in tons of poor households—tons to eat, but nothing edidble. Precious’s hunger can't be sated, it is both real and metaphorical, and though I agree that Lee Daniel's fantasy pieces are jarring and sometimes simply don't work on a cinematic level, you do get what they are supposed to get at: they don't really work for Precious, either.

But my biggest problem with this review is the same problem I have when I meet people who read good literature about complex--even malefic characters--and then declare they don't like the book because it's about "bad people." Well, that's the point. There is artistry involved in getting one's reader down to the lowest level of humankind, and there is a reason one must descend to the lowest circle of hell. If you can't go there with Dante or Dickens--or the muckrakers or the satirists--then you are missing out on a big part of the human conversation, and are stuck pre-Enlightenment, and might as well stick to morality plays.

Stevens, I think, is smarter than that, but there is some essential reason why she's blocked. As other posters mentioned, she couldn't understand the mastery of "No Country for Old Men," either. Is it the reflexive belief that all violence is gratuitous? "Precious" and "No Country" are the very opposite of gratuitous violence; to be sure, Aton Chigurh had no reason at all for killing, but that doesn't mean Cormac McCarthy and the Coen Brothers didn't see a point in portraying such violence and nihilism.

And there is likewise a reason behind why Sapphire and Lee Daniels “Precious” is unrelenting. Sometimes you just want it to end because it is just a little too real. But I count that as a triumph of the film, not a deficit.

Wow, you managed to make the movie sound even less appealing.

@quid - yep, a Friday night date movie for certain! Leave it for the Oprahbots and Soc 101 students. "Haven't you heard? Life is unfair!"

Why can't "urban fiction" actually be literature? Is excerpting in New Yorker the test there? For instance, on Amazon it is tagged as "urban fiction." This sounds a tad snobbish.

When I think of "porn," I don't think of the misguided feeling of usefulness suggested by your definition. It is more like wallowing in prurient subject matter without providing suitable social value. The fact you won't change anything by watching it, therefore, does not erase its 'porn' nature. The social value aspect is another matter.

I'm loathe to assume some metaphor is obvious, but the reviewer's take on the meat appears as possible as your in depth analysis. The fact meat is dead is not the point. Women say "don't treat me like a piece of meat" often enough to mean don't treat me like I have no value, as just something to satisfy your urges ... it is a common motif.

I also don't understand about people saying they don't like a book because it's about "bad people." Who really says that? Some might want a positive character, true. But, the reviewer surely is not saying everyone here is a bad person & most great novels and films have bad people as adversaries. She is also not upset just because it deals with poverty. She is upset at how they do so. It isn't even that it's "relenting." The review goes past that.

This criticism seems to talk past the reviewer.

-j

Your points may be valid, yet, as you said I seemed to talk past the reviewer, it seemed as though the reviewer seemed to talk past the film--and it's the reviewer's job to NOT talk/write past the film.

The various ways you suggested she did this, however, did not really convince me. So, it's connected.

-j