Why I Don't Need To See Precious

As a black man, there are few movies that are available to me that display the black experience. The ones that are often available unfortunately seem to focus on the negative of what it means to be black. Precious, for all of it's uplifting messages, is still not a picture I wish to see.

The answer as to why is very simple. I've seen this film before.

I grew up in the 1980's and the 1990's. During the latter period filmmakers like John Singleton, The Hughes Brothers and Nick Gomez all decided to explore the often short-lived poverty stricken lives of black people living in impoverished neighborhoods.  Although movies about the hood weren't necessarily a new thing, these filmmakers were able to make money (in good ways, and in bad ways) out of these tragic stories.

Singleton with Boyz N The Hood didn't have the excess violence or endless scenes pandering to the criminal-minded individuals of those neighborhoods. Instead, he created a balance; he gave you the violence, but also a combination of solid characters who practiced the violent acts in their hood and characters who wanted to survive another day for a better future. Cinema often in dealing with this subject, seems unable and unwilling to provide such a balance.

If anything the argument films after Singleton's Boyz N The Hood make is that the hood is better for black people of a much more practical context. These black folks from Hollywood's financial point of view do not believe in futures or seeing things beyond their chaotic lives. These black people, marginalized to a stereotype to gain easy dollars are simply living for the moment or trying to desperately escape a terrible situation. Black characters that recognize their mortality, that actually grow up, that have more to think about than death, survival and the immediate thrill, are not wanted, nor do they make for good box office numbers.

I grew up with a combination of black folks who lived outside the hood and in the hood. In the many years I've come to understand these two worlds, I find myself more and more unsure of what world I belong in. Is it unrealistic for me to have grown up with black parents who thought beyond the negative ideals black people are often associated with? Is it unrealistic for me as a black man to see something that is traditionally wrong, such as mistreating black women, as just that?

Should I, in the name of what is real, rather than gravitate to people like Michelle Obama and Barack Obama, celebrate the likes of Notorious B.I.G. and Tupac?

No.

I know how to read. I try to see a glass half-empty and a glass that is full. I also know that being black doesn't automatically require a lifetime of hood psychology.  I try to see beyond me. That often, in films about the hood and with people who come from the hood, seems to come across as being something to hate.

In the way that Hollywood, and the generation that has been the exploited inspiration of these modern-day "violence-on-demand" films of the project life views me, I am not black.

Screw Hollywood and the short-minded of the black community who think I deserve to be an outcast. I refuse to think that over the many years we have existed as a people that we are simply born to die an early death or live a lifetime of misery. I refuse to believe that trusting your neighbor, believing in something better, and becoming something more than yourself is against what it means to be black.

Precious, however good a film it may be, is not a film I wish to see. I've seen it before. I know the general idea: The hood is a terrible place that destroys whatever life a black person wishes to have.

What's next?

What is there after the hood?

The salon?

The prison system?

What other places are out there that black people, in cinema terms, have yet to cross?

We collectively probably would come up with different answers as everyone in black culture is different. One thing is for sure; not everyone is looking to the hood for the experience of what it means to be black. The sooner we make films that showcase the black experience as the human experience, which in turn would mean we could go anywhere, the sooner more of us get put in different kinds of films.

Life as a black man is more than facing a bullet.