flickr image. by 68esc
Fat girls named Precious. I think it begins there for me.
In the 2nd grade, I was terrorized by a fat girl named Precious. She wore pink berets and ribbons in her hair. She was her mother’s first born. She was her mother’s only child. They lived across the street. My mom insisted that we play together because she was in want of new friends. Precious went to my elementary school.
Precious was a bully.
I didn’t know how to fight back yet.
I got transferred to a different school. Precious moved away. I don’t know what’s become of her. I’m not sure if I care. She was a bitch; a precocious, insufferable, spoiled bitch that had everything. I had government cheese.
So I may be the last black person on the planet that will go see Precious at the theaters.
I recognize the petty reasoning. Yet, I also understand my limitations even as a critical thinking, (supposedly cultured) educated black person. I also realize that I should support filmmakers of color, specifically black ones, in their endeavors to try to bring diverse voices of our collective human experience to the big screen.
But I’m also hypersensitive.
I haven’t read Push. I barely survived reading Night when I was 17. I remember vomiting after reading the part why they skipped Yom Kippur fast. I literally ran away from Kindred and Beloved; I had to anchor my body in a chair and read those books without screaming. I sort of still see Ralph Fiennes as an SS officer. I saw Requiem for a Dream once. Once. I don’t need to see that ever again. Marlon Wayans balled up in twisted agony at the end, Ellen Burstyn’s frenzied movements, Jared Leto’s missing limbs, Jennifer Connelly’s –well, you know if you saw it too — and that driven and agonizing soundtrack from the Kronos Quartet… (shrivers) I got it.
Is there a phobia of witnessing human suffering and feeling powerless to help? If so, may I submit that we need to add a clause to the definition of Algophobia, which is currently defined as:
An abnormal and persistent fear of pain. The fear is excessive, beyond that which is expected under the circumstances, producing an anxiety reaction.
-from MedicinenNet.com
That isn’t to say the story of Precious is invalid. I can’t. It strikes nerves because it’s a reality so ugly we’d rather tuck it away from sight. It angers and supports every negative image of African Americans that exists. These images live in the background in ourselves and in our daily interactions with ‘majority society’. Many more wiser critics than me have had their go at teasing out the validity of the film and it’s implications in our culture.
My hypersensitivity is something I struggle with daily. I have a special place in my heart for the heroine in Parable of the Sower because I know her challenges, which can account for the reason why I never finished reading the book. Just reading about her empathic abilities was too much for me.
I love Bjork, but I may never see Dancer in the Dark. I’ve only made it to page 42 of Philip Gourevitch’s We Wish to Inform You That We Will Be Killed With Our Families. I haven’t looked back. I’m still heartbroken, mad even, with the French family for giving up Shoshanna’s family in Inglorius Basterds.
These are some serious shortcomings, I know. I’m writing a longer work of fiction that has to look at a whole world of hurt more directly and it terrifies me. There’s a really horrible space you have to go to and dig through for truth. It’s not fun. I don’t deny that there’s a dark side to human nature. And sometimes we need to see the shadow to appreciate the light, or something to show us such extreme depravity to remind us how to be human.
Isn’t that the job of art? For this, I look back to Joseph Campbell in The Power of Myth:
There’s another emotion associated with art which is not of the beautiful but of the sublime. What we call monsters can be experienced as sublime. They represent powers too vast for the normal forms of life to contain them. <snip> By a monster I mean some horrendous presence or apparition that explodes all your concepts of harmony, order or ethical conduct.
I suppose that’s why I’m rereading Sontag’s long essay, Regarding the Pain of Others and the unfortunate follow up, Regarding the Torture of Others, because circumstances necessitated it. There’s a considerable amount of depravity in every epoch. Some terrible beasts we all have to slay in real life and in our imagination.
