Want to argue about race? Start with "Precious."
Is the sincere yet ultimately bathetic movie that is "Precious" really going to become the new flashpoint for talking about Race in America? We were totally due for a paradigm shift -- Spike Lee's had his 20 years -- but... this? It's not just all the arguments about whether or not "Precious" pathologizes and stereotypes black culture. "Precious" can actually be a starting point for any dialectic you want to set up. For example, look at the way that the New York Times' A.O. Scott bounces, of all things, "The Blind Side" off it ("imagine these movies in dialogue with each other, taking part in a conversation on race that the American public is always supposedly eager to have, but never right now") and concludes the two movies are basically the same, because they rescue one victim of an underlying societal problem without thinking of how to solve the bigger...
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