Dear God, Please Don’t Let Mo’Nique Win an Oscar
by L. Arthalia Cravin
The last first-run movie I saw was “What’s Love Got to Do With It.” I saw it in 1993 in Los Angeles at a theater on Hollywood Blvd. Angela Bassett didn’t win an Oscar but she should have for playing the multi-faceted and complicated role of Tina Turner. I chose not to watch the movie “Precious” although I read lots of reviews. One review said that Precious included every stereotype about black folks imaginable including, eating greasy fried chicken, incest, absent fathers, out of wedlock births, extremely vulgar head-rag wearing black women, abusive mothers competing with daughters over the same man, rampant community illiteracy, lazy trifling black men, obesity, cursing and verbal abuse, bullying, child abuse, lack of proper mothering of children, just to name a few. One review said that “Precious” made D. W. Griffith’s “The Birth of a Nation” look like a good movie about black folks. On the other hand there are those who claim that “Precious” brought the issue of familial sexual molestation out into the open to help free so many who were living in shame or dark closets about this type of abuse. Many others say that it is the Oprah, Tyler Perry production money that has pushed an otherwise bad movie up the ladder to at least five Oscar nominations.
Whatever anyone thinks of Precious as racist stereotyping or as “art imitating life,” it is up for Oscars for Best Picture, Best Actress (Gabourey Sidibe); Best Supporting Actress (Mo’Nique), Best Director (Lee Daniels); Best Film Editing (Joe Klotz), and Best Writing-Adaptation of a Book to a Screenplay ( Geoffrey Fletcher). I just don’t want Mo’Nique to win best supporting actress because she is one out of control, don’t know what to say, or how to say it with style and grace, open-mouth-insert foot actress. And I am being kind.
