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.
According to her biography, Monique was born to middle class parents, one a drug counselor the other an engineer in Woodlawn, Maryland. She graduated from Morgan State University then worked as phone sex operator, monitoring phone calls. From there she “rose” to stand up comedy, and vulgar stand-up comedy routines at that, to various acting roles. She has a large “body of work” behind her. I remember her from “The Parkers” television show in which she did and said every foul-mouthed, sexually suggestive, over the top thing trying to get “The Professor” to marry her. At the risk of offending folks who think black folks should be proud just because “we are there” in the form of the many nominations that Precious has gotten, I say The Oscars should run from Mo’Nique the same way that “The Professor” did in “The Parkers,” and the same way the Oscars shunned “What’s Love Got to Do With It,” which got 13 Oscar nominations, but before the night was over, the entire cast had completely slinked down into their cushy seats when it won exactly zero.
I saw Mo’Nique the other day on some Hollywood insider show and Mo”Nique and her husband were talking about their “open marriage.” How these two recently married folks (four years) treat whatever their marriage vows were is between them, but I was highly offended by Mo’Nique’s unchecked vulgarity. In fact her husband is worse that she is. Someone asked him to name one thing that he like about Mo’Nique and he said something to the effect that she was as wild and uninhibited in bed as she was with her movie roles, or some such vulgar description. Of course Mo’Nique went on and on with references to her husband that purely implied “don’t come a knocking when the trailer is rocking.” Whatever, Mo’Nique needs to “act like a lady” more often and not like a Hollywood tramp. And so God forbids if she wins an Oscar. One can only imagine what she and hubby will do onstage should she win. Whatever, it will probably be XXXX rated. So, Dear God, please don’t let Mo’Nique win an Oscar.
Copyright 2010 - L. Arthalia Cravin. All rights Reserved. No part of this commentary may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the author.
