From the Notebook

Precious

blogqz01 | 18 January, 2010 18:52

You probably know that this is a title for a movie that is still in theater now. If you have seen the movie, you will notice the irony of this title. But for what the movie presented to us, and what it leads to, the title is a good fit for this movie.

For most people, this movie led us to a world we are not familiar with and wish that it does not exist. But obviously it does exist, and facing it will bring new light on the world that we think we know about.

To be honest, I found the first part of the movie especially fascinating. Yes, it is very brutal, it is so intense, and sometimes it is so overwhelming that it is difficult to breath. It is because that it felt so real. The cinematic technique that is used made we felt like active participants, breathing the same air, at the same atmosphere. For at least a few moments, we felt like it is our world.

We often talk about the world. But the world for each of us is different, and most people do not seem to realize this simple fact. In fact, most of the social activities are based on the assumption that we all live in the same world.

But the world we face as individuals are different. By presenting an extreme case, it makes us consciously aware of this simple fact. By bring this extremely dysfunctional family to our attention, I think it found the core of the true that related to this matter.

The purpose of formal education is to deliver the established human knowledge system to be accepted by the individuals, the effect is to build common consensus. But interactions with the world and negotiations with environment started at home, when one was born, and it will shape the person fundamentally as who he or she is.

Although it is not impossible for people to change certain aspects of their personality, it is very difficult to reshape a person entirely. So, the impacts of the parents on a child’s life are profound.

The general consensus is that parents would see their children as natural extension of themselves, so that they will treat their children as themselves, or even more. But what people should do does not mean that is what they would do. For whatever reason, for example, the environment that they grow up in shaped their world view may be far different from the common consensus, so our assumption can be invalid in some cases. When dealing with social issues, general assumptions often become obstacles in understanding the reality of different worlds that individuals reside in.

One had to believe that what happened to Clareece “Precious” Jones is extremely rare. But it is conceivable that it could happen, and we occasionally do hear stories like this in real life. Most importantly, from contemplating the extreme cases, we often could start to rethink our understanding of the world from fundamental level.

By assuming that all parents are treating their children as the extension of themselves, we ignored the possibility that this recognition may not be nature and complete. The fact that children shared DNA with their parents does not necessary mitigate the fact that they are after all individuals separated and could be independent of their parents. Often, depending on the mind sets of the parents, they could be viewed as adverse to the interests of the parents.

One of the common misconceptions regarding family relationship including spousal or blood relationship is that love is often provided as default assumption. Although in many cases love is deeply embedded in the daily interaction and not so obvious, there are many cases it is simply absent.

Although it could be rare, in some cases (such as what we have seen in this movie, especially in the case of the father), parents are treating their children as a complete stranger, and taking full advantage of their full access and control over the children, and explore the vulnerability of the children without any restrain.

In many cases, however, parents knowingly or without conscious awareness taking the advantage of the situations to a certain degree. It might not be obvious, in some cases, both the children and parents could not even be aware of the problems. These hidden harms done by the parents could be very damaging, because the existences of them are not detected, thus not dealt with.

Although it can hardly to be seen as a blessing, “Precious” can point out the obvious monstrous behaviors of her parents as to the cause of most of her problems, taking a clear break from it, and start with a clean sleeve (so to speak, because she probably have to deal with the damage to her health for the rest of her life). But for many people, many physiological damages caused by their parents are hidden and intertwined with their personality, thus it might be harder to break free from.

The sad thing about this cycle is that most of the time, the problem originated from the psychological problems of the parents, that they are unintentionally harming the well being of their children unknowingly.

There are many modern literatures that revealed this type of problems. In fact, this theme seems to be the focus of many modern literatures. However, psychology and modern social science field failed to provide ways to lead us to basis understanding and solutions about this problem.

In addition, formal education is mostly focusing on introducing the established human knowledge system to the individuals, little attentions are paid to the actual development of the mind. Lack of understanding on the human minds and lack of effort to address the problems in the development of human minds leaves everyone to themselves to struggle, to sink or flow, only a lucky few can find some wise parents or close ones to provide them with some help.

But it is important for society (not just for the sake of individuals) that we should get better understanding of the problems and find solutions. In this film, the father of the young girl is the cause of many of her problems. Although the film did not provide us with his side of the story, as it did with her mother, I think in the end it is safe to say, it is of the same kind. This is also the cause of the many problems in the society. People usually do not do something bad to others out of hate (except in the case of revenge, in which case the start of the chain ought to be something other than hate. People do things that end up hurting or harming others because of their own interests. In the case that people carry things to the extreme that they recklessly harm others without any consideration is often because that they often justify their behavior as a victim (as the mother of “Precious” did in the movie).

Obviously not every one that had been harmed by others will turn out to harm others in a recklessly way, only those that are extremely selfish would do so. Selfishness does not seem to be characteristics that are fully determined by the environment, but the psychological and emotional damages in a person’s early years (often are caused by parents directly or due to lack of protections or guidance from the parents) to a selfish person can make one easily felt to be a victim and becomes extremely selfish and reckless. Thus breaking the chain of harms should be a goal of the society.

Although each individual case may be different, and there are many factors that could be part of the equation in the problems, we can start with a simple approach. Most so called “social science” studies had put too much emphasis on using “scientific method” and building “scientific model” (please see my post “Some Thoughts about Arts and Science” for related information). People seem to forget that essentially scientific method starts with assumptions (although ends with verification of the assumptions), thus non-linear creative thinking is the start of all scientific process.

In confronting the current problems related to the relationship of the parents and children, the first consideration could be as simple as what types of behaviors of the parents are most harmful to the children psychologically, and the second consideration could be simply what are the causes of the those behaviors, so that we will know how to fix it.

I heard people commenting that you need to take a test to drive a car, but any one can be a parent. In the case of “Precious”, her mother is getting paid from the government for her and her daughter. I do think there is something wrong with this. Although the solution for “Precious” is obvious, in most cases the solution is to fix the problem. But in order to educate people on how to be parents, there ought to be basic understanding and consensus on what to do and what not to do. I do not believe we are there yet.

The story of “Precious” is also related to the question of influence of environment and individuals’ responsibility. The movie did a very good job for putting us in her shoes. As we are experiencing what she had to deal with day and night, we start to realize her crushing reality. When people are talking about individuals’ responsibility, we all seem to assume the basic assumption that there are reasons to do so. The disaster in Haiti put many people’s devastation into our minds. But we ought to remember, there are many devastations happening every day in this world. Before we talk about responsibility, we ought to provide an environment that meets the basic assumption of what it means to be human, that there is certain level of human dignity that the society will protect, otherwise we are asking for too much.

Some might think the subject matter of this film is too brutal and depressing. But I think this film is incredibly optimistic. If a young girl like Clareece “Precious” Jones can overcome all the brutalities, desperations, misfortunes and obstacles, then literally there is nothing a human being cannot do.