Pushing intoPrecious: Black Women, Media Representation, and the Glare of the White Supremacist Capitalist Patriarchal Gaze

Abstract

Intervening in popular discourse that hails Precious: Based on the Novel “Push” by Sapphire (Daniels & Fletcher, Citation2009) solely as “inspirational” (Lumenick, Citation2009), this essay illuminates how the film continues the tradition of glaring at the Black female body through the White gaze. To deconstruct representations of protagonist Claireece Precious Jones and the storyline, I draw upon Black feminist thought (Collins, Citation2009) as a Black feminist spectator (hooks, Citation1992) to expose how the dominant gaze shapes and shades our understandings of Black femininity. At the intersections of racism, sexism, and classism, this essay interrogates the film's: multiple fantasy scenes that allow Precious to “escape” her reality momentarily, appeals to light/Whiteness personified by the characters that come to her aid, and promulgation of “post-” (Squires et al., Citation2010, p. 210) ideology.

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