I was interested in this movie, which looked like it would take a girl with a painful, self-denigrating life to a better place, and I think such a story is worth telling.

But are we really to believe not only has her dad been raping her since childhood, but her mother is jealous of her for it, forcing her to live as the house slave? Wouldn't she likely have been driven out of the home by one of the two of them? Or replaced in her dad's bad by a younger sister when she matured? Isn't this way, way too far into a grisly update of the Cinderella backstory? And that's not taking the impaired children she gives birth to and her illiteracy into account.

Oprah's one of the producers. She is yet again producer of a project in which women are serially abused and displayed in all their naked, humilated pain. I'm not remotely surprised. Is it because of her childhood, or because she came to fame in The Color Purple? It probably doesn't do any good to say this about a woman who has been so monumentally successful in her choices, but I think long ago Oprah learned all the wrong lessons.

I may not see this movie, but I hope its release will prompt conversations about unwanted pregnancies, and the "casual cruelty" (as in "sit down" spoken in harsh tones)directed at children who are not wanted, as well as the quiet but devastating inattention to the important details of children's lives.

And by "unwanted pregnancies" I do not mean to conjure up the old conversations about birth control, abstinence etc., etc. I am talking about the cultural/social space for adults and near-adults to say simply and forthrightly: I don't want this baby. Somehow there has to be spoken recognition that some people's lives are so damaged that they should not, must not, have children, no matter the possibility of a good ending to it all.

And perhaps the film's release will make many of us actually begin to see the Preciouses, and (as famiy members) start to have the courage to speak up and say: Don't you talk to that child that way, or (to Precious), you can spend the weekend with me.

@you got to be kidding me: I started not to respond to your absurd posting ("I was interested in this film?" I'm so sure). To make this film about Oprah reveals you to be an angry/cynical/non-literate (as in probably not having read Alice Walker or Sapphire or Zora Neal Huston or Dorothy West or any other authors Oprah has brought to the screen) person...

So sad.

BTW: I read Push when it was first published, and was left with an overwhelming sense of brutatlity. So overwhelming, in fact, that I could not conjure up the details upon hearing tha that a movie had been made...

It is good to hear that the film may not have the same effect as the book, and Precious (the actual child/person) does not disappear into the usual pathology-of-black-community/family/women/men sociology...

Unfortunately, attitudes like yours are what keep children in the cycle of abuse.

In Philadelphia, we just lost a 10-yr old girl name Charleeni to what police call the worst case of abuse they've ever seen. This child walked and attended school for years with fractures and broken ribs. A gash in her skull hidden by a weave. 2 school nurses alerted authorities over and over and over again and the case was investigated. However, because no one at DHS could really believe that the clear injuries this little girl was sustaining were caused by an adult (no x-rays, medical care, MRI's though?!) this little girl died as a result of iunfection from broken bones left ubntreated.

Charleeni's autopsy reveals a pattern of many broken bones and sexual abuse as well. Her father just hanged himself in prison. her stepmother, the PRIMARY abuser, remains in jail.

I can understand recoiling from stories of horrific abuse but let's not pretend that it doesn't happen. It does and far too often.

How do you reconcile the two viewpoints that the case you site was both the worst case you've ever seen and that the case is typical?

I don't for a minute deny that children are sexually abused. Sometimes they probably do carry children as a result (but one of the reasons many abortion clinics don't want laws forbidding underage girls from going to them is that these places often see girls who are pregnant with their own father's child).

I do doubt a regularly raped girl being hated as a rival-in-love by her mother. And the enourmous pile of different abuses piled on her.

There is also a pretty clear difference between the possiblity of something happening, and the idea that that situation is a regularly occuring phenomenon. There is finally the fact that Oprah has already exposed us to lurid sexual abuse in the past, and that she is doing so again says more about her preoccupations than the statistical realities.

I do doubt a regularly raped girl being hated as a rival-in-love by her mother.

Believe me, I've heard about family relationships way more f'ed up than that. A friend of a friend was molested for years by her father. When her sister finally found out, instead of consoling the victim she became jealous, essentially whining to her sister that, "dad always liked you best."

If you have one parent who's sexually abusive and another who's just abusive, that can be a really toxic combination.

I eagerly await the Terry Gross interview of the 'real' Precious.

is this based on a true story?

i saw the commercial for this movie and even the commercial made me sick. this poor girl!

and christopher - you may not want to believe it, but it is true that in some cases the mother is jealous of the daughter who is being molested by the dad. but keep in mind, the woman/wife was probably abused as a child as well and is probably being abused by the husband. its a sad vicious cycle of violence.

my boss' sister was molested by her stepfather and had his 2 children. my boss was molested as well. their mother saw them as rivals. but their mother was pretty twisted herself and an alcoholic.

its a sick sick world.