Precious, a movie based on the book Push written by Sapphire, is an interesting movie directed by Lee Daniels. Precious can be easily analyzed using basic motivation and emotion theories in psychology. The movie is about Claireece "Precious" Jones and how she becomes a strong, independent woman after breaking through her curse of physical and sexual abuse which she has endured since she was three months old. At the beginning, Precious is physically and verbally abused by her mother. In addition, Precious was raped by her father multiple times and impregnated twice. After being kicked out of her school because she was pregnant, Precious willingly joins the Each One Teach One alternative school so she can improve her reading and writing skills while, eventually, taking care of her two children. After some guidance from her teacher, Ms. Blu Rain, Precious starts feeling safe and starts to love herself and others around her. A lot of the behaviors in the movie can be easily explained by biological needs, psycho-social needs, and Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
There are many biological needs a person has. These are usually things that drive species to do things in order to survive. Especially, since Precious is pregnant, she must have food, water, oxygen, sleep, and avoidance of pain. At one point in the movie, when Precious’ mother would not give her money to buy food, Precious goes into a restaurant, orders some chicken wings, and runs out without paying. Precious was very hunger and her biological need to have food and water drove her to do this. Precious was always psychically abused by her mother, Mary. However, after giving birth to her second child, she started to defend herself against her mother to avoid pain. These are just s...
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.... Precious was finally proud of herself for doing well in school. In addition, her friends, her teacher, and her social worker were recognizing her efforts–these were some of her external esteem needs. Finally, at the very end of the movie, it is arguable that that she was self-actualized, even though this stage is never able to be satisfied because as one grows psychologically there are always new opportunities to continue to grow. However, for the time being, she was happy and free from her mother.
Precious is really an inspirational movie. It makes the viewer sympathize and empathize with Precious, the main character. Even though Precious’ story is not common, she is still like every other human being, in regards to her psychology. In my opinion, Precious was a great movie to analysis and connect to psychology, especially, emotional and motivational psychology.
“Excelsior! I’m gonna take all this negativity and use it as fuel and I’m gonna find a silver lining. That’s what I’m gonna do” (Russell, 2013). A silver lining is defined as having optimism or a positive outlook on a situation that might seem gloomy on the outside. Silver Linings Playbook is centered around Pat Solitono Jr, a middle-aged man who just spent eight months in a psychiatric hospital for beating the man whom his wife had an affair with. Pat leaves the hospital determined to accomplish his unrealistic goal of winning his wife back. His motto is “Excelsior” (Russell, 2013) and he uses this to fuel his actions. He believes every negative action can result in a positive action. He also believes he can rise up and be superior over his actions and others to win his wife back. Pat has Bipolar I disorder with manic episodes that can be seen played out in the movie. He himself states, “undiagnosed bipolar with mood swings and weird thinking brought on by stress” (Russell, 2013).
Precious and her family members are invisible to the larger world because they don’t posses any skill that enables them to make even the slightest difference in the world. The tests that Precious take show her lack of intelligence and only amplify her inferiority to the people around her. When you’re invisible, nobody treats you with respect; in the beginning of the book, everyone treats Precious like worthless trash. Though, later, she becomes visible again through the people she meets at the alternative school, and the birth of her second baby, Abdul.
She was seduced at an early age and then fell in love with a preacher, but was overcome by an exciting younger man. She experienced every form of lust and desire as well as loss. Somehow though all the hardship she was able to come out on the other side a more complete woman and ironically did so without any of these
Precious was subject to injustice acts by her very own mother, Mary Lee Johnston, and father, Carl Kenwood Jones who is never seen in the film. She does not know how to live any other way that is not being subject to the cruelty committed by Johnston’s hatred towards her. This is seen in almost every scene that includes she abuses Precious by hurting her with any inanimate object in her way: vases, pans, bottles, etc. She devalues her every opportunity she has in order to keep her own daughter from succeeding since that is exactly how she sees Precious, unsuccessful and worthless.
The movie Precious is a movie about a sixteen year old girl nicknamed Precious. The movie shows her difficult life as she lives with her mother. Precious is a teen mother expecting her second child, who is also her father’s child due to him raping her. She is verbally and physically abused constantly by her mother and lives in a very unhealthy environment overall. She takes care of herself and her mother and is told what to do everyday. In the movie she begins to turn her life around when a teacher has faith in her and she begins to get an education, and learns she is not what her mother thinks she is.
The 2009 film “Precious”, based on the novel “Push” by Sapphire, tells the tragic story of sixteen-year-old Claireece Precious Jones; an overweight, illiterate who is now pregnant with her second child. Her life at home is a complete nightmare; her mother, Mary, verbally, emotionally and physically abuses her daily. Her father, Carl, molested her on multiple occasions and impregnated her twice then disappeared. Precious was kicked out of public school and took an offer to attend an alternative school where she meets her inspirational teacher Miss Blu Rain. Precious begins to believe in herself and prepares herself for her future. She becomes engaged in class and learns how to read and write; she was called stupid and dummy all her life and
In the movie “ Precious “ by Lee Daniels, Gabourey Sidibe plays a sixteen years old, illiterate and overweight girl name Precious, who lives in Harlem, New York. She lives with her mother Mary Jones, who was entropic and abusive to her. The abuse and oppression was so traumatic for Precious, she would often dissociate herself from the situation and pretend to be someone else. Losing track of time, her situation and herself was her coping mechanism; throughout the movie it appeared that she would have these dreaming episodes where she would be another person in a much better situation. Precious become pregnant twice from her biological father, who had abandoned the family and infected both she and her mother with the HIV virus. She suffered long-term physical, emotional, sexual, and verbal abuse from her from her parents; symptoms from her personal oppression were depressive and withdrawn attitude. Often she was very quiet and appeared unengaged and inattentive in class.
The first concept from the book that I immediately thought of after watching this movie was chapter 4, Behavior and Attitudes. The movie, as a whole, is all about behavior and attitude. Our main character, Rylie, is seen as a “happy girl” by her parents. But when Joy is shut out
First and foremost, Pearl is a poor victim of circumstance. It’s not Pearls fault that her she was created under one of her mother’s bad choices. It is obvious that
...amily she finds the true meaning of being brave and saves her family (“Brave”). I like this kind of movie instead of a man being the brave and independent one now the woman is. These are the kind of fairy tales that need to be told so that women do not feel the need to be weak and dependent on other people. If fairy tales slowly become more realistic then I think they are a good thing but teaching women to not be strong or if their not a size 0 and gorgeous, well that in my eyes is not okay.
This film challenged my previous thoughts of bipolar disorder and took me into personal accounts of people suffering from this horrible disorder. I learned that individuals that are diagnosed with bipolar disorder are not the same and have different experiences of how the disease affected their life. I was honestly shocked at the fact that a disease in the brain can make you go into a manic state of mind and then fall into a deep depression. One of the most eye opening parts in the film was when Cheri was going to a client’s house and had to look into the mirror before she went in and told herself to put on her game face and transform into a chipper, perky version of herself because she was feeling down. This made me realize that people around you can be suffering from depression or other mental diseases around you and you can be completely unaware because the symptoms can be
Precious is a 16-year-old African American who is morbidly obese. She suffered sexual abuse from her father, and physical and emotional abuse from her mother. As a result of the sexual abuse she incurred from her father, she contracted human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). She has two children, a daughter and son, both conceived from her father. Likely a result of incest, her daughter has Down
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