Dialectical Mediation: The Play of Fantasy and Reality in Precious

This essay develops a feminist dialectical reading practice that acknowledges the essential ambivalence of Lee Daniels's 2009 film, Precious: Based on the Novel "Push" by Sapphire, the complexities of female experience, and the power of socially marginalized girls. By analyzing the roles of fantasy and reality in specific scenes, especially the film's opening and closing sequences and Precious's first visit to the Each One Teach One classroom, this essay demonstrates that, while scholars and critics have debated the film's conservative or progressive social functions, Precious cannot be categorized as essentially positive or negative in its approach to race, class, gender, and sexuality. Rather, it dialectically pairs forces aligned with sexist, racist, classist, and heteronormative systems of meaning with forces of resistance, thus rendering such either/or propositions and their attendant binary oppositions incomplete and somewhat beside the point.