Throughout the film the audience witnesses Precious facing daily violence encounters with her family. Precious lives in an extremely toxic environment, Precious’ mother Mary emotionally and physically abuses her constantly. Not only does Mary frequently hit her daughter, she verbally abuses her. She tells Precious that she's fat, stupid and that she's worthless. Poverty plays a significant part of Precious’ life. Due to Precious being a mother as well, Mary makes her living off of welfare. Some say that poverty and mistreatment of kids go hand in hand.
The only hope that Precious feels is when she escapes from reality into her fantasies. She fantasizes everything that she is not in real life, unfortunately those few small glimpse aren't enough to help emotionally sustain her. However, …show more content…
Family violence has many faces. It can be the kid who is sexually assaulted, the baby that was neglected etc. Violence is when an act is intended to physically harm someone. Abuse however, is a much more general term, it refers to an instance when a person takes advantage of a less powerful person. (Barnett, Miller-Perrin, & Perrin, 2005; Frankel-Howard, 1989). Director, Lee Daniels, was able to use the graphic scenes to emphasise the extent of the abuse that not only Precious, but thousands of other girls experience in their lifetime.
The family system theory suggests that family abuse is like a cycle. We learn from patterns of interactions within our families. These patterns have roles, that are expected patterns of behaviour for family members. These roles become so entrenched that they are hard to change. For example, in the film when Precious sees another young girl in the office being verbally abused by her mother, Precious can relate to her. Or how when Mary is explaining to the social worker that she was just raising Precious how she was
The only hope that Precious feels is when she escapes from reality into her fantasies. She fantasizes everything that she is not in real life, unfortunately those few small glimpse aren't enough to help emotionally sustain her. However, …show more content…
Family violence has many faces. It can be the kid who is sexually assaulted, the baby that was neglected etc. Violence is when an act is intended to physically harm someone. Abuse however, is a much more general term, it refers to an instance when a person takes advantage of a less powerful person. (Barnett, Miller-Perrin, & Perrin, 2005; Frankel-Howard, 1989). Director, Lee Daniels, was able to use the graphic scenes to emphasise the extent of the abuse that not only Precious, but thousands of other girls experience in their lifetime.
The family system theory suggests that family abuse is like a cycle. We learn from patterns of interactions within our families. These patterns have roles, that are expected patterns of behaviour for family members. These roles become so entrenched that they are hard to change. For example, in the film when Precious sees another young girl in the office being verbally abused by her mother, Precious can relate to her. Or how when Mary is explaining to the social worker that she was just raising Precious how she was