Discuss how Mary, Precious’s mother, is portrayed in the following scene:
What is your reaction to this scene? How does this portrayal compare to the depiction of welfare motherhood in Claudine?
Week 10 Day 2 Discussion Question 1
April 18, 2016 | 5 Comments
March 20, 2019 at 2:00 pm
In this scene, Mary is the embodied stereotype of the welfare queen. However, in the greater context of the book/movie, it is up to the viewer’s interpretation about whether the story as a whole faults the system or undeserving people. Mary is an unlikable character who is abusing the system. However, she is by no means living in the lap of luxury. She lives a miserable life as she has no friends, cannot take care of herself, and has a husband who sexually abuses her daughter. Precious, on the other hand, is genuinely curious, a hard worker, and a natural parent to Abdul. The system has clearly failed her as she never learned to read until she attended an alternative school. In the alternative school she finds solidarity with others whom the system has also failed. Precious is a testament to the strength of black women who can still succeed despite enduring inhumane abuse and oppression.
Claudine is a character who is directly critical of the welfare system and outlines a clear argument about the problems it creates. Women like Claudine have to live a flawless lifestyle in order to elicit any pity. She has to prove that she works harder than anyone who does not receive welfare.
March 20, 2019 at 12:18 pm
The scene depicted above shows multiple examples of the welfare mother stereotype and further characterizes Mary as an abusive and lazy women of color. The scene was somewhat agitating as it displayed all the aspects I believe to be synonymous with what the media depicts of a stereotypical person on welfare. When the social worker enters the house, Mary consistently lies about all her responsibilities. She ensures the social worker that she has been trying to find employment but has been constantly rejected. She then proceeds to deceive the social worker about the health of the child in an attempt to conceal her abusive and lazy approach to taking care of the child. However, aside from these two lies, the stereotype that frustrated me was that of a lazy women of color that attempts to build a facade in order to cheat the government. Already in modern media there is a presentation of people on welfare, specifically people of color on welfare, being lazy and attempting to play the system for their benefit. Furthermore, the notion that people in this scenario always attempt to hide their insecurities and problems is an issue as it presents the argument that people try to evade their own problems and put up a front of them being hardworking and caring. Even more so, this scene eludes to the idea that laziness is to blame for the circumstance of being on welfare. By depicting Mary as abusive, lazy, and unfit, the scene helps to build on the idea that being on welfare is a choice and Mary chooses to continue to try to benefit from it. The problem I have with the scene isn’t necessarily with Mary. Mary seems to be able bodied and fit to work, but she doesn’t want to. However, the portrayal is consistent with many stereotypes and portrayals of poor colored women. There is a general stigma around the idea of welfare, specifically colored people on welfare, but this stigma seems to be much more racial than class based. In the United States, from my experience, white people on welfare gain much more sympathy than colored people on welfare. The colored people often times get told they are lazy and unmotivated when in fact a number of circumstances could be to blame for their situation. This portrayal directly shows this bias as it is consistent with most portrayals of people in this situation in the media.
March 20, 2019 at 11:37 am
In watching this clip the portrayal of Mary aligns with many “welfare queen” stereotypes. Her laziness is emphasized visually by her weight, and also by the fact that she is not actively finding a job. She is also an aggressive parent which is seen by the way in which she treats the child when the social worker is not around. Mary has a general dictator-like hold on the house.
Her general portrayal adheres to the idea that welfare benefactors are responsible for their situation. Mary is able-bodied, intelligent enough to commit fraud, and seems to have a leadership personality. That is to say that she is capable of finding a job but is not actively pursuing employment. For me, this became most clear when the social worker addressed the new microwave in the kitchen. Which made Mary seemed like a thief, as she is capitalizing on free money without putting in an effort to find a job. She enjoys the income but does not want to work for it. This is furthered by Mary`s presence on the couch, while the other woman is working in the kitchen. It highlights that even in her subsidized housing filled with materialistic objects probably purchased with her welfare checks, she still leaves the work to another person. This depiction shows that it is not Mary`s circumstance that is responsible for her being on welfare. It is her low-motivation, and little desire to earn income from employment.
March 20, 2019 at 10:46 am
This scene from Precious portrays many aspects of the “welfare queen” stereotype. Foremost is the physical portrayal of the characters, Precious, her mother Mary and grandmother. Precious and her mother are both significantly overweight, which connotes laziness and an unhealthy lifestyle. In contrast, the social worker, an employed individual, appears to be average weight and fit in comparison. The stark contrast between the employed social worker and Precious’s family evokes the fit to live fit to work mentality and how a health is an indication of someone’s worth in contemporary society. Additionally, Precious’s mother, Mary, treats the child poorly away from the authority of the social worker, lies about employment and recent medical appointments for the child. The confluence of the characters’ physical appearance, treatment of the child, and lack of employment shapes a picture of the “underserving poor”, to use one of the frameworks presented by Kendall. Henderson and Tickamyer state, “In the United States, poverty is commonly given a Black and disreputable face and then alternately ignored and demonized, part of a legacy of institutionalized racism-”, which is an accurate statement as it relates to the racial portrayal of the welfare queen in Precious. The portrayal of poverty is overwhelmingly racialized in popular media. Although all of the women shown in this scene are black, there are clear indicators of their differences. One particular detail I noticed was the straight hair of the social worker in comparison to the wig adorned by Precious’s mother. Also, the contrast in clothing between the two women furthers the divide between their identity, regardless of them being the same race. The depiction of motherhood in Precious is vastly different than Claudine. Claudine depicts a mother who is a “deserving poor”, who works incredibly hard as a maid in the suburbs pursuing the “American Dream” to provide for her children. Additionally, as Sydney mentions, Claudine evokes a sense of sympathy from the viewer because she is loving with her children and working hard to change her current situation. It is clear she is not exploiting the welfare system, unlike Mary. Overall, these are two very different depictions of the racialized narrative of the welfare mother. The viewers opinion of the characters if further molded by their performance of welfare queen stereotypes perpetuated in the media.
March 17, 2019 at 4:05 pm
As we have spoken about in class, you can see many elements of the “Welfare Mother” stereotype in Mary. In this clip you can clearly see the laziness aspect of the welfare mother, where the social worker asked her if she is looking for a job and although she answers yes you can tell she made it up and is not looking for a job, as well as making Precious do all of the work for her. You can also see the stereotype of being a bad parent, when she first yells at Precious to get her wig and lipstick, as well as yelling at and pushing her granddaughter and being very impatient with her the entire time except for when the social worker was around. It is clear she is committing fraud by lying to the social worker in order to stay on welfare, as well as treating Precious and her granddaughter poorly, which reinforces all of the components of the “Welfare Queen” stereotype.
Unlike Mary in this clip, while watching Claudine I feel empathy for a hard working woman who is in love and needs to stay on welfare in order to feed her many children. Claudine in contrast to Mary is loving, hardworking, and defies the stereotype of a mother on welfare who does not deserve it. I think it is important to see both sides, but also important to see that both of these women were trapped in economic hardship and did what they needed to do in order to feed and take care of their children. I think efforts in portraying both sides of the “Welfare Queen” are important, more so in order to break the stigma that not all mothers on welfare are undeserving. It is also important to point out that in both Precious and Claudine, they are both African American women which shows that African American women overrepresented when talking about welfare. This overrepresentation reinforces these stereotypes of an unfit, abusive, and lazy mother who is unwilling to work and is deceiving in order to stay on welfare, as well as racializing the term “Welfare Queen.”