Research

Media Representations:
A Black teenage female named Precious, she is represented as a stereotypical black female teenager, due to the fact that she is pregnant and has been the rebel girl in school. She is pregnant with her second child and struggles to keep up with both home and school life. I think the representation is showing how people stereotypically see people like Precious, however after watching the movie fully, we are shown how hard her life is and that she never had a control over how her life would turn out to be. The representation is neither fair nor accurate because it is solely based upon one person’s life. Towards the end of the movie, Precious get’s a chance to change her life, as soon as she decides to take care of her own children and actually devote herself not only to her children but also her education.

Media Languages and Forms:
Throughout the movie there is great use of both denotative and connotative meanings. Connotations are used through the representation of Precious. The use of connotations is very important, because if shows how the audience change their opinion on precious from the beginning of the movie to the end of the movie. The mise en scene helps us as viewers understand Precious’s story better, as we see how she lives we can see how hard it is for her at home. There are many shots of the streets to show the rough areas where she lives and contribute to her stereotype. There is a constant use of juxtaposition used throughout the movie, where we see shots of Precious in a glamorous set singing and signing, which shows the viewers just how different her life is from her dream.
Repetitive shots of the boiling pan of food, to reinforce the idea of how repetitive her life is (Going school, coming back home, making food and so on) and also to prominently contrast the difference between her reality and her dreams.

Iconographies consist of:
Big hoop earrings
Flat’s
Rough streets
Dialect of the actors and actresses

Narrative:
The viewers follow the story of Precious from scratch and are told about her story through her own voiceover, which allows the viewers to feel how she makes them to. As the movie has shots of real sets, and the costumes are not as glamorous, ‘real people’ can gain personal identification, as they to may be living in a state like her, or have an abusive household. I think Ideologies such as ’never judge a book by its cover’ are conveyed from the movie.

Genre:
Can be placed under the Teenage drama genre. The text does conform to the genre as it has little to no humour in it at all, and is based upon a forever contemporary issue of teenage pregnancy.

Values and ideologies:
‘Life is hard. Life is short. Life is painful. Life is rich. Life is....Precious.’