Classroom Savagery

Mr. Wicher and Precious have a bizarre relationship. Though both characters share little screen time together, the few pages where they do interact with one another explore a unique dynamic, with malleable Precious fulfilling the noble savage stereotype to Mr. Wicher's cultured European.

For a child like Precious, who wants little more than to "change my seat to the front of the class," one would assume she'd be something of a teacher's pet, trying her best to please Mr. Wicher by whatever means necessary. Of course, assumptions don't even work for the status quo, which is definitely something Precious doesn't belong to. What the audience sees instead is a combination between classroom enforcer, willing but unable learner, brown-noser, and adversarial disruption. She creates a classroom persona around her intensely mercurial emotions. How many students could one second claim to confront the teacher angrily - "his face is red, he is shaking" - to genuinely exclaiming "shut up mutherfuckers I'm trying to learn something" to her classmates moments afterwards? It seems like most of the moments in Precious' math class are equally full of these dualities. "Mr. Wicher look at me confuse but grateful," says Precious, proudly, after "keeping those rowdy niggers in line" during math class. It's behavior more fitting for a warzone than a math classroom. Furthermore, Precious elaborates her defined role within Mr. Wicher's classroom to the audience by saying she's "like the polices for Mr. Wicher, I keep law and order," and of course, here is where the reality lines start to blur together. "I like him, I pretend he is my husband and we live somewhere in Wesschesser, wherever that is," muses Precious. Although Mr. Wicher "don't come to school looking like some of those nasty ass teachers," it is probably incredibly odd to the audience to imagine a teenage girl attaching herself to a math teacher who isn't particularly attractive-looking instead of someone like, say, (generic choices ahead) Brad Pitt or Orlando Bloom or some other hunk-of-the-month seen on the covers of girl-mags. What's most interesting to me, though, is that Precious makes no remarks about the physical attractiveness of any of the (admittedly few) male characters she comes in contact with throughout Push. For a teenager living in an increasingly image-based society, it's not only expected but even encouraged peerwise to make remarks about hot guys or people she'd love to crassly fuck, but she shows little signs of real shallowness. She justs wants a man to love her, regardless of what they may look like. It's touching and realistic, as depressed people generally lack an interest in sex, if a little jarring to an audience expecting to read the equivalent to a rambling teenybopper's diary throughout Push.

According to Precious, Mr. Wicher says she "has an aptitude for maff." This is confusing. Is Mr. Wicher mistaking Precious' class enforcer role for "maff" skills? Doubtful. Does he just feel bad for the girl, like he owes Precious some blase compliments in return for protecting him? I mean, pardon the excessive vanity of my language and everything, but how the hell does Mr. Wicher know Precious has any latent math talents if all she does, by her own admission, is sit down and shut up in class? Precious doesn't even recall the last time she wrote anything down the first time Miz Rain asks the class to keep a journal in Each One Teach One. In fact, she panics - she cries, wondering if she even belongs in Miz Rain's class because she can't do nearly everyone else can. Mr. Wicher really doesn't know Precious. He doesn't know Precious at all beyond whatever front she chooses to present in class that particular day. These empty compliments are all said to placate her, a "troubled student," from interrupting his teaching, and it's a common affront I absolutely have an issue with. Mr. Wicher is an enabler. Mr. Wicher leads her on. Mr. Wicher is just like all of the other professionals who have failed Precious, only his special brand of caring but not really caring comes in "a dope suit." I find it fitting that Sapphire chose to make a Mr. Wicher a male instead of female character, like the rest of the more important characters in Push, to illustrate how Precious' - and on an even grander scale, any "problem childs'" - welfare falls not on just one sex, one gender identity, one parent, nor one ethnicity. Blaming the mother? Well, what about the teacher who pity-passed a struggling student because he was too lazy to help out, or the counselor who didn't intervene when she knew a client was being beaten by her father? These parties are all equally responsible for passing the child's problem on to another person. It should be everyone's burden to bare, because it does take a village to raise a child - as well as a village destroy one unequivocally.