Making Peace With Tyler Perry
This is not another article about how Tyler Perry is ruining black America with his minstrelsy, sexism, or thoughtless religiosity. There are enough articles like that. I have written several myself. On the contrary, this post is about how I made my peace with the Bard of Black America and found better targets for my righteous indignation.
Perry and I have long-running beef. One-sided, of course. I am well aware that the accomplished TV, film and stage impresario, who is worth an estimated $350 million, is not studying me. It’s like the Biggie/Tupac beef if, instead of one of the best and most successful rappers of all time, Pac was a blogger.
Though Perry doesn’t know or care, I have been disturbed at his elevation by the mainstream as some storyteller of the black experience. And, if I am honest, I am none too pleased about his popularity within the black community either. It’s not that I don’t admire the brother’s hustle. I wish I had that kind of work ethic and mojo. But I am no fan of the Perry ethos. I think he makes black women’s lives harder, in particular, by reinforcing sexism and the centuries-old stereotypes the plague us. I wish a brother like Perry, with so much money and support behind him, could present a better case for black womanhood than the big, ball-busting granny and the embittered, work-obsessed, money-hungry bourgie chick who doesn’t know how to appreciate a good, blue collar man. Actually, his portrayal of blackness as a whole, to me, amounts to a combination of dysfunction, shucking and jiving and saccharine set to gospel music.
My views on Perry haven’t changed. He is never going to be my favorite director. But I realize the energy I have put into railing against his efforts is misdirected. And I realize that I am indulging in a form of respectability politics that is more hurtful than helpful.
My eyes were opened while writing an article, “No Disrespect: Black Women and the Burden of Respectability,” for Bitch magazine. Inspired by negative reaction to Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer’s portrayal of maids in The Help, I wrote about how the personal and professional choices of black women in the public eye are routinely judged through the perilously unflattering lens of the majority culture — Eurocentric, patriarchal, Judeo-Christian, heteronormative and middle class — and found wanting. Davis and Spencer (and Halle Berry and Erykah Badu and Beyonce) are not allowed to be simply women or performers, but, by dint of their blackness, are asked to serve as ambassadors whose every decision reinforces the respectability of black folks to white America. That means Davis and Spencer are criticized for playing domestic workers. Halle Berry is criticized for having graphic sex with a white man in Monster’s Ball. And Erykah Badu is judged for having children out of wedlock as Beyonce is praised for using her uterus “the right way.” That is how respectability politics work. And, in my article, I judge that extra burden as unfair and damaging.
Respectability politics serve to curtail the individual liberties of people who have spent centuries fighting to be free. For black female actors and other artists, this may mean making choices based not on what’s best for their careers and personal lives, but instead, on what serves to convince the majority culture that people like them deserve respect.
…..
Policing the behavior of black women is not the answer. If it is wrong for a contemporary black actress to portray a maid, what message are we sending to black women who do domestic work? If it is wrong to be shown having sex with white men, what does that say about black women in interracial relationships with white men? If Erykah Badu is a whore for having children out of wedlock, what does that say about all black single mothers? Indeed, since more than half of births to all women under 30 occur outside of marriage (regardless of race), what does it say about women as a whole?
I have, hypocritically, directed the same unfair expectations I abhor toward Tyler Perry and his career. I have expected him to be my ambassador, communicating my secular, feminist, middle class, progressive values to the masses. But he is not me. However disappointing I find his schtick, it is his. Perry has done the work and paid the price. And there is no doubt he believes he is doing what is best, not only for himself, but as a member of the black community. And there is this: For as much as I don’t identify with Perry’s output, there are plenty of black folks who see their lives reflected in his storytelling. As Perry said on 60 Minutes, in response to Spike Lee’s criticism:
“I would love to read that [criticism] to my fan base. … That pisses me off. It is so insulting. It’s attitudes like that, that make Hollywood think that these people do not exist, and that is why there is no material speaking to them, speaking to us.” …”all these characters are bait – disarming, charming, make-you-laugh bait. I can slap Madea on something and talk about God, love, faith, forgiveness, family, any of those.”
But the most important thing is this conclusion from the Bitch article:
The goal of respectability politics may be noble, but the execution is flawed, damaging, and ineffective. By indulging in respectability politics, we acquiesce to the racially biased idea that the actions of individual black people are representative of the whole. We add to the pre-existing burdens of racism and sexism. And we fail to solve our problem, because we move the responsibility for eradicating race and gender biases from the powerful institutions and systems that perpetuate them to those oppressed by them. It is easier to try to control the oppressed than challenge the oppressor, but it is rarely a humane or useful approach.
Perry may be powerful, but he is still a black man within a Hollywood power structure that is overwhelmingly white. The problem is not Perry, though he makes a convenient target. The problem is an entertainment industrial complex that feels more comfortable pushing Big Momma’s House – Part Eleventybillion than Pariah. The problem is there can be many important white, male directors, but the industry only makes room for one black director du jour per generation. The problem is Hollywood will not cast black women as romantic leads, superheroes, or simply multi-dimensional characters. And fandom tends to hate black, female characters, however, they are drawn. The problem is that in Hollywood, all women are marginalized and women of color doubly so, and most people of color are stereotyped and exoticized. Whatever you thought of Red Tails, it is significant that even a man as mighty as George Lucas couldn’t get funding to tell the story, however imperfectly, of World War II heroes who happen to be black.
In other words, there are a whole lot of systematic problems bigger than Tyler Perry. If Madea and the Browns existed alongside diverse portrayals of people of color … then, fair enough. The problem isn’t the existence of Angela, a Sapphire-type character in Perry’s Why Did I Get Married and For Better or Worse. The problem is that there are few counterpoints to Angela. And that isn’t Tyler Perry’s fault.
I can dislike Tyler Perry’s shows and movies. (Except Daddy’s Little Girls, cause … Idris Elba). I can continue to find them overly broad. I can even critique his lack of gender politic. But I can’t get mad at a brother for not creating characters and stories just for me any more than I can get mad at Judd Apatow. Well, I can get mad (I get mad at some of Apatow’s dudely output, too.); it’s just that I have to reserve at least as much energy for a fucked up system that abets and amplifies any damage done by Perry.
“I am well aware that the accomplished TV, film and stage impresario, who is worth an estimated $350 million, is not studying me. It’s like the Biggie/Tupac beef if, instead of one of the best and most successful rappers of all time, Pac was a blogger.”
By the authors own admission he is worth 350 million dollars and still he has not yet once made a movie that hasn’t made black women look like complete fools. He has the money to do so, he just doesn’t want to. He is no better than eddie murphy, chris rock, martin Lawrence or any other person who thinks it’s amusing to make black women the butt of jokes.
Exactly. I see what the author is saying. Also black people themselves will flock to go see some stereotypical stuff, but I don’t agree that Hollywood made him do it lol. He does most of this on his own. Remember all those black rom-coms of the 90s and early 2000s? Remember Think Like a Man? Black people do go see things that don’t have foolishness in it. He just doesn’t want to be original and write anything different. I understand that there are people with these backgrounds, but the majority of his movies are about a bougie black woman getting knocked off her pedestal and falling into the arms of a blue collar man or a bougie black woman who is stereotypically emasculating. I just don’t buy that he can’t do better. He chooses to right the same stuff. Is there any play or movie of his that doesn’t shoe black women as
-loud
-fat and sad
-loud and fat
-loud and fat and sad
-ghetto
-bougie and stuck up
-abused and pathetic
???
The black men that he writes are usually not stereotypical. They are almost always professionals or kind, blue collar men.
Maybe he thinks this is the black version of damsel in distress. I just get tired of seeing the same portrayals of BW. And he is not at fault for our portrayal, but it starts with someone doing something different. He is the person that is most in a position to make a change and he doesn’t. We say that white Hollywood should do better, but black writers themselves play into stereotypes rather than doing something new.
Wow, I actually really love this article. I too am a huge Tyler Perry critic, but for some reason I felt that the energy I felt baggering him to my friends or on YouTube was misplaced. I think you helped me figure out why…
@Brooks and @Val,
Thanks for your comments.
Make no mistake, when I say that I have made peace with Tyler Perry that doesn’t mean that I’ll be standing in line for the next Madea atrocity. I’m also not going to stop writing about and analyzing his work. But, I think moving forward:
- When I discuss Perry, I need to put his output in context and critique that context (i.e the larger system) as fervently as I critique Perry.
- I need to be wary of buying into the racist idea that any ridiculous black, female character that Perry creates is representative of me. And I need to check other folks–black and not–who position his characters as representative.
- I need to be mindful that I have my own biases (of class and other things) and I need to make sure that those things don’t color my interpretations.
I still think Tyler Perry sucks, but there are nuanced ways to think about and communicate his suckitude. Perry has become sort of a lightning rod for educated, middle class, feminist black women like me–a symbol for a whole lot of the shit we take on the regular. But simply painting him as a misogynist, buck-dancing devil who will destroy all of black America after taking down the black woman with his drag comedy stylings misses all kinds of larger societal points. It’s so easy to go there and it doesn’t help.
Now, Steve Harvey…My beef with him is still soooo on!
-So can your theory also be used with reality tv shows Like basketball wives and love and hip hop?
-Steve Harvey is another type of beast lol. But he is marketing himself well .
-I think we get heated with ppl like Tyler Perey because of the lack of diversity within our own entertainment. In all honesty we woundnt have this ” Tyler represents the whole black culture ” chip on shoulders if we had more shows on air that viewed us in a different light. Again a different light might not always be a Cosby themed type show ( we have this tendency to fall back into that example , when we try to create ” other ” black shows) .
Sometimes we try so hard to show ppl the ” black experience ” that we end up cheaping it with overdone stero types , boring cliches and repetitive story lines.
@Smilez_920–Thanks for your comment. I agree about needing to see diverse representations of the black experience.
I definitely think this discussion applies to reality TV as well. In the Bitch article linked above, I wrote:
“The image of black female dignity is routinely attacked by a 24/7 media-industrial complex that serves up a steady stream of caricature. Scripts featuring fully formed black female roles may be difficult to find, but the exploding popularity of unscripted television has placed an increasing number of stereotypical black female characters in the public eye—characters presumed to represent “real” black womanhood. In her book Reality Bites Back, Jennifer Pozner points out that producers in the reality tv genre specifically seek out “characters” that represent gender and racial stereotypes—namely angry black women.
Bravo’s popular Real Housewives franchise—a reality juggernaut that keeps spawning new shows—follows the antics of groups of bourgeois women from various U.S. cities. Nearly all participants are presented as bullying, narcissistic, backstabbing, money-grubbing, cliquey, disloyal, arrogant, self-involved, willfully ignorant, poorly spoken, wasteful, and tackily nouveau riche. It makes for good television. But the mostly African-American Atlanta cast’s dysfunction is accepted as uniquely black, a confirmation of a host of stereotypes about poor, ignorant, urban people; loud, angry black women; and shiftless black men. The cast is discussed in the blogosphere using racialized terms, including, frequently, “ghetto.” By contrast, the Beverly Hills, Orange County, New York, and New Jersey wives are not seen as representative of white culture or white womanhood. They are not discussed using racialized terms. And few white people are spending time being embarrassed by their hijinks.
The question is: Who is most to blame for the images of black women we see? In the case of the Real Housewives franchise, it is series creator and Bravo executive Andy Cohen, who selects the casts and guides storylines through editing and behind-the-scenes maneuvering. But modern purveyors of respectability politics have concerned themselves with black women like Real Housewives of Atlanta star NeNe Leakes. Loud, aggressive, and crass, Leakes is often charged with setting black women back through her behavior. For instance, earlier this year, in an interview with HelloBeautiful.com, actor Brian White (Stomp the Yard) derided Leakes while calling her presence on television an accurate depiction of reality, and urged the black community to do better by saying, “You can’t call it a stereotype if it’s the majority.””
Sorry to cut and paste, but I’m feeling lazy. LOL!
I get what you’re saying and I don’t disagree. And truthfully part of my problem may be class based. And I agree that the system needs to be criticized as well as Perry.
But, there is one thing that I do disagree with;
” – I need to be wary of buying into the racist idea that any ridiculous black, female character that Perry creates is representative of me. And I need to check other folks–black and not–who position his characters as representative.”
Unfortunately as an unfavored minority inside of an unfavored minority people are going to generalize about us. I wish we lived in a world where we were seen by all as individuals, but we aren’t.
And that means that even though intellectually we know that Perry’s work portrays a gross and stereotypical representation, we have to continue pushing back because the world around us is going to judge us and worse sometimes treat us a certain way based upon those images.
Thanks.
Yeah, I think we pretty much agree.
Stereotyping is a fact of life for us even though it is wrong. Black women carry all the negative portrayals with us wherever we go–everytime we intereview for a job, etc. I’m not naive about that.
I just think that while we push back on poor portrayals in media and art, it’s also important that we push back on generalizing about who we are and, especially, don’t acquiesce to it.
nice article…i feel like his stans will get tired of his corny ass movies and tv shows
I am with this article, but it is also part of the problem.
We do not care how much he is worth, from rappers to others they are given leeway because they bring in money to the Black community.
But at what cost? There is too much money in this whole black low life scene. As long as we are uneducated enough not to see that we are being mined rather than farmed , that is going to be the problem.
Okay, I remember Bill Cosby being destroyed, but if you look carefully there we industry big wigs who were threatnned by what he was saying.
They ignored what previous work he had accomplished, and destroyed him.
People like Jay Z get away with murder, but because they are worth something and they fans are ready to destroy whoever has the nerve to challenge them, we all have keep quiet.
Cosby destroyed himself
We should have respected his position first, but they did not allow that to happen.
If they can crush him, what will they do to us?