Tweet
Hating Tyler Perry: Why Does He Raise the Ire of the Black Intelligentsia?
by Steven Barboza
Atlanta Post
If Perry Can Do Bad All By Himself, Should Black Critics Assign His Films to “Perry’s Inferno”?
We live in the age of Tyler Perry.
He is everywhere – on billboards, in sitcom credits, in profiles of Hollywood heavyweights. His stage and screen creation, Madea – a feisty, linebacker of a grandmother – has joined the pantheon of black comedic characters, a hall of fame that includes Flip Wilson’s Geraldine and Bill Cosby’s Fat Albert. And soon, Perry will appear in a thriller as the crime-solving psychologist Alex Cross, a role made famous by Oscar-winner Morgan Freeman. The film will be shot in Cleveland starting next month.
Perry is arguably the most successful black film director, producer and screenwriter in history, a mogul whose status in Hollywood is a testament to his business acumen and artistic ingenuity. Why then are there so many Tyler Perry haters?
There’s a huge market for his films. But the black literati have designated a special place in hell for them: Perry’s Inferno. <span style="font-weight: bold">The criticisms are harsh indeed. They go something like this:
</span>
• Tyler Perry is the “KFC of black cinema.”
• Tyler Perry’s television shows contain “old stereotypes of buffoonish, emasculated black men and crass, sassy black women.”
• Tyler Perry is a no-count filmmaker whose works are excuses for feel-good sermonizing, not vehicles for human drama that will enlighten us.
This is just not the kind of criticism you’d expect to hear about a major black artist in the era of Obama. It sounds like disapproval for another era – that of the actor popularly known as Sleep ’n Eat, Willie Best’s character of the 1930s.
<span style="font-weight: bold">“I feel like Tyler Perry’s films are bad for your brain,” said Touré, TV host and cultural critic. “They promote a sort of victimhood: it is good and comfortable and okay to be a victim, especially in [the movie] ‘For Colored Girls,’ [featuring women] who are getting beat down by life in various ways and then at the end, they hug. They make no material change. They don’t get rid of the villains in their life. They don’t make attempts to move upward. They just hug. It’s victim porn. I don’t think it’s positive to tell black people it’s okay to be victims.”</span>
While Touré’s take is severe, he’s not the harshest critic out there. <span style="font-weight: bold">Seemingly, the king of Perry knockers is Spike Lee,</span> ’80s film maverick, Oscar nominee, and unofficial dean of modern black filmmakers. Lee pulls no punches in his discussions of Perry’s film aesthetics. He has been quoted as saying this:
“We shouldn’t think that Tyler Perry is going to make the same film that I am going to make … As African Americans, we’re not one monolithic group so there’s room for all of that, but at the same time, <span style="font-weight: bold">for me, the imagery is troubling and it harkens back to ‘Amos ‘n Andy.’”
</span>
Perry’s fans object, and not just verbally. They support him with their wallets. Perry has to be the most popular black filmmaker in history, perhaps because his films bask in the glow of the Southern black church, and are rooted in the ideals of prayer, faith, and family values. Some (not all) of his films seem like wholesome fare for picnic afternoons. And for many movie-goers, there’s value in that.
Black folk are hungry for stories that reflect their experiences, and Perry has tapped a deep vein of pent-up demand for black imagery both on screen and on stage. And it’s making him a bundle of money.
His “Meet the Browns” sitcom is one of the highest rated shows on TBS. Forbes ranked him as the sixth highest paid man in Hollywood – back in 2009. He signed a 100-episode deal for the “House of Payne” TV show, a deal valued at $200 million.
Many people think his accomplishments should be celebrated. He has come a long way from being mired in neglect and poverty, from dropping out of high school and attempting suicide as a boy to escape his father’s beatings. Perry says he learned from watching the “Oprah Winfrey Show” that writing can be therapeutic, and so he found refuge in words, eventually put $12,000 of his life savings on the line to finance his own musical, “I Know I’ve Been Changed.” He molded it into a hit, and he has never looked back.
Perry’s defenders include Oprah Winfrey and Will Smith, immensely powerful Hollywood figures. Winfrey, for her part, offers that Madea is not negative or degrading, but that she’s an amalgamation of the strong black women who touched Perry’s life early on and who survived the vicissitudes of black life that would almost surely crush others.
Other black producers come to Perry’s defense too. “I actually admire what Tyler is doing,” said James DuBose, CEO of DuBose Entertainment, whose credits include the “Bad Boys of Comedy” on HBO and “Super Agent” on SPIKE TV, as well as shows for BET and NBC. “I’m a fan.”
He added: “It’s not like in our black community we don’t have an array of experiences. I just think that everybody should have the opportunity to articulate black life the way they experience it. … And I just think more of that should actually be shown in cinema and television.”
Hollywood – along with Wall Street and Madison Avenue – see African Americans as an increasingly powerful market segment with wide ranging movie-going tastes. Some 81% of movies seen by blacks do not feature a lead black star or have a black story line, according to a BET survey. The study also pointed out that only 3 of this year’s top 19 films featured black leads – Perry’s “For Colored Girls,” “Big Mama’s House: Like Father, Like Son,” and Perry’s “Why Did I Get Married Too?”
Also, blacks are more avid movie-goers than other groups, making 195 million trips to movie theaters annually – going twice per month on average for a minimum of 28 times per year.
What do they choose to view? Blacks spent the most to see comedy ($3.6 billion), followed by action-adventure ($2.8 billion), romance ($1.6 billion), sci-fi/fantasy/horror ($1.2 billion), animation ($1.2 billion), mystery/suspense ($1.1 billion) and children/teen/family fare ($835 million), the BET study found.
In light of this, Perry is attempting to give black audiences what they want – a smart business decision, no doubt. His comedies are aimed squarely at the largest segment of black cinema-goers
Still, black cinema cannot be neatly divided into two camps, the Perryists vs. the Lees; there are other influential black directors and producers, among them Antoine Fuqua (“Training Day”), John Singleton (“Boyz N the Hood”) and Darnell Martin (“Cadillac Records”), the first black woman to have a major studio release. And then there are the independents – black filmmakers who add their voice to the black film vernacular by raising their own funds and negotiating their own distribution deals.
One such filmmaker is Ava DuVernay, head of a publicity firm that has worked on more than 100 film and television projects, including “Dreamgirls” and “Invictus.” Last year, DuVernay directed three documentaries that were broadcast on BET and TV One. This year, she completed a feature film, “I Will Follow,“ which she wrote, directed and financed. The film, which stars Salli Richardson, received a thumbs-up from critic Roger Ebert and was released in AMC Theaters. It grossed $11,500 per screen on average, showing at 22 screens in 15 cities, so she was able to recoup her investment quickly.
DuVernay embraces the DIT – or Do It Together – concept. She helped create an organization other filmmakers can join — the African American Film Festival Releasing Movement. A small group that lends its creative talents to build grass-root support for indie films.
Also, instead of selling the DVD rights, she packaged and distributed the film on her own. “I made more money than the deals I was offered,” she told a blogger. “Companies take your DVD rights for 20 years. We made back our money in one year doing it on our own. We sold it to small hip hop and record stores. Then we got into Netflix and iTunes. We did get a Showtime deal that I orchestrated.”
Working in this fashion is perhaps the best way to circumvent the studio system and get your film out to audiences. DuVernay continued: “I work to make my films and to self-finance them. They’ll have small budgets – the price of small cars. It’s really low budget filmmaking. A lot of people are doing it well.” Her goal is make one movie per year.
But getting a film produced and financed is difficult, particularly in this economy. “There aren’t that many black people that have significant amounts of disposable or investable cash, giving hundreds of thousands of dollars to films that may or may not make some money,” said Touré.
When you examine the economics of black film, the Tyler Perry juggernaut is a major success. He puts black actors and film crews to work, no mean feat in a depressed economy. Those who don’t like the product must either balance the Perry imagery with their own cinematic creations, vote with their wallets, or lodge complaints –but as we all know, complaining certainly won’t stop the Perry show
by Steven Barboza
Atlanta Post
If Perry Can Do Bad All By Himself, Should Black Critics Assign His Films to “Perry’s Inferno”?
We live in the age of Tyler Perry.
He is everywhere – on billboards, in sitcom credits, in profiles of Hollywood heavyweights. His stage and screen creation, Madea – a feisty, linebacker of a grandmother – has joined the pantheon of black comedic characters, a hall of fame that includes Flip Wilson’s Geraldine and Bill Cosby’s Fat Albert. And soon, Perry will appear in a thriller as the crime-solving psychologist Alex Cross, a role made famous by Oscar-winner Morgan Freeman. The film will be shot in Cleveland starting next month.
Perry is arguably the most successful black film director, producer and screenwriter in history, a mogul whose status in Hollywood is a testament to his business acumen and artistic ingenuity. Why then are there so many Tyler Perry haters?
There’s a huge market for his films. But the black literati have designated a special place in hell for them: Perry’s Inferno. <span style="font-weight: bold">The criticisms are harsh indeed. They go something like this:
</span>
• Tyler Perry is the “KFC of black cinema.”
• Tyler Perry’s television shows contain “old stereotypes of buffoonish, emasculated black men and crass, sassy black women.”
• Tyler Perry is a no-count filmmaker whose works are excuses for feel-good sermonizing, not vehicles for human drama that will enlighten us.
This is just not the kind of criticism you’d expect to hear about a major black artist in the era of Obama. It sounds like disapproval for another era – that of the actor popularly known as Sleep ’n Eat, Willie Best’s character of the 1930s.
<span style="font-weight: bold">“I feel like Tyler Perry’s films are bad for your brain,” said Touré, TV host and cultural critic. “They promote a sort of victimhood: it is good and comfortable and okay to be a victim, especially in [the movie] ‘For Colored Girls,’ [featuring women] who are getting beat down by life in various ways and then at the end, they hug. They make no material change. They don’t get rid of the villains in their life. They don’t make attempts to move upward. They just hug. It’s victim porn. I don’t think it’s positive to tell black people it’s okay to be victims.”</span>
While Touré’s take is severe, he’s not the harshest critic out there. <span style="font-weight: bold">Seemingly, the king of Perry knockers is Spike Lee,</span> ’80s film maverick, Oscar nominee, and unofficial dean of modern black filmmakers. Lee pulls no punches in his discussions of Perry’s film aesthetics. He has been quoted as saying this:
“We shouldn’t think that Tyler Perry is going to make the same film that I am going to make … As African Americans, we’re not one monolithic group so there’s room for all of that, but at the same time, <span style="font-weight: bold">for me, the imagery is troubling and it harkens back to ‘Amos ‘n Andy.’”
</span>
Perry’s fans object, and not just verbally. They support him with their wallets. Perry has to be the most popular black filmmaker in history, perhaps because his films bask in the glow of the Southern black church, and are rooted in the ideals of prayer, faith, and family values. Some (not all) of his films seem like wholesome fare for picnic afternoons. And for many movie-goers, there’s value in that.
Black folk are hungry for stories that reflect their experiences, and Perry has tapped a deep vein of pent-up demand for black imagery both on screen and on stage. And it’s making him a bundle of money.
His “Meet the Browns” sitcom is one of the highest rated shows on TBS. Forbes ranked him as the sixth highest paid man in Hollywood – back in 2009. He signed a 100-episode deal for the “House of Payne” TV show, a deal valued at $200 million.
Many people think his accomplishments should be celebrated. He has come a long way from being mired in neglect and poverty, from dropping out of high school and attempting suicide as a boy to escape his father’s beatings. Perry says he learned from watching the “Oprah Winfrey Show” that writing can be therapeutic, and so he found refuge in words, eventually put $12,000 of his life savings on the line to finance his own musical, “I Know I’ve Been Changed.” He molded it into a hit, and he has never looked back.
Perry’s defenders include Oprah Winfrey and Will Smith, immensely powerful Hollywood figures. Winfrey, for her part, offers that Madea is not negative or degrading, but that she’s an amalgamation of the strong black women who touched Perry’s life early on and who survived the vicissitudes of black life that would almost surely crush others.
Other black producers come to Perry’s defense too. “I actually admire what Tyler is doing,” said James DuBose, CEO of DuBose Entertainment, whose credits include the “Bad Boys of Comedy” on HBO and “Super Agent” on SPIKE TV, as well as shows for BET and NBC. “I’m a fan.”
He added: “It’s not like in our black community we don’t have an array of experiences. I just think that everybody should have the opportunity to articulate black life the way they experience it. … And I just think more of that should actually be shown in cinema and television.”
Hollywood – along with Wall Street and Madison Avenue – see African Americans as an increasingly powerful market segment with wide ranging movie-going tastes. Some 81% of movies seen by blacks do not feature a lead black star or have a black story line, according to a BET survey. The study also pointed out that only 3 of this year’s top 19 films featured black leads – Perry’s “For Colored Girls,” “Big Mama’s House: Like Father, Like Son,” and Perry’s “Why Did I Get Married Too?”
Also, blacks are more avid movie-goers than other groups, making 195 million trips to movie theaters annually – going twice per month on average for a minimum of 28 times per year.
What do they choose to view? Blacks spent the most to see comedy ($3.6 billion), followed by action-adventure ($2.8 billion), romance ($1.6 billion), sci-fi/fantasy/horror ($1.2 billion), animation ($1.2 billion), mystery/suspense ($1.1 billion) and children/teen/family fare ($835 million), the BET study found.
In light of this, Perry is attempting to give black audiences what they want – a smart business decision, no doubt. His comedies are aimed squarely at the largest segment of black cinema-goers
Still, black cinema cannot be neatly divided into two camps, the Perryists vs. the Lees; there are other influential black directors and producers, among them Antoine Fuqua (“Training Day”), John Singleton (“Boyz N the Hood”) and Darnell Martin (“Cadillac Records”), the first black woman to have a major studio release. And then there are the independents – black filmmakers who add their voice to the black film vernacular by raising their own funds and negotiating their own distribution deals.
One such filmmaker is Ava DuVernay, head of a publicity firm that has worked on more than 100 film and television projects, including “Dreamgirls” and “Invictus.” Last year, DuVernay directed three documentaries that were broadcast on BET and TV One. This year, she completed a feature film, “I Will Follow,“ which she wrote, directed and financed. The film, which stars Salli Richardson, received a thumbs-up from critic Roger Ebert and was released in AMC Theaters. It grossed $11,500 per screen on average, showing at 22 screens in 15 cities, so she was able to recoup her investment quickly.
DuVernay embraces the DIT – or Do It Together – concept. She helped create an organization other filmmakers can join — the African American Film Festival Releasing Movement. A small group that lends its creative talents to build grass-root support for indie films.
Also, instead of selling the DVD rights, she packaged and distributed the film on her own. “I made more money than the deals I was offered,” she told a blogger. “Companies take your DVD rights for 20 years. We made back our money in one year doing it on our own. We sold it to small hip hop and record stores. Then we got into Netflix and iTunes. We did get a Showtime deal that I orchestrated.”
Working in this fashion is perhaps the best way to circumvent the studio system and get your film out to audiences. DuVernay continued: “I work to make my films and to self-finance them. They’ll have small budgets – the price of small cars. It’s really low budget filmmaking. A lot of people are doing it well.” Her goal is make one movie per year.
But getting a film produced and financed is difficult, particularly in this economy. “There aren’t that many black people that have significant amounts of disposable or investable cash, giving hundreds of thousands of dollars to films that may or may not make some money,” said Touré.
When you examine the economics of black film, the Tyler Perry juggernaut is a major success. He puts black actors and film crews to work, no mean feat in a depressed economy. Those who don’t like the product must either balance the Perry imagery with their own cinematic creations, vote with their wallets, or lodge complaints –but as we all know, complaining certainly won’t stop the Perry show
Alex is hella sexy, man! All the Cross books I've read, I've always wanted to lie dung wid dat man 
Sexy as all get out.
Well, for sure I don't want to sleep with Tyler, but I did not want to sleep with Morgan either. Will would have worked out well too. I think Idris would have been the best choice like you said befofre.
Comment