Tyler Perry Exploits Black America Essay Example for Free

Tyler Perry Exploits Black America Essay Actor, director, playwright, screenwriter, producer and, author Tyler Perry has taken Hollywood by storm. Perry has grossed close to $500 million in domestic box office receipts since 2005 (Smith) with his stage plays that have been turned into movies. Being ranked by Forbes magazine as the sixth highest-paid man in Hollywood (Daniels), Tyler Perry has revolutionized black entertainment by becoming the first black man to own a major movie and television studio in Atlanta, GA (Walker). I like Tyler Perry and enjoyed his early stage productions and films such as â€Å"Daddy’s Little Girl’s† and â€Å"The Family that Preys†. However, I struggle with his portrayal of black people, more specifically on his TBS television show, â€Å"House of Payne†. Perry’s â€Å"House of Payne† exploits African Americans as entertainment, combining slap stick comedy with regressive stereotypes with characters such as Curtis the Coon, Ella the Mammy, Janine the Drug Addicted, selfish Mother and Calvin the â€Å"Happy Negro†, remedial Player. I plan to deconstruct the â€Å"House of Payne† to reveal its minstrelsy nature and demonstrate how â€Å"House of Payne† does nothing to counteract racial assumptions that black people are ignorant, hip hopping, over weight jigaboos that are nothing more than comic relief. Tyler Perry supporters, who are mostly black, church going women, feel as though they can relate to Perry’s characters, strong Christian messages, and are happy that Perry keeps black actors on the big screen, and on television (Smith). Much has been said about Tyler Perry’s â€Å"House of Payne† and how it is a new millennium minstrel show. Minstrel shows consisted of white male actors, in black face that performed what they perceived as blackness. Performers of blackface interpreted blacks to be lazy, buffoonish, cowardly characters that often lied, stole and mangled the English language (Stark). Ultimately minstrel company owners hired black men and women, emphasizing that their ethnicity made them the only true delineators of black song and dance (Mahar). Black minstrels added religious themes to their shows while whites shied from that made them a popular hit amongst other blacks. Once minstrel shows began to decline in popularity, blackface continued by way of film (Mahar). One of the most notable actors was Lincoln Theodore Monroe Andrew Perry, also known as â€Å"Stepin Fetchit†. Although he was the first black actor to become a millionaire, the persona of â€Å"Stepin Fetchit†was the quintessential lazy, foolish, shucking and jiving Negro (White). Film critic, Armond White in his essay The Rehabilitation of Stepin Fetchit† asserts: â€Å"Should African-American performers be accountable to political correctness? To what degree should they worry that their antics shape the self-image of young African-Americans? Should they follow any standard other than their own conscience? Should they have a conscience? The psychological rationale for racism cuts two ways—flattering whites and defaming blacks—and it rebounded upon Stepin Fetchit and stained his soul. â€Å" Whites projected stereotypes onto black people and now we help them out: the buffoon, the Mammy and the Jezebel have been replaced with the ghetto fabulous drama queen, the feminized male, the thug and the dope fiend. Television is a powerful agent of information that not only shapes our way of seeing the world, but influences how we view and understand differences (Ford). The stereotyping of African Americans can partly be attributed to television limiting black actors to roles to jezebels, street punks, simple minded servants, and violent criminals. With the success of the Tyler Perry brand, Todd Boyd, Professor of Critical Studies at USC School of Cinematic Arts, asserted that Tyler Perrys works â€Å"are rooted in some of the worst stereotypes that have ever existed† (Svetkey, Watson, Wheat). Donald Bogle, author of Toms, Coons, Mulatoes, Mammies Bucks: An Interpretive History of Blacks in American Films, tends to agree: If a white director put out this product, the black audience would be appalled. The main characters in â€Å"House of Payne† are a married couple Curtis and Ella Payne, who are comparable to Ol’ Darkie and his counterpart Mammy in various minstrel shows. ‘Old Darky’ or ‘Old Uncle’ was usually the head of the black family (Stark), just as Curtis is the patriarch on the â€Å"House of Payne†. Curtis or Uncle Curtis is known for his loud over the top delivery, grumpiness, and brash jokes. Coons, are a source of amusement because they are complete buffoons (Toll). Every episode the audience can expect a slap stick performance from Curtis ranging from slapping of other cast members to the tumping his toe and falling over a chair. Ella is the exact replica of Mammy, which is one undeniable fixture in any Tyler Perry production. Ella is dark skinned, overweight, a great cook and singer and is the religious glue that holds the family together. Ella’s matronly demeanor causes for her well- liked by everyone and will put Curtis in his place when he gets irate. Tyler Perry replaces Mammy’s head wrap and apron and puts Ella in clothing that only exaggerates her unhealthy size. One episode, Curtis and Ella go on diets because they are at risk for diabetes and heart attacks. Curtis, who himself is obese, foolishly does a single jumping jack and falls out as if he just ran a marathon and hides snacks and fried food all over the house. Ella, who sticks to the diet for a few days constantly, nags Curtis about the risk factors. The story looks to be headed in a motivational direction as African Americans are twice more likely to develop diabetes than white people (CDC), however the scene ends with both of them abandoning their diets and exit to get a fried chicken sandwich (Perry). Curtis and Ella have a son, Calvin Payne who lacks common sense, motivation, yet is a self-proclaimed ladies’ man. Calvin is similar to â€Å"Happy Negro† who seems to relish in his stupid and immature nature (Stark) that causes any scheme or idea of his own to greatly backfire. Perry relies heavily on the well-worn stereotypes that black people have been subject to and Calvin is another Tyler Perry pattern. Calvin has had numerous relationships throughout the show and eventually gets married to Miranda, but finds out he’s fathered a child out of wedlock with an ex-girlfriend Tracie at the same time his wife reveals she too is pregnant. Perry strips Calvin of a dignified title of married man, father-to-be and to the stereotypical black man who is a low down, cheating â€Å"Baby Daddy†. In the doctor office scene where Calvin, Miranda and Tracie coincidently cross paths, Calvin is surprised that he has a son and asininely asks â€Å"how’d this happened? † The racists Dr. Marcos (who calls Tracie â€Å"Bonqueisha and Soul Sister†) scientifically dissertates that â€Å"when black people are poor, uneducated, unemployed and can’t play basketball, they have nothing to do but have sex† (Perry) and the laugh track spits out entertaining cackle. Where is the humor in that punch line? While some audience members can point out that we all know someone like that what Perry lacks is any compassion or ability to humanize these characters making them a moral, baby making caricatures (Smith). According to the CDC, at the end of 2007, blacks accounted for almost half (46%) of people living with a diagnosis of HIV infection in the 37 states and that is no laughing matter (CDC). Tyler Perry has been quoted saying that his characters are based off of real life people, especially the women he saw growing up as a young boy in New Orleans (Lapowsky). I believe that Perry’s work is a reflection of what he saw as a youth, however I agree with critics like Spike Lee and Edris Elba who maintain that it’s time for Perry’s work to be elevated and cease with the â€Å"coonery and buffoonery† (Svetkey, Watson, Wheat) as Perry’s work continuously delivers monolithic characters that are satirical at best. The House of Payne storyline takes place with three generations living under one roof because Janine, the wife of CJ who is also Curtis’ nephew, burns down their house to claim the insurance money to fuel her crack cocaine habit. She can be compare to the â€Å"wrench† or â€Å"Yaller Gal† who through the show, deserts her family to live as a dope fiend, then after she is rehabilitated, divorces CJ and becomes pregnant by a new man. The boyfriend is revealed to be sterile and after a drunken one night stand with CJ, process of elimination proves CJ is the father. Janine and CJ eventually remarry and by the final season, Janine flirts with the idea of having an affair with her boss. To protect the black women, you must also protect how she is being depicted regularly (Haven). White women are casted in various roles, however dating back to minstrelsy, black women are type casted as loud mouth, promiscuous, drug addicted breeders. It has nothing to do with talent, but choices by the studios and decision makers like Tyler Perry to determine what is projected. The entertainment business is just that, a business. As does any business, the entertainment industry relies heavily on supply and demand. If there is a demand, it is supplied. The support of Tyler Perry proves that there a demand for black entertainment. At the end of his stage play â€Å"Madea’s Family Reunion†, Perry as himself, addressed the audience saying â€Å"as long as yall wanna see Madea, I’ma do Madea† (Perry). In essence, as long as black people keep supporting Tyler Perry shows like â€Å"House of Payne†, he’ll keep feeding his audience the same chitterlings and cornbread. Tyler Perry has capitalized off â€Å"House of Payne† as he exploits stereotypes of African Americans. There are other ways to make us laugh and make money. Until black American stops clinging to such degrading material and demand more substance and social responsibility, just as those before us did with minstrel shows and blackface, Tyler Perry will fill the demand with more characters like Curtis, Ella, Calvin and Janine.