I’m up nights worrying about Tyler Perry.
In an earlier post, I worried about what the money-making, commercially successful films of Tyler Perry were saying about sex, gender and race. Implicitly, I worried about art and money and money corrupting art and money-making not really being terribly arty.
This isn’t terribly unusual since I regularly worry - oh the hand-wringing! oh the teeth-gnashing! - about sex, money and meaning.
It may not be an unexpected cause for teeth-grinding and ink-spilling but the money/art conundrum is a false dilemma. Money and art can go together nicely. Just because something makes a lot of money does not disqualify it from the footrace to artistic merit.
This is what I was up late, worrying about. The word “hypocrite” may hve looped around my head a few times. I worried about Tyler Perry’s fragile feelings and I worried about my future.
One day, my bff Oprah Winfrey will invite me to lunch and Tyler Perry – single, artistic, entrepreneurial, brave, resilient, charitable Tyler Perry – will be there and I will die a little inside because I said something bitchy and unfounded about his work.
I don’t care how much money he has or how strong he is or how he doesn’t even know I’m alive. Did I really need to be snarky?
No. I didn’t.
I blame the intersection between my medium (blog=snark) and my gd scholarly training.
My university background is political science. Political scientists (ahem) like to pretend that politics can be analyzed in a systematic, scientific way.
I know. Crazy. Arts majors are so creative.
Anyhoo, in the social sciences (ahem), we’re trained to think critically which is a conceit at best and at worst means we’re trained to tear shit apart. Even stuff we like. Especially stuff we like. The more we like it, the more we have to interrogate it, lest our liking-it bias be revealed, thereby demonstrating our **hushed tones** lack of objectivity.
I know. Objectivity is bullshit. Like all vices, academic habits die hard.
The academic insistence on finding fault in the name of objectivity is much like ‘split the difference’ journalism. I decry split the difference journalism. It is weak. Tepid. Safe. The antithesis of any kind of useful thinking.
Academic critics attempt, paradoxically, to insulate themselves and their works from critique by clinging to a nebulous, fabled beast, the sasquatch. I mean objectivity. They’re equally real.
But blogs are different than academic critique. Blogs are personal.
The personal, immediate, reactive, (and sometimes snarky) nature of blogs means that dry, seemingly objective (don’t get me started again) academic investigation and critique don’t work here. Even the most apparently thoughtful, high-brow critique ends up feeling ad-hominem-y and snarky.
Even if my piece on Tyler Perry was academic critique (it wasn’t), it was still lazy-ass critique.
Here’s why: I have seen two out of eight Tyler Perry films. Is that a basis from which to conclusively claim “errr, not so much” about his movies?
Errr, no. It is not reasonable to dismiss his entire oevre based on 25% of his work.
Even more than that, my piece about Tyler Perry was disingenuous. After I wrote that piece, I started thinking about “Why Did I Get Married?”.
Specifically, I started thinking about Jill Scott’s character. In the film, her husband used her weight to emotionally bully her and as justification for cheating on her. They split, and she blossoms, and next time she sees him, she’s all radiant and empowered and in love and he is soooooooo sorry. Was that a lil’ FA in there? That sneaky Tyler Perry.
That’s the other thing about Tyler Perry’s films. In them, fat people exist.
I KNOW!
Here’s another thing about Tyler Perry films: at heart, they are about justice. They are about the win and the underdog and the winsome underdog winning.
Take Medea, for example. You know why Medea is loved, and recognized? Because she embodies absolute, knee-jerk justice.
Don’t we all need that? Thirst for it? Isn’t it rare? Aren’t there times when you’ve bared your soul to a friend about how you’ve been done wrong, and what you absolutely, resolutely, positively thirsted for was this:
Ima kill that bastard.
Yes.
Yes.
HELL YES.
Maybe that’s just me.
So, with this in mind, and to flesh out my critique a little, I did a little extra-credit research this weekend.
The occasion: H1N1 and deep sense of regret about my largely unfounded opinions about Tyler Perry’s work.
The result: I watched another of Tyler Perry’s films (Medea Goes to Jail) and, based on the three films I’ve seen so far, this is what I have to say:
Yeah, I was wrong.
What Tyler Perry does in his films is what I argue romance novels do for women.
They deliver the win. The underdog triumphs. The underdog is you.
All the stock, arguably offensive stereotypes to which Spike Lee et al object are laugh bait (and Tyler Perry admits this). They get your ass in the chair so that you’ll sit through the sermon. Is there anything wrong with a good belly laugh?
Yet, arguably, a Tyler Perry movie offers more than a belly laugh. It is a shot in the arm, a pat on the ass, a football huh! as you huddle and that shit’s just empowering.
Ask Erin Brockovich, the movie. I can’t get enough of Julia Robert’s boobs and bad-ass attitude. Tyler Perry, I argue, is doing the same thing with his plays and movies. He’s inspiring you, teaching you, preaching to you, and he’s making it fun.
Empowerment can be light. Empowerment is light. But you know what is not empowering?
Asking of an auteur,
Can you please make movies that I will never see? In poverty?
I think his movies are terrible. Weak hackneyed plots, unreliable, poorly written characters, and terrible acting. Just cause his heart is in the right place doesn’t mean he shouldn’t hone his craft. And I may be in the minority but the buffoonery doesn’t make me laugh. It makes me cringe. And nothing about his movies makes me feel empowered.
All that being said, I like your blog, Kelly. Great energy. Lots of heart. Thanks for writing.
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