This will cost me some points on my Blackness Credit Report, but I don't give a damn. Tyler Perry fucking sucks. He has a new movie coming out and the Facebook statuses are already buzzing: "It's a tear jerker, bring a tissue."
I'd cry too if I had to sit through another one of his movies. Everyone is so damn melodramatic and the writing is atrocious. Now don't get me wrong, I have a sense of humor. Fun is fun and jokes are jokes. This blog isn't exactly "proper" writing, but at the same time I don't pretend that it's the Wall Street Journal.
When I first saw the play of Madea's Family Reunion, I almost fell out of my chair...in the barbershop...watching the bootleg. It was only when he started taking himself serious and he became the only Black production on TV and film that I started having issues. There were always two kinds of Black plays: The churchy kind and the "real" plays. August Wilson's Fences was a real play because of the solid writing and acting (James Earl Jones, Mary Alice, Courtney Vance). Churchy plays like Mama I Want to Sing, My Grandmother Prayed for Me, and anything else with one of the Winans in it were catered to the church crowd. The production values were lower, some people broke character, but you had a good time. Never before did we confuse the two.
Then came Tyler P.
All of a sudden we (Black people) start accepting bad wig mics, cheesy songs and banter with the audience as a broadway productions...So he makes them into movies. Those movies suck because of poor dialogue, storytelling, directing, editing and acting....so then he starts making tv shows. Exactly ten years after what was hands down the best era of Black television we end up with Tyler Perry Productions being the only source of Black entertainment.
Living Single, Martin, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, The Cosby Show, A Different World, Roc, The Wayans Brothers, In Living Color, New York Undercover, Hanging With Mr. Cooper, In the House, Malcolm and Eddie and many other shows came on in the 90s. What do we have now? House of Pain and Meet the Browns. We went from realistic characters to buffoons and caricatures.
The sad thing is that these shows get high ratings so we'll get more of the same, just like we get more Tyler Perry movies. I don't want my kids growing up thinking that this is the best that Black artists have to offer.
So knowing that my Blackness Score is on the line...I'll take a hit on my credit. Tyler Perry sucks!
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