Mammie Dearest (The Pledge)

Ok, I’ve got a great idea for a movie. An African-American woman is trapped in a loveless marriage to a white collar Black man who beats her, has no Christian values and cheats on her with a woman lacking the same moral values. There is another man, a blue collar worker who believes Jesus Christ is his Lord and savior and is only looking for a good woman to settle down with but she can’t she him through her tear stained eyes. That is until a gun-toting, foul mouthed mammie looking cross-dressing Black man spewing Christian rhetoric dances in to point out the obvious prompting her to fall head over heels in love. Throw in some incest, sexual abuse and a bit of homophobia and we have a great movie, right? Oh wait…Tyler Perry has already done this…like about a hundred times.

There is a scene in Mr. Perry’s current film, “Why Did I Get Married Too”, where Janet Jackson’s character is going through a divorce from her husband and decides to attack his “manhood” by delivering a drag queen stripper cake to him to embarrass him in front of his co-workers. She then taunts him telling him “you want to act like a bitch, ok here’s your bitch”.
This scene is important because it points out Tyler Perry’s exploitation of his audience. He knows he can play to the homophobia of his mostly Black church audience by ridiculing gay men as outrageously feminine freaks that any “moral minded respectable heterosexual” would find an amusing and embarrassing spectacle. The same can be said of his constant use of incest and sexual abuse in his movies as any “Good Christian” can relate to the immorality and sinful behavior of these characters.

Ok so Mr. Perry knows his audience and is probably giving them what they want or at least his idea of faith-based messages (even though the message is somewhat hypocritical coming from a man who dresses in women’s clothing). But what about some positive portrayals of Black men. Even though his audience is all too willing to see them, his portrayal of Black men as incestuous, abusive, Black woman batterers or overtly feminine queens is not only insulting but rather depressing and I for one am sick of it. This man has the power to present images rarely seen onscreen whether it be TV or the movies and both are mediums he controls with his entertainment empire. On TV it’s the same thing. His African-American male characters are shucking and jiving, loud talking, overweight, ignorant ridiculously dressed buffoons. How about some encouraging stories of African-American couples and their families? Not necessarily the Huxtables but we’re not all the Evans clan from the Good Times either. Success does not necessarily breed evil as Mr. Perry’s films suggest. What about some stories featuring positive portrayals of masculine African-American gay men in sustaining relationships which don’t reinforce the homophobia of the black church?

By pandering to the lowest denominator of our culture and offering such a narrow point of view, Tyler Perry presents a disservice to the African-American community as a whole and we deserve so much more. My pledge is to no longer support his films in their current state but realistically, I don’t expect them to change.