In your recent disappointment in cinema, Temptation: Confessions of a Marriage Counselor, your leading actress (played by Jurnee Smollett-Bell) get infected with HIV and loses her marriage based on her ambition to overall pursue a better career as a marriage counselor. Given that she is unhappy in her current marriage with an aloof, underachieving husband (that rather her cook dinner every day for him and go to church more to become “a better wife”) Smollett-Bell’s character is less understood given that she instead pursues a man that matches more of her professional, sexual and intellectual desires. If anything, the unfortunate moral of the story is: the more you aim high, the less happy you are.
Such a pathetic motif continued in your other movies, where in Madea’s Family Reunion, successful black actors such as Blair Underwood is a controlling and abusive black attorney who loses his fiancée. Gabrielle Union in Daddy’s Little Girls is a snobby uptight Ivy League alum turned attorney who “humbles” herself for a mechanic with previous children. Sanaa Lathan in The Family That Preys plays an educated accountant that is a doomed cheater that is scarred by a white man. Robbie Jones in Temptation is a successful black social media tyc00n with HIV that is a womanizer who cheats, beats, stalks, controls and infects the many women around him. And the list goes on…
As for the many falsehoods and fallacies that play out in your movies, the biggest stereotype might just be that with black success come negative atrocities. If it means anything, your films continue to place blacks who aspire to do more be hesitant to achieve such for preconceived consequences will follow.
While Tyler Perry’s rags to riches life has, in effect, made him powerful enough to disregard criticism, it is important that everyone irrespective of race or creed be willing to speak out against him. It is bad enough that others knowingly vilify a people. It is unforgivable when it is one of your own.In your recent disappointment in cinema, Temptation: Confessions of a Marriage Counselor, your leading actress (played by Jurnee Smollett-Bell) get infected with HIV and loses her marriage based on her ambition to overall pursue a better career as a marriage counselor. Given that she is unhappy in her current marriage with an aloof, underachieving husband (that rather her cook dinner every day for him and go to church more to become “a better wife”) Smollett-Bell’s character is less understood given that she instead pursues a man that matches more of her professional, sexual and intellectual desires. If anything, the unfortunate moral of the story is: the more you aim high, the less happy you are.
Such a pathetic motif continued in your other movies, where in Madea’s Family Reunion, successful black actors such as Blair Underwood is a controlling and abusive black attorney who loses his fiancée. Gabrielle Union in Daddy’s Little Girls is a snobby uptight Ivy League alum turned attorney who “humbles” herself for a mechanic with previous children. Sanaa Lathan in The Family That Preys plays an educated accountant that is a doomed cheater that is scarred by a white man. Robbie Jones in Temptation is a successful black social media tyc00n with HIV that is a womanizer who cheats, beats, stalks, controls and infects the many women around him. And the list goes on…
As for the many falsehoods and fallacies that play out in your movies, the biggest stereotype might just be that with black success come negative atrocities. If it means anything, your films continue to place blacks who aspire to do more be hesitant to achieve such for preconceived consequences will follow.
While Tyler Perry’s rags to riches life has, in effect, made him powerful enough to disregard criticism, it is important that everyone irrespective of race or creed be willing to speak out against him. It is bad enough that others knowingly vilify a people. It is unforgivable when it is one of your own.
Isnt the point of a movie to have flawed characters? Does the writer want the black characters be perfect? If that were the case, where would the conflict be? How would a story develop?
On another note, I'm getting pretty tired of the word "stereotype" as it pertains to black people. I guess the reason is because it seems its only blacks and minorities tht actually have "stereotypes". Basically a white person can be any kind of character they desire, and the word stereotype never seems to come into play. Its almost like black actors and directors have to be so much more careful in what they do s not to offend other blacks. White people dont have to play by these rules.
