Tyler Perry and Blaxploitation

The African American director Tyler Perry has the same problems that ‘blaxploitation’ had in the 70s. Stereotypes abound in his films, especially of women, just like the black films of the 70s, but at least they are not super women but real women with real problems and heavy women like human beings. Have you ever noticed that when black actors do a romantic comedy or comedy in general, they play characters who are successful, middle class or upper middle class, but as soon as they do a drama they are poor as hell? Message delivered — “real” blacks are always poor.

The critics of your movies are not the people who go to see your movies. Blaxploitation critics said the same about those movies, but they made money. But Tyler Perry can mature, unlike blaxplotiation. He directed “For Colored Girls” and was attacked for portraying black men in the worst light. He’s just a man, but he’s very influential, but he’s still a person. He is not trying to have a political and social conscience, but to entertain. Spike Lee and Tyler Perry disagree. Lee is tired of blacks being held down to silly stereotypes, while Lee thinks Perry is profiting from the images he hates.

In the 70s, black audiences loved blaxploitation, seeing people who looked like them attacking The Man and sleeping with their women, and being the hero. But all the movies were like that and soon the public got tired of them. It has been said that blaxploitation was so great at one time that the NAACP wanted to monitor the medium. Maybe they should have, the images of black people could have improved. Black movies even saved a studio — MGM !!

Blacks yearn to see better images of themselves than they see in movies and on television. The cable audience has three channels, BET, Centric, and TV One, and there has yet to be an original drama on either network. African Americans are the best consumers advertisers can have, yet they don’t use them to their full potential to launch programs they will support. Blacks need to complain, but they should not go to the presidents of this network, but to the mega company that pays their checks. The main companies that own these networks have money for other channels, so why not these?

There was a time when the NAACP was going to boycott movies and television, because they were tired of stereotypes showing. They didn’t do it then, but I think they will soon. Audiences can still laugh and enjoy some stereotypes, but there is much more to African Americans than meets the eye.