Hip Hop is dead. That’s what NAS said. Jay-Z was at the top making his brand of music, and bad rap artists dominated the air waves, but I wouldn’t have known. I never turned on the radio. If I did happen to hear something good by recommendation, then so it was. I was too busy appreciating current hip-hop by cats that you probably hadn’t heard of. When Jay-Z dropped a banger, well, that was icing on the cake.

I don’t think I’ve ever thought to myself, “Jay-Z needs to make better hip hop because the whole game rides on his shoulders.” I mean, I hope Common or Lupe Fiasco, or Mos Def never heard that. They can’t be dead, right? I’m listening to their new music right now! Hell, I LIKED Jigga’s “Death of Auto tune” (does that make me lame?).

And so it goes with Tyler Perry.

I feel as if I’ve been fighting the “let Tyler Perry be” battle for years now. I’m intelligent. I appreciate film and its effects on its audience as much as the next man. However, when I listen to people describe Tyler Perry’s work, it’s almost as if we’re watching two different productions. I don’t know about you, but when I walk out of a Tyler Perry movie, I feel FANTASTIC. I see all shades and shapes of black people on screen, usually resolving some barely-complicated family moral dilemma, notably with familiarity and good spirit, packaged neatly in just over an hour.

Celebrated director John Hughes used to make movies like these. He abandoned Hollywood, set up shop in Chicago, and made teen movies with his hand-picked ‘brat pack’ that reflected family life that he wanted to show. Pretty in Pink. The Breakfast Club. Some kind of Wonderful. He monetized idealized whited and pseudo-teens in dramatic situations so compelling that people wanted them in their lives, except it was actually only on TV. None of it was realistic. I’ve had white kids tell me years later that they wanted their lives to be like that, their proms to be so fanciful, but romanticizing these absurd characters never made them real. Perhaps that wasn’t the point. Walking away, you FELT good.

I never get the icky or poisonous feelings of negative film making when I watch Tyler’s work. They’re simplistic, sure, and barely above ABC After-school specials on the sophistication ladder. However, on some of those rougher days that life throws at us, it’s the simplicity that makes them so charming. There’s so much open and loving intent behind what’s he’s trying to say, I never understood why people seem so eager to tear the work down. Frankly, I always walk away feeling, “Man, I really enjoyed that. I wouldn’t mind letting my mom or aunt or the kids see that movie.” Dutifully, I pass the DVDs along, and they enjoy them, too. It usually takes me back to my childhood in P.G. County when the big night was to see the Christian theater production at the local Evangel Temple.

To the core of what the blogger said, though, I want to address specifically: Tyler Perry doesn’t represent all of the African American movie-going experience. Personally, I think that Spike Lee is one of the most powerful voices working in Hollywood today. However, if Spike was in Tyler’s place, Spike doesn’t speak for the whole of ‘Black America’ either. Heck, my family was part Crooklyn, part Madea’s Family Reunion, part Welcome Home Roscoe Jenkins…ALL invaluable on screen.

Why is it up to Tyler to do anything that Tyler doesn’t want to do when he’s not actually damaging anything? Medea may be loud, silly, and absurd, but damaging? She’s not MY grandmother, but she’s the comic point of entry whom some identify. To be frank, I don’t even LIKE Madea and usually dodge Tyler’s movies with her in it. Still, that’s MY issue, not Tyler’s. More, even though I’m personally no fan, I wouldn’t tell others not to see the movies because they’re solid at the end of the day. They just aren’t for me.

And all told, isn’t it about choice? Tyler’s movies didn’t stop you from supporting Spike Lee’s, Passing Strange or Miracle at St. Anna, did it? Maybe the success of Tyler made you miss Dennis Dortch’s, A Good Day to be Black and Sexy”, or Giancarlo Esposito’s, Gospel Hill? We ALL went to go see Kasi Lemmon’s, Talk To Me, right? No? That damned Tyler needs to stop making his coon movies so we can go see movies that EVERYONE needs to support…next time. Yeah, you’ll do your part NEXT time.

It’s the CORPORATION’S fault, of course. Or those brain-washed back-water church blacks who are too BLIND to see that Tyler’s drug-free, cursing free, relatively violence free, simplistic Christian movies are DESTROYING THEM. Damn whitey and blind blacks for putting THAT kind off BULLSHIT in the forefront, while good strong black movies whither to nothing (because they don’t get no damn support from WHITEY!!). Tyler got lucky, that’s all. That coon found a specific audience to market to when everybody in Hollywood closed the door on him and his type of bullshit. He said screw LA, found a way to make his own movies in ATL mad cheap, and got LUCKY than a Mofo! Fag-ass nigga!

It’s laughable. Every time ANY black director comes out, blacks have the most to say. Wah-wah…Spike didn’t have enough dark-skinned sistas in his movies. John Singleton keeps making dumb movies. Where’s the IMPORTANT stuff? Where’s the IMPORTANT themes? Wah-wah…Spike’s movie’s are too preachy, ain’t nobody tryin’ to see all that! John’s movies are too hood, ain’t nobody tryin’ to see all that! When did the whole of black cinema become, Spike, John, and Tyler? More, what WILL you support?

Before I forget, there’s one point that the blogger mentioned that unsettles me deeply. That point is about the expectation on Tyler to relinquish some of his hats from his own productions, i.e., to allow other ‘artistic’ folk to do the jobs that he’s doing that they feel that they can do better. Perhaps they can? Who knows? A friend and I once discussed the then, burgeoning Nigerian film industry. I looked at these simple, crude movies, and speculated aloud about what kind of power we could have if we took our American aesthetics and our U.S borne film training and make get into that Nigerian market and kick all kinds of butt. In my pompous delusions, I thought that I was a genius. My college-trained hollywood ass would go to Nigeria and show those Africans what REAL film making was. We’d hook up their shanty tales and astound them. My friend looked at me and laughed. He’d been to Nigeria, understood the culture, lived there for years while my half-born self only learned about that heritage second hand. His mirth totally left when he spoke to me, trying to explain a concept that took years for my ego to process. he said, “They LIKE the movies they have there. American movies don’t sell as well and they prefer buying their local movies over the stuff that’s imported.” I thought what he said was preposterous. Who wouldn’t prefer better visual quality, deeper stories, and the L.A. learned marketing savvy that we could bring? We’d dominate! It’ll be like OUR industry. Why wouldn’t they work with us? We’d improve their work and make their work BETTER.

Who are we to tell someone, who has pioneered something that works, speaking directly to an audience that IS responding favorably, that it is HIS RESPONSIBILITY to diversify and to hire and bring up black talent to help his movies be ‘better’? The question begs, “Better than what, Better to Whom, and better FOR who?” Those same Nigerian filmmakers BEFORE their created their venture is the same as Tyler when he was living in his car some 15 years ago. Nobody had anything to say until they became visible. They aren’t doing anything wrong, per se, just not doing it the way YOU would do it. It’s not poppin’, basically, just not as poppin’ as it COULD be. For the record, that Nigerian industry suffered through a few ‘high quality’ European helped productions, then proceeded happily and profitably along making what they made before the artistic interventions. I suspect, so will Tyler. I digress.

“Do you”, black people. To you Black Intellectuals, the movies that you want to see do exist. Seek them out. Don’t rip down artists that not only put out work that isn’t as shameful as you make them out to be, but who are genuinely putting energy to creating a sort of template and example for you to do YOUR THING.

Bringing this full circle, proof of good work exists. Ask Mos Def, Common, and Lupe Fiasco. Perhaps it doesn’t live conventionally on your radio or thrive in your cine-plex, but seeking it bears its own reward. It’s okay. You can like Jay-Z, too. We won’t crucify you. Now start talking that Lil Wayne stuff, and we might have a very different discussion. When Tyler does something REALLY damaging, we’ll talk. In the meantime, I’ll join you on that righteous boycott of the artists that REALLY deserve it. Sign me up when we’re abandoning R.Kelly and Chris Browns and filth peddlers. No? I guess we’ll get at them AFTER we finish dancing to that chart-topping new single. Fuck it. Sugary Tyler Perry is a much easier target. Get that evil “The Family That Preys Together” outta here!

On Mediocrity and Aiming for Less..

Mediocre to whom? The ‘educated’? Mediocre to those that know ‘quality’ film? Work that is simplistic to me might be the same work that encourages someone to fall in love with cinema. That’s what bugs me, I think. There’s just so much scholarly pretentiousness. Tyler’s work might be simplistic, but if someone is moved by what they’ve seen in a Tyler film, are they idiots because they ‘got’, say, Madea’s Family Reunion and didn’t get, say, Eve’s Bayou? How is this argument any different from someone who decides to pursue directing from watching Star Wars, versus Stanley Kubrick’s 2001? Who is the purveyor of quality? Of class? Of what’s important or not, and for which reasons? It’s almost as if we, who act as if we know better, makes the decision to uplift the masses ‘kicking and screaming’.

Folks speak – and don’t speak – with their dollars.