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Last Updated: May 30th, 2008 - 11:49:13 |
Even for Madea, Tyler Perry’s gun-toting matriarch of stage and screen, one scene at the start of “Diary of a Mad Black Woman” is outrageous. Inside the walk-in closet of the mansion where her grand-daughter Helen used to live, Madea furiously whirls her tall, heavy frame and shreds the new designer outfits of the other woman who has moved in with Helen’s husband.
“This is for every Black woman WHO HAS EV-ER HAD A PRO-BLEM WITH A BLACK MAN!” Madea yells while ripping reams of couture garb. So goes this particular moment of Madea’s gray-hair-and-red-lipstick rage. And so goes Perry, blazing his own particular path and brand of Black feminism and empowerment—first on stage, then in two hit films and, now, even in print. His new book, Don't Make A Black Woman Take Off Her Earrings, debuted at No. 1 on the New York Times hardcover bestseller list.
Love Perry or hate him, he has nonetheless managed to articulate a strong Black woman’s voice and vision in his popular morality tales that have won audiences over to the tune of millions in profit. Some Black women dislike Perry playing a female character but his success comes in an era when dominant hip hop culture frames Black women as gold diggers or worse, sneers at romance, idealizes women with lighter hues and keener features, and only endows men with the toughness required for street justice. (The scene in the walk-in closet ends with the arrival of the other woman, her threat to call the police and Madea’s memorable retort: “Call the po-po ho!)
It is obvious that the rags-to-riches Perry is benefiting from the lessons learned while he toiled on the Black theater chitlin circuit (he hates that term), marketed to churches filled with Black women, honed his Christian soap operas of redemption and forgiveness and created an audience with direct advertising on much-listened-to Black radio. But, perhaps not as obvious, is his ability to hammer at themes that appeal to an ignored audience of Black women hungry for portrayals of their lives, stories and dreams that exist beyond the frame (and male centeredness) of music videos or ‘hood flicks. Reflected in the title of his book, he especially likes to praise, and not denigrate, the fortitude and battle savvy of the women he has known.
Exhibit number one in this toughness is, of course, Madea, a grandmother of warmth, wit and wildness. Perry, who transforms his six-and-half-foot frame into the character Madea with much make-up and prosthetics, says he created her as a composite of many women he knew growing up in New Orleans, most notably his mother Maxine and his Aunt Mayola. But, citing other influences, he also dedicates his new book to “Big Mabel Murphy, Viola, Olabea; Sylvia—all those women who were on the block.”
Many of Madea’s fans have come to love her as a grandma-in-the-‘hood who isn’t afraid settle a dispute with the language and mode of the streets. In the film “Diary,” when Helen’s mother (Cicely Tyson) utters the gospel lyric, “Peace Be Still,” Madea responds, “Well you know what? Peace is always still around me ‘cause I keeps me what they call a piece of steel.” Quickly retrieving a semi-automatic weapon from her purse on the kitchen counter, she continues: “Long as you got a piece of steel, you gonna have peace.”
Zeroing in on Madea’s flair for the not-so-veiled threat, Perry’s most recent film, “Madea’s Family Reunion,” which grossed more than $63 million in theaters, was marketed heavily on Black radio and TV with a scene where two nieces ask her what a young woman should do about a boyfriend who hits her.
“Before or after his funeral?” is Madea’s no-nonsense reply.
But with Perry, it’s not all about toughness. Another unifying thread through his work is attention to and a genuine sympathy for the issues of love, commitment, marriage and family that Black women focus on more than Black men. Even the fact that he made “Diary of a Mad Black Woman” his first film release exemplifies his focus on this core audience.
In “Diary,” Helen, played by the actress Kimberly Elise, makes the journey from being the wife of a successful lawyer, with a mansion and maid, to being penniless and waiting tables. But she also journeys from being with a cruel, soul-less man to relationship with a steelworker, played by Shemar Moore, who loves her and wants to marry her. He tells her: “If you’re away for more than an hour, I can’t stop thinking about you. I carry you in my spirit. I pray for you more than I pray for myself. And when you smile, my world is all right.”
Similarly, in “Madea’s Family Reunion,” a working class single mother, Vanessa, played by Arrindell Anderson, learns to overcome her fears and embrace new love. Improbably, she gets to heal ugly wounds from her childhood and shine. In this tale, as well as others, Perry also makes pointed comments about color and class discrimination with the Black community and lets the chocolate girls be Cinderella.
Somewhere, within the Madea jokes, church-centered storylines and frequent melodrama, Perry includes romance that, as Helen’s steelworker says, feels “like a fairy tale.” Sure. It is usually a syrupy sweet tale but Black film seems to offer Black women either sweet syrup or gin and juice. (Easy to choose sweetness!)
When Perry talks about Madea’s character and dialogue, he sounds as if he is channeling an ancestral spirit of a female warrior needed in these times. “In the black community, Madea was the head of that village,” he writes in Don't Make A Black Woman Take Off Her Earrings.
“Her name is the southern term for ‘mother dear,’ he adds. “Madea used to be on every corner in every neighborhood when I was growing up and generations before… No matter what race you are, everybody wants to have a Madea in their family. She’s not politically correct. She doesn’t care about anything but what is honest and true.”
Esther Iverem is the founder of www.SeeingBlack.com whose most recent book of poems is Living in Babylon.
© Copyright 2006 SeeingBlack.com
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