Tyler Perry Exploits Black America Essay Example

Actor, director, playwright, screenwriter, producer and, author Tyler Perry has taken Hollywood by storm. Perry has grossed close to $500 million in domestic box office receipts since 2005 (Smith) with his stage plays that have been turned into movies. Being ranked by Forbes magazine as the sixth highest-paid man in Hollywood (Daniels), Tyler Perry has revolutionized black entertainment by becoming the first black man to own a major movie and television studio in Atlanta, GA (Walker). I like Tyler Perry and enjoyed his early stage productions and films such as “Daddy’s Little Girl’s” and “The Family that Preys”. However, I struggle with his portrayal of black people, more specifically on his TBS television show, “House of Payne”. Perry’s “House of Payne” exploits African Americans as entertainment, combining slap stick comedy with regressive stereotypes with characters such as Curtis the Coon, Ella the Mammy, Janine the Drug Addicted, selfish Mother and Calvin the “Happy Negro”, remedial Player. I plan to deconstruct the “House of Payne” to reveal its minstrelsy nature and demonstrate how “House of Payne” does nothing to counteract racial assumptions that black people are ignorant, hip hopping, over weight jigaboos that are nothing more than comic relief.

Tyler Perry supporters, who are mostly black, church going women, feel as though they can relate to Perry’s characters, strong Christian messages, and are happy that Perry keeps black actors on the big screen, and on television (Smith). Much has been

said about Tyler Perry’s “House of Payne” and how it is a new millennium minstrel show. Minstrel shows consisted of white male actors, in black face that performed what they perceived as blackness. Performers of blackface interpreted blacks to be lazy, buffoonish, cowardly characters that often lied, stole and mangled the English language (Stark). Ultimately minstrel company owners hired black men and women, emphasizing that their