Flashback: Tyler Perry

Violating somewhat the high-minded principles enunciated below, I take note of the $40 million opening weekend gross posted by Tyler Perry's latest, Madea Goes to Jail. I could point out that I was there relatively early, but of course millions of rock ribbed Perry fans were there much, much earlier, way below the pop culture radar.

I would continue to recommend a look at Perry's stage work to those who want at least a glimmer of insight into the tone and conventions of his movies, not to mention the tumultuous audence response, before writing them off as low brow religious hokum.

And I would suggest gently to the NY Time' fastidious Mr. Scott that if he finds the "transitions from raw emotion to silly humor" in Perry's movie "jarring," he should try Bollywood.

Reviewer`s Notes
posted Mon, 27 Feb 2006

Read this and see if you can figure out what sort of production is being described:

THE STORYLINE IS AN intense marital melodrama in which a verbally and physically abusive husband rejects his childless wife in order to take up with her fertile best friend. Punishment is swift: he is struck down and confined to a wheelchair, in a semi-comatose state---only to rise and walk again when his wife and her devoutly religious mother kneel down center stage and pray for him during an appartent thunder storm (though these may merely be some overly enthusiastic off-stage lighting effects). The context of the central storyline is the wife's huge extended family, whose members live under the same roof and whose shared religion serves as a frame of reference for every important decision. Would it help to know that all of the story's big soliloquies (the husband's rejection of his wife, the wife's declaration of vengeance) are sung rather than spoken? Or that at regular intervals a group of raucously comic supporting characters (eccentric uncle; even more eccentric hot-headed grandma [Madea, of course]) take over the stage for minutes at a stretch to enact almost completely gratuitous comic set-pieces?

My daughter got it in one: "It's like a Bollywood movie. One of the older ones, with Johnny Lever." What I had been watching, in fact, was the DVD video recording of a performance of the original stage version of Tyler Perry's Diary of a Mad Black Woman. I had rented it by mistake, meaning to take a look instead at the toned down and classed up movie remake that was one of last year's biggest "surprise hits" -- which is what critics always call it when they have missed the boat by more than the usual few miles. This was a lucky mistake for me, because, as it turned out, the theatrical version was exactly the sort of no-stone-left-unturned entertainment I have learned to love when the dialog is in Hindi. (It's intresting that the music is the one element of Perry's stage style that is eliminated completely from the movie version; the play was performed by a cast of gospel singers doubling as actors.)

THE UNIFORMLY NEGATIVE REVIEWS Perry's films have recieved from mainstream (read "white") critics were certainly discouraging. The one most often quoted was Roger Ebert's:

"Diary of a Mad Black Woman" begins as the drama of a wife of 18 years, dumped by her cruel husband and forced to begin a new life. Then this touching story is invaded by the Grandma from Hell, who takes a chainsaw to the plot, the mood, everything. A real chainsaw, not a metaphorical one. The Grandma is not merely wrong for the movie, but fatal to it -- a writing and casting disaster. And since the screenplay is by the man who plays Grandma in drag, all blame returns to Tyler Perry. What was he thinking? ... I've been reviewing movies for a long time, and I can't think of one that more dramatically shoots itself in the foot.

Ebert seems to have had no clue that the film was adapted from a play, much less a hugely successful example of a flourishing school of musical melodrama whose conventions are still at work, to some extent, in the more naturalistic movie versions. Instead the style was described as if all of its salient characteristics were the result of bizarre miscalculation or incompetence. Exactly the kind of put down routinely visited upon Bollywood.

MY INTEREST in Perry was sparked by a radio report about his struggles to get his plays produced on the so-called "Chitlin' Circuit," and about their strong Christian themes. It was also a point of interest that Perry had helped the Reverend T.D. Jakes adapt the play that later became the powerful Christian film Woman Thou Art Loosed, which I had reviewed favorably for the LA Weekly. And if middle-class white movie critics have a hard time with demotic Black cultural forms it's fair to say that they are completely tone deaf when it comes to religion. (One of my favorite examples is an item that ran last year in EW, to the effect that that the upcoming film version of The Da Vinci Code could be sold to the same audience that had supported The Passion of the Christ.) It is axiomatic that if a film has a religious angle, and gets bad reviews, the MSM's allergy to religion must have been at least partially responsible.

ROGER EBERT DISMISSES the movie's "Christian agenda," too, but without ever quite realizing what it is. Perhaps it is simply beyond the ken of a person who is not religious to realize that the most serious danger possed by the death of a spouse would be its effect in udermining the survivor's faith. "Don't let this turn you away from God," the abandomned wife is warned by her mother, though at that point it's already much too late. And when the wayward husband recovers and staggers upright and falls to his knee to repent, he expresses his change of heart in orthodox Christian language: "You are a gift to me from God. When I mistreated you it was a slap in His face."

A handsome and sensitive suitor for the wife's hand turns up in both the stage and the screen version and in human terms it may seem bizarre to reject this unambiguously good man in order to re-embrace the abusive Prodigal Husband. But in Christian terms this is what it all comes down to; Tyler is trying to show us how lives can be reshaped when they are touched by a Power that is more than human.

THE CRITICS HAD A particularly hard time with the raucous, truth-yelling Uncle Joe and Medea characters (both played by Perry, in alternate scenes in the stage versions and with split screen effects and better wigs in the film), who are recurring supporting characters in all of Perry's theater work, always entering to loud woops of approval from the fans. These are the characters that sell tickets, the ones his fans come back to see again and again, that induce them to sit still for the heartfelt moralizing. They are profane commentators whose comments satirize the melodramatic goings on eddying around them, without apprently rendering the high emotional moments any less effective.

In the special features interview on the DVD of DMBW/The Play, Perry explains that his project as a writer-director is to help Black theater grow by slowly introducing more serious themes into the Chitlin' Circuit format---but not so fast that the core audience is left behind. In terms of its origins, in other words, it is the heartfelt dramatic elements and not the comic characters that are extraneous.

CRITIC ARMOND WHITE noted in the New York Press that
"Critics hail [David] LaChappelle for discovering a little-known subculture [in Rize], but these are the same clueless trend spotters who disdained the film version of Tyler Perry's vaudeville-drama Diary of a Mad Black Woman. They prefer Rize because it doesn't require sympathy with middle-class black gospel or an appreciation of black showbiz tradition. The wildly gesticulating dancers in Rize reinforce apprehensiveness about urban youth being out of control."
I'M NOT SURE HOW a Cultural Studies professor would account for the resemblance between Perry's films and the products of Bollywood, though to me it's unmistakable. On one level it makes perfect sense that two forms of entertainment so completely in tune with their audience and so unselfconsciously devoted to showing the folks (or The Folk) a good time (Bollywood's "affirmative attitude to entertainment") should adopt similar styles and devices.

I know a bit about the history of Bollywood's conventions, which did indeed grow out of popular theater forms, urban melodramas based on 19th century British melodramas, and village religious pagents. (If you can wade through the academic undergrowth there's some good historical information here.) People who worked in those stage traditions became India's first filmmakers in the silent era. Like most whites I know much less about the development of Black theater in America, which is why I had to be led to an appreciation of Perry's films via the sub-continent. But on the DVD of the MBW play it is evident that the audience is very directly and vocally involved in everything that's happening on stage; that they are locked in every step of the way. Perry in his Special Features interview describes touring the country with his plays and using audience reactions as a guide when revising them. one gets a sense that the plays are produced partly in collaboration with the audience, as the Marx Brothers touring vaudeville productions famously were.

ALTHOUGH MOST OF THE SONGS are used as background or source music in the movie version of DMBW,, there is one amazing moment of full-throated musical melodrama toward the end, a moment that any Bollywood heart-tugger would be proud of. A reminder of the power of music to express dramatic emotions that may have been abadoned in the West (and often even in Bollywood of late) because it's too potent to allow a fastidious, controlled response; you either allow yourself to be overwhelmed or you feel nothing.

I would respectfully submit that it Roger Ebert did indeed manage to sit through the whole film, and saw this and was not so moved, it might finally be time for him to consider another line of work.

NB: Tyler Perry's latest, Madea's Family Reunion made over $30 million this past weekend.

UPDATE: "GREAT MINDS" DEPT:

Just as this was (as we say) going to press, my friend Joey O'Bryan passed along the following exchange:
Re: the similarities between Bollywood conventions and MADEA'S FAMILY REUNION.

Re: Will it be odd if a white family goes to see this?
by - manjitsinghpabla (Sun Feb 19 2006 12:04:41 )
Im Indian and my whole family loved DMBW, i think general themes in that movie like family, revenge, betrayal are all major themes you find in both indian movies and in DMBW.

Madea' the Bollywood flick?
by - ajy1 4 hours ago (Mon Feb 27 2006 07:08:39 )
I'm Chinese American and my girlfriend is white and we both went to see "Madea" on opening night. We both really enjoyed it and would agree with the poster who said that this plays a lot like a Bollywood film (we see a lot of those). This film is thematically a lot like one. It's got the family dynamics (matriarch in conflict with her daughters, 2 differing stories about relationships incl. one that could've been a Shahrukh/Kajol one), sermonizing (much like Amitabh would do at the end of a movie), melodrama and "intense" acting, upper class struggles (like any Yash Raj film, complete with overly "glamorized" sets), musical numbers (1 line dance sequence and 1 song serenade, with songs throughout), and comic relief. (Medea and Uncle Joe could've easily been played by someone like Johnny Lever). I didn't know what to expect after the last flick, "Diary of a Mad Black Woman," which was notable more for how bad it was. It seems that Tyler Perry has really nailed the formula (since this is essentially the same film as "Diary" but perfected). Quite entertaining through and through, this should crossover with a bigger audience. Anyone notice those similarities as well?

Re: 'Madea' the Bollywood flick?
by - toxic_staple 2 hours ago (Mon Feb 27 2006 09:22:28 )
what bollywood movies would you recommend to those of us who liked this movie?

Re: 'Madea' the Bollywood flick?
by - ajy1 1 hour ago (Mon Feb 27 2006 10:18:09 )
I'd say that "Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Guam" may definitely be a good choice. That flick has a lot of the elements that were displayed in this film and is a good representation of the family drama/comedy staple.

This one is a personal fave: "Na Tum Jaano Na Hum".

And for sermonizing, you can't wrong with Amitabh Bachchan in "Baghban".

Here's an interesting article on the theme of women taking revenge on their tormentors in Bwood.
I'm told this exchange was copied from the IMDB Meassge Board for Madea's Family Reunion, though I haven't had time yet to scroll down through all the messaages to confirm this.

Madea
posted Wed, 01 Mar 2006 16:50:21 -0800

Tyler Perry inteviewed by Elvis Mitchell on NPR's "The Treatment." The name Madea is an affectionate contraction of "Mother Dear," a common Southern nickname: "It has nothing to do with Euripedes."

Mitchell mentioned an article [Gates, Henry Louis. 1997. "The Chitlin Circuit." The New Yorker. February 3], reprinted here, that I have not yet been able to find on line. But this one offers a vivid glimpse.

Predictably, other studios are now looking to find their own Tyler Perrys on the black theater circuit.

Newsweek says a "flood of mail" forced Ebert to recant his DMBW review---and it mentions Bollywood. Who's crazy now?

Interesting Owen Gleiberman review in EW, on line here (scroll down).
Let's not sell Tyler Perry short. As the vinegar-witted Madea, he's a drag performer of testy charm, but in his overlit patchwork way he's also making the most primal women's pictures since Joan Crawford flexed her shoulder pads. "Madea's Family Reunion" plays Lisa's horrific engagement off the romantic awakening of her sister (Lisa Arrindell Anderson), but Perry's women aren't just looking for love; they're snapping psychological chains of poverty and abuse and upwardly mobile hunger. No wonder the audience finds them liberating.
The irony is that if Owen is hinting what I think he's hinting, Perry could one of these days suddenly become intensely intersting to many of the people who are now dissing him..

Perry is launching a syndicated sit com with an innovative distribution plan, and his first novel will be available in April.

Official website.

Madea 2
posted Tue, 07 Mar 2006 17:59:12 -0800

This review of Madea's Family Reunion, by Matt Zoller Seitz in the NY Press, strikes a good balance:
Any critic who condescends to Tyler Perry hasn't seen his films with a paying audience. Madea's Family Reunion, Perry's follow-up to his smash hit Diary of a Mad Black Woman is the sort of film that invites murmurs of delight or disapproval, gales of laughter and the occasional half-embarrassed sob. This is the kind of movie where the villains behave so atrociously that half the audience bands together to rebuke them. To watch Madea's'with a paying crowd is to understand that popular movie storytelling is alive. Not necessarily alive and well, mind you, but alive.

[snip]

At this early stage, Perry's films are more curious than impressive, but they still deserve respect as genre-fusing entertainment, as records of a particular time and place in black America, and as reminders of an era when even the klutziest films connected with life.
The finale of (to give it its full official title) Tyler Perry's Madea''s Family Reunion: The Stage Play has the second most impressive single piece of music-theatrical melodrama I've seen in his work to date (the first most impressive being the surprise-entrance-in-song at the end of the film version of Diary of a Mad Black Woman). This one is a full cast ensemble gospel chorus about turning your life over to Jesus. Wouldn't be surprised to learn there were actual in-theater conversions at some stops on the play's 2001 US tour.

WSJ goes Madea
posted Sat, 27 May 2006 07:54:57 -0700

They do make it hard to plug their stuff. This excellent essay by John McWhorter on Tyler Perry's Madea persona will be available on line for only seven days:
Madea knows that the black community cannot wait for the Establishment to save it: "There come a time and place when you'll have a say and you can change things." Make no mistake -- Madea shares the black community's skepticism of President Bush. But if Mr. Perry worked for a think tank and wrote op-eds, he would be considered the latest black conservative. When filtered through Madea such supposedly "right wing" thinking on race becomes mere common sense.



To be sure, some of Mr. Perry's assumptions may not translate perfectly to white readers. What whites often think of as obese Madea thinks of as sensual. She tells us to eat what we want and let the pounds pile up. Her advice on child-rearing includes spanking (more precisely, "Whup that ass!") -- hardly a common way of thinking even among feminism-skeptics like Caitlin Flanagan and her admirers. But then my mother's grounding in that tradition persuaded me to stop talking back to my teachers. Overall, [Perry's bestselling book "Don't Make a Black Woman Take Off Her Earings"] is best read with the Madea character's voice and physicality in mind. Those who haven't caught the live shows or DVDs may wonder what the fuss is about.

The fuss is genuine -- and significant. Mr. Perry's popularity may represent a tipping point in the race debate. Mr. Cosby is too grouchy to reach the unconverted, and perhaps the message is more effective coming from a woman (or "woman"); the warmly maternal is preferable to the sternly paternal.
C.I.: Tulkinghorn.