Tyler Perry & The White Gaze (part 1)

[@nypeach7144]

Thank you, as a black man for acknowledging the point that famous black men add a stigma to the black woman's image when doing their caricatures of us. People believe these images, although there can be some truth to the images but they were too pervasive while not being a representation of the average black woman. We're not a monolith.

[@MrBaskins2010]

the tv shows had writer's rooms* (*=excluding house of payne after episode 100 when the writers saw the success and asked for healthcare. they were promptly fired and the show's quality reflected that going forward). another stellar piece fam, thank you for speaking truth to power

[@finn4786]

You were right i liked this. My extremely white parents jumped on the tyler perry bandwagon in no small part because of the christian themes. He was "one of the good ones", speaking a language they were willing to consider understanding.

[@justiicekeliss]

yeah, what a way to find some "good blacks". watch a tyler perry movie 😁! your parents are racist there isn't no changing that 😭.

[@finn4786]

@@justiicekeliss oh absolutely no contesting that, there are many reasons I won't be speaking to them again and this was definitely one of them

[@MrBaskins2010]

my first family reunion had a tyler perry play bootleg marathon while took the coach bus four hours down to maryland

[@elsamarks8477]

As a white: my only impression of black films for decades was Tyler Perry (and specifically Diary of a Mad Black Woman.) I watched it, didn’t like it, and didn’t think to make an effort to see more black cinema. It took a wildly patient black friend of mine to sit me down with The Best Man for me to get a new perspective. I think a consequence of Tyler Perry is that white people who don’t know better don’t have the opportunity to explore great black movies because his is the loudest voice that sucks up the attention.

[@lemoncholyme]

Breaking In is a great action/thriller, Waiting to Exhale (chick flick/drama), Jordan Peele's latest horror films (Get Out, Us, NOPE), Them and His House (horror), Carmen featuring Dorothy Dandridge (film Opera) and Blaxploitation films such as A Rage In Harlem, Blacula, and Boomerang are great movies. *Honorable Mentions: Vampire in Brooklyn (comedy/horror), Guava Island (musical, thriller, comedy).

[@lemoncholyme]

"As a white" is hilarious 😆

[@Mia.xO8]

This was a conversation u had no business in ma’am black community only

[@enphynitisymone]

@@lemoncholyme ⁠​⁠​​⁠​⁠also honorable mentions: Love Jones, Mahogany, Coming To America, Sparkle (both versions), The Wood, Eve’s Bayou, Mo Better Blues, She’s Got To Have It (any Spike Lee movies)…there’s so many to watch that provides a wider range of perspectives that shows representation of black culture.

[@elsamarks8477]

@@Mia.xO8 the comments boost the channel! KZbin loves comments lol But I get it! I don’t think black cinema should ever cater to white audiences, but I do think most art ought to be appreciated by general audiences, and I think it’s a shame that I ignorantly judged an entire branch of films because I didn’t like a Madea movie.

[@AfroRedMusic]

Also, still poignant and hilarious how apt Aaron's critique of him was via Boondocks LMAO

[@acephaedramusic9588]

Oh, I thought he just sucks at writing in general Edit: This was excellent, can't wait for pt 2

[@jellybelly0000]

Hattie ,Floyd and Joe used to be my favorite characters but his new movies are very cliche now you can guess the plot and it really doesn't has a message like I feel the plays used to have

[@BlakeGildaphish76]

Even in the early 2000s, when his plays were all over the place, i was OVER it! The performances were fairly good, but Tyler Perry plays mostly gave chitlin' circuit to me. .. and i was teenager at the time. Especially those Madea plays. It's been over 20 years and i still hate anything having to do with Madea.

[@iwatchuonutube6638]

The art behind you is doing my head in 😢

[@FatCharlie215]

ay, leave my dorito out of this- lol

[@distinctlydri2831]

Ava wasn’t trying to leave Dallas. He filed for divorce.

[@FatCharlie215]

ive been through too much Tyler Perry- all the films have started to run together- Dallas is a B.A.N anyway

[@usagiwerd6664]

A wonderful video

[@grayice]

The plays were amazing. Gave me so many points on life.

[@colormecoco3779]

2:20 that was the cringiest thing I’ve seen all year….. 😢

[@pacmiller7564]

😂😂You and me both.

[@JusticeLong3317]

This was a great video. A few months ago I had thought to myself about how hard Tyler Perry plays hit the black community in the 2000’s. As your right your mom, auntie, cousins, uncles all probably had a Tyler Perry play on DVD. So when I saw Tyler Perry being heavily critiqued for his films it made me wonder. Why is the disconnect? And I came to the conclusion you do in your video the plays were made for black people and the films are generally made for white audiences. You didn’t mention this in your video but I think the best example of this is Meet The Browns the Play vs Meet The Browns the movie. I think this is especially important because The play version of Meet The Browns is one of the few Tyler Perry plays that does not feature Madea. When it comes to the differences it becomes quite clear that film was made to appeal to white audiences as he went out of his way to add in stereotypes. As in the play the character of Brenda does not exist. There is no single mother with a whole bunch of kids. She doesn’t have a drug dealing baby daddy, so the oldest taking up drug dealing isn’t in the play either. Now it’s been a while since I’ve seen the play but from what I remember it was just pretty much a family drama. In fact if I remember correctly the main couple in the play were a doctor and a lawyer. There was an infidelity storyline but the play (as I remember) was no more stereotypical than say Crooklyn by Spike Lee or Soul Food. Now I no longer watch Tyler Perry plays or his movies. I think the last play I saw was Madea gets a job and the last movie was Madea Halloween. However, this might be a hot take but if you look at the trajectory of Black Cinema a Tyler Perry was bound to happen. In fact, many of the tropes that we see as staples in his movies were not started by him. As you mentioned Tyler Perry frequently has this evil darkskin man who is abusive has no redeeming qualities and is just there to terrorize the woman. However, this trope can also be seen in say Jason’s Lyric. As this pretty much sums up the character of Joshua played by Bokeem Woodbine. As we know the film is about two brothers Jason and Joshua who experience a traumatic life event as children due to their father coming home from Vietnam. However, color comes into play as Joshua (the lighter or lightskin brother) is the one that is given all the redeeming qualities. He has job, he’s thoughtful, romantic, etc. The darkskin brother Joshua is given all the negative qualities. He’s in-and-out of jail, he self medicates, violent, etc. And when it comes to Jason’s Lyric all the darker or dark skin men in the film are robbers, murders, etc. Joshua throughout the movie causes problems for Jason and Lyric that results in Lyric famously telling Jason “you can’t save a brother who doesn’t want to be saved” the movie ends when in a gun standoff Joshua takes his own life after shooting Lyric and the last thing we see is Jason and Lyric on a bus embracing each other it’s like the film sends the message that the lightskin couple can finally be happy now that evil darkskin is dead. Then there’s Terry McMillan. I honestly feel she is Tyler Perry’s predecessor. Now I know that she is an author but I am going to focus on her film adaptations. Some might say that Terry McMillan didn’t have control over how her movie is adapted but she was listed as an executive producer in Disappearing Acts and has writing credits on Waiting to Exhale. Nonetheless, I could completely see Tyler Perry making films like Waiting to Exhale and Disappearing Acts. Let’s start with Waiting to Exhale. In this movie 2/4 of the women are sleeping with married men for majority of the film and one is about to sleep with a married man whose wife was dying of cancer! Bernadine is a complete mess in that film. If black woman were do to what Bernadine did in real life they would get court ordered domestic violence classes. Showing up to her ex husbands job and slapping one of his employees (a white woman at that), burning his clothes and setting his car on fire during a custody battle would more than likely have cost her custody of her children in real life. Then we have to talk about the fact that she did all that out of anger because her husband cheated on her only for her to try and sleep with another woman’s husband. The film tries to portray as though Wesley Snipes’ character is a good guy even though he’s our here laying with other women while his wife is dying of cancer! But i can see that that they were trying to do the wronged by another man and save by a good man trope that Tyler Perry would trademark in his films. Then when we get to Disappearing Acts. In that film it features that irredeemable darkskin black man trope. Again as Wesley Snipes character (the darkest person in the film) has no stable job, two kids he doesn’t really take care of, and a wife that he is legally still with. One thing in the film that I noticed is that there was a time when her friends were trying to set her up with a good man. Since Franklin (Wesley’s character) wasn’t shit. This man is portrayed to be educated, refined, even artistic, and much better suitor than Franklin. The difference is that this man is lightskin. The film is willing to show an intelligent black men but only if he’s lightskin. Thus further perpetuating colorism. There are more examples but I have pretty much already typed an essay😂

[@AfroRedMusic]

THANK YOU!

[@novemberthewriter]

This video got me thinking about how, when I used to work at a video store, I always had this white family come in to rent nothing but "Ma - day - uh" movies (yes, that's how they pronounced it 😂)

[@deshawn1995]

Bro started his video knowing the bullshit 😂

[@reggieroyster6463]

Yur

[@Filmation77]

Eh, I gotta disagree to a point , I don't he's ever made his work for The White Gaze (the closest he ever did to that was "Madea's Witness Protection" with of ALL Actors Eugene Levy and Denise Richards..that's seriously WHITE people there) but one thing which I think is secretly bugging him , is the age of Black Creatives in Hollywood has passed him by ,with names Jordan Peele, Ava DuverNay , Issa Rae and Kenya Barris. His fans are starting to expose Him as a Hack. He's become the Black Roger Corman,he faked it till he made it. But never evolved.

[@FatCharlie215]

he literally mentions on numerous occasions that he needed a white audience...so yea - he did

[@AngelisaHassan]

But he doesn't have a whote audience. I dont see anything wrong with catering to a certain audience as long as it is done respectfully.​@@FatCharlie215

[@zzay3345]

Algorithm

[@LifeOnCoach]

✌🏾

[@badboygoodgirl]

Yerrrrr!!!!

[@camplo777]

Tyler shows the worst in black families

[@SoDamnGangsta]

The wigs he puts on people is some of the funniest shit I’ve ever seen tbh

[@iDewThis4Yu]

Man every black family (atleast in the south) loved Tyler Perry untill he got so big that white folks started paying attention and respectability politics came into play. FOH. Now to be fair his new ish is trash😂. But yall gotta stop pretending like he didn’t put out years of some good family classics

[@WildKardRuss]

So just because he made ppl laugh, we should excuse the way he portrays black ppl???

[@xletragedyx]

It was c00nery from the very beginning. Take off the nostalgia goggles

[@MirrorSurfer]

Thanks for being the one to put not only your channel but your personal wellbeing in danger for our edutainment. When the Perry agents come for you at least you can go out with your head and view count held high.🥲😔🙏🏾

[@FatCharlie215]

they'll for sure hate next weeks video