"For Colored Girls" heads to the big screen, Tyler Perry-style — Page 2

I found this interesting post elsewhere, but felt it needed to be spread around. And sorry, Wayman - it indicates that Perry is perhaps the last person on earth fit to translate FOR COLORED GIRLS..to the screen.

"I've seen more than one of this closet case's films. They're basically filmed gospel plays with lots of audience reaction moments, and while I understand why that market is so popular and why people enjoy his films because they feel they finally have a consistent voice onscreen, I think that voice is extremely regressive and uncurious, unlike Spike Lee's work or others.

Perry's films not only allow people to keep sticking their heads in the sand but are also at least borderline misogynist - virtually every one features some iteration of "the successful woman" as a fool who needs to give up that silly career business that done got her in a tizzy, and come back to the loving, strong, masterful arms of her man and the church, not necessarily in that order. Even Janet Jackson had to play this character in WHY DID I GET MARRIED? At worst, these career woman are presented as fairly two-dimensional villains, not only prioritizing their work but sleeping with *GASP* white men. The most extreme example of this in Perry's work was Sanaa Lathan in THE FAMILY THAT PREYS. How was she handled? For her sins, her husband backhands her up against and over a kitchenette, leaving her to crash on the ground. The audience cheered, as they were supposed to.

I think it's wonderful that there is something that black audiences can enjoy. I just wish it wasn't something that attempts to hold the community in stasis. Perry's work is either a cynical calculation based on freezing public tastes and insecurities in a single place and capitalizing on it, or it's an expression of his own profound self-loathing, while still taking time to take swipes at women and glorifying all the men (in Perry's films, he usually plays the one perfect "good man" in the ensemble). Or maybe it's both.

Bottom line, black film can do better. And has before. Hopefully "Precious" is good, even though Perry slapped his name on it after it was finished. And I hear good things about "Gospel Hill."

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Updated On: 9/12/09 at 10:53 PM

...with special guest stars Whitney Houston and Queen Latifah!

(or is the Queen out now?)

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Madea gone legit! Coming soon!