Tyler Perry Sucks

Posted at 4:30 PM Jan 26, 2009

By Andy Beckerman



As the kind of  white, bourgeois jackass so famously captured in Weird Al's "White & Nerdy," I'm about as much Tyler Perry's demo as Gleeb-Kra, my tentacled friend from Dimension 12. Yet, cynical hucksterism and naked commercialism transcend race and class lines like a love of fudge or mozzarella sticks, or fried fudge sprinkled with cheese bits. And when as in the case of Medea Goes To Jail, when your most iconic character Medea starts sharing movie titles with the Ernest franchise, something has definitely gone beyond the pale enough where pale pieces of shit like myself feel the eternal critical duty to stand up and scream into the void. Know what I mean, Vern?

Like the Bush Administration, I ignored all the signs of terror... until it was too late. As Perry flew his latest vehicle into my eyes, the aesthetic center of my brain collapsed. And yes, conspiracy fuckwads, the melting temperature of aesthetic cognitive modules is consistent with the NIST reports of my neuro-meltdown. However, as my brain fell apart, the history of black cinema flashed across the horizon, and while I can understand Perry's ascent, I cannot condone the shape it's taken.



There's no doubt Hollywood is racist. And while every once and a while talented actors like Denzel Washington get wide, color-blind recognition, more often than not, someone like Halle Berry, an abominable boardtreader, is the one being showered with symbolic accolades, if anything at all. (Why was the mostly black cast of The Wire never up for any major awards?)

And unfortunately, It is because the studio system isn't honorably servicing the 41 million or so black citizens of this country that Perry gets any leverage at all, exploiting middle class black America to peddle his cloying bullshit and half-assed Mrs. Doubtfire rip-offs. Stealing from noted joke-burglar Robin Williams, Mr. Perry? You should be ashamed of yourself. Is there no honor among thieves?

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