This Is Finally The Right Time To Talk About Tyler Perry

When I was in Atlanta back in 2019.

I have had long-held opinions about Tyler Perry and his movies for years, but I have not found the right time to express those opinions on this blog…until now. I just watched FD Signifier’s 4-hour video on Tyler Perry where he talks about his beginnings in theatre, to the issues with Perry’s movies, to his vast business empire. This is an incredible video and I highly recommend people to watch it and understand how damaging Tyler Perry is to the black community and other minority communities as well. I am not going to rehash anything in the video, but I want to talk about my personal anecdotes on watching some of Tyler Perry’s movies (particularly the Madea movies) and how I have come to have the opinions that I have about him.

Years ago, I remember going to one of my family members’ houses, and my parents and other family were watching a Madea movie on TV. I sat down to watch the movie with my extended family and I remember everyone laughing uproariously at Madea’s antics, and I found myself not laughing at any of the jokes and antics at all. In fact, I was horrified at what I saw. At various points of my life, I would see my parents, their friends, and other family members watch Madea movies and I just could not get into it at all.

If I could put into my own words what I think about Tyler Perry and his movies and other media, I think that he promotes several negative stereotypes about black people and the black community. To put it bluntly, I think Tyler Perry movies are modern-day minstrel shows that harm the black community. There are Madea movies where she (and when I mean “she”, I mean Tyler himself who plays her in drag) beats children for acting up which is incredibly traumatizing and hits a little too close to home for me. Madea feels the need to tell black women how they should just move on from their trauma and not try to properly heal from what has happened to them. He also seems to regularly portray darker-skinned black men as evil and lighter-skinned black men as “saving” the troubled black woman in her abusive marriage. I also think Tyler Perry is a terrible filmmaker where most of his movies follow the same terrible plot with nonsensical plot twists. It is the equivalent of low-brow black media slop.

Outside of the hilarious Tyler Perry episodes on The Boondocks and Atlanta detailing the problems with his filmmaking, I have always felt alone among my family and my community in having these opinions about Tyler Perry. I had to do some extended research online to see if there was anyone who had the same views that I had. When I watched the FD Signifier video, I felt a sense of vindication. I read the YouTube comments and I seen so many people have the same opinions that I had and share their personal stories and anecdotes, and I think that is amazing. 

I know that Tyler Perry has his audience of the church-going, middle-aged and older black and immigrant women, but I always think about the education angle of his audience. I do not want to generalize, but I think those who enjoy watching Tyler Perry videos are those who have a lack of formal education and fail to think critically about what they are watching. I find it a bit disgusting that Tyler Perry built a billion-dollar empire off the exploitation of the black community, and his massive studio in Atlanta is a depressing monument of that exploitation.

I do not have anything against people enjoying Tyler Perry’s works, but I also hope people start to become aware of how he profiles black people in those works, because I do not think this is positive for the community at all.