The hiphopscholar blog
Is Tyler Perry Enuf for the Rainbow?
by AK on 09/16/10
When news broke that Tyler Perry would direct and produce the choreographed poetic behemoth known as For Colored Girls Who Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Not Enuf, blogs were abuzz. Could Perry handle the complexity of such a script by respected author Ntozake Shange? Who would portray the women with the skill and range necessary to do justice to not just a play, but a monumental statement, a timeless marker of consciousness for Black women since its debut in 1975.
For many these questions are of critical importance, while others are confident in the one-man media empire, who they would defend as if he were their own child. By 2007 Perry had already become one of Hollywood's elite powerbrokers. Perry has a controlling hand in books, films, television, and the ability to create from his own Tyler Perry Studios. His films regularly gross more than 50 million at the box office and often open at the No. 1 spot, not to mention his unprecedented 200 million, 100 episode distribution deal with TBS, Fox, and Lions Gate. Fans moved by his rags to riches rise cite his ability to capture 'real' life stories that are family oriented, uplifting, and containing the right dose of humor.
However critics have noted his work generally lacks depth in quality of scriptwriting and a success formula rooted in pandering cliches of minstrel era stereotypes and buffoonery-with unoriginal redundancy. The most obvious target of criticism, as parodied in a 3rd season Boondocks episode, is Madea. Madea, Mr. Perry himself, cross-dressing as "...a God fearing, gun-toting, pot-smoking, loud-mouthed grandmother" (Tyler Perry website).
While the ability to cash in on Black men cross dressing, or cross dressing in fat suits is an easy money maker (See Martin Lawrence, Eddie Murphy, and the original Geraldine by Flip Wilson) translating one of the most important chorepoems to screen is another matter all together. The institution of Hollywood moving making politics notwithstanding, it will take more than a 'wounded woman just get a good man and go to church' sub text to adequately render the metaphysical weight of what "bein alive & bein a woman & bein colored" is all about.
In some respects this conversation resurfaces the heat the Steven Spielberg production of Alice Walker's The Color Purple endured. Though Spielberg had built a reputation as a bankable Hollywood director/producer during the 1980s many doubted he could capture the psychological, spiritual, and socially layered Black world from a 'Black' point of view as conveyed in Walker's novel. The Color Purple film produced a variety of reviews from those who felt it completely sanitized the most necessary elements of the books sexuality to those who argued the film demonized Black men without addressing the larger forces of their circumscribed social and political condition. Perry, though box office bankable, has yet to demonstrate the level of intensity and texture Shange's characters demand. For those eager to see more than the novelty of the film and a Black success story we will have to see the end of the rainbow to determine if Tyler Perry is enuf.
