Tyler Perry and Blaxploitation

African-American director Tyler Perry has the same problems that ‘blaxploitation’ had in the 70s. Stereotypes abound in his films, especially of women, like the black movies of the 70s, but at least they are not superwomen but real women with problems real and heavy women like human beings. They have realized when black actors do a romantic comedy or comedy in general, they play characters that are successful, middle class or upper middle class, but as soon as they do a drama they are poor as fuck! Message delivered — “Real” blacks are always poor.

The critics of your movies are not the people who go to see your movies. Blaxploitation critics said the same thing about those movies, but they made money. But Tyler Perry can grow up, unlike blaxplotiation. He directed “For Colored Girls” and was attacked for portraying black men in the worst light. He is just a man but he is very influential, but still he is a person. He is not trying to have a social, political conscience, but to entertain. Spike Lee and Tyler Perry are at odds. Lee is tired of black people being reduced to silly stereotypes, while Lee thinks Perry is making a mint out of images he hates.

In the ’70s, black audiences loved blaxploitation, seeing people who looked like them attacking The Man and sleeping with their women, and being the hero. But all movies were like that and soon the public got tired of it. It has been said that blaxploitation was so big at one point that the NAACP wanted to monitor the medium. Maybe they should have, the black pictures could have been better. Black movies even saved a studio — MGM!!

Black people long to see better images of themselves than they see in movies and on television. Cable viewership has three channels, BET, Centric, and TV One, and yet there hasn’t been an original drama on either network. African-Americans are the best consumers advertisers can have, and yet they are not being used to their full potential to launch the programs they will support. Black people have to complain, but they should not go to the presidents of this network, but to the mega company that pays their checks. The major companies that own these networks have money for other channels, so why not these?

There was a time when the NAACP was going to boycott movies and television, because they were tired of stereotypes being seen. They didn’t then, but I think they soon will. Audiences may still laugh and enjoy some stereotypes, but there is much more to African Americans than meets the eye.