We Need To Respect Tyler Perry

I think Tyler Perry's movies are wack. He's a horrible actor who finds a way to shoehorn himself into every film. I don't even think he's a good writer. All of the material he writes leans heavily on, don't try to fix your problems, God and Madea will handle it for you. Damn near every movie has an abusive relationship where the woman is beaten or raped, often by a dark skinned black man. Only to fall madly in love with another man, most often a light skinned man, and then live happily ever after. While we're talking skin tones just about every single one of the leading women falls right in the middle of light and dark skin. I have no reason to ever watch one of his super religious color struck movies, never. Now, with all that said, we need to respect Tyler Perry.

Tyler Perry has really helped revitalize black cinema. Ava DuVernay is killing it, Shonda Rhimes is killing it, Rick Famuyiwa is killing it, Ryan Coogler is killing it and so many other black directors, writers and producers are finally getting a chance to shine. Even when all these people were well known in the black community before, especially people like Shonda Rhimes and Rick Famuyiwa have been grinding for decades now. The rest of the world is finally coming around to acknowledge their work.

The thing is, it just would not have happened without Tyler Perry breaking ground. Tyler Perry is the guy who broke box office records and made Hollywood say "Maybe there's money in these black movies after all." It took almost 10 years for a sequel to The Best Man to get made. Have you seen Atlanta? It's the best show on TV right now in my opinion. But, would it have gotten the green light if Tyler Perry wasn't raking in money with Meet The Browns, The Haves and The Have Nots, House of Payne and other TV shows?

It took Tyler Perry to make Hollywood respect black created content. It doesn't matter how much you hate him for whatever reason, if he didn't make all that money, a lot of these shows would have never been given a look. Spike Lee is a great director, most of the time, but he doesn't make money like Tyler Perry. Now shows like Empire, Power, Atlanta, Queen Sugar, Black-Ish and so on are breaking records every season. I mean, Black-Ish made Modern Family change it's air time. That's crazy when you consider for a long time, it looked like we weren't ever getting anymore black sitcoms until Tyler Perry came along.

It's not just the creators either. Someone in Hollywood is mad right now, because Tyler Perry is fucking with the pay scale for black actors and actresses. Let's take Taraji P. Henson for example. She's been acting her ass off on TV and in movies since 1997. She's an award winning actress and the only women more loved in the black community are Oprah and maybe Angela Bassett on a good day. Despite being the third billed star in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, she was only paid in the lowest of six figure range compared to the millions Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett made. Additionally she had to pay her own cost of staying in New Orleans while they were filming there. Then along comes Tyler Perry fucking up the pay scale and just throwing a ton of money at her for her role in I Can Do Bad All By Myself. Now she makes more for every episode of Empire than she did that movie. While Taraji may be the most noted case, she's not the only one.

I don't care for Tyler Perry's work in any form. But, I respect the man. He was the last foot that needed to get in that door before Black Hollywood was able to just tear it down. He's not the most important person in Black Cinema history at all. Yet, he's important enough that we have to recognize that his contributions helped usher in this new golden age of black cinema we're in right now. Also he killed Nate Parker at the box office and finally put an end to that "I beat a rape charge," victory tour Nate was doing. So yeah, we cool Tyler Perry.

You can hear Darrell on the CP Time and Powerbomb Jutsu podcasts. He also plays classic arcade games on The Cabinet. You can also check out his playthrough of Sleeping Dogs.
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