Rembert rode around in Tyler Perry's Porsche and gave Mr. Madea a piece of his mind
For years, when he was the foremost black person presenting black characters and telling black stories, I thought Tyler Perry's films and shows made my life harder'
The portrait alone is worth a thousand words. Inside the recent edition of New York Magazine, cover subject Tyler Perry strikes an austere backyard pose while chaise lounging in Louis Vuitton sneakers. The accompanying story ("The Brand Keeping Oprah in Business") is written by Rembert Browne, the well-known Atlanta native who recently became writer-at-large at NYMag after jumping ship from Grantland before ESPN pulled the plug on the popular sports and pop culture site. Including among his biggest stories in 2015 was a Grantland interview with President Obama on Air Force One. This story finds him closing the year much closer to home — riding shotgun in Tyler Perry's Porsche Cayenne around Atlanta.
He even scores phoners with Cicely Tyson and Oprah Winfrey to flesh out his profile of the Atlanta-based media maverick.
The story is full of rarely reported tidbits, like the fact that Freaknik first drew Perry to Atlanta in the ’90s. And that he was evicted from his first apartment near the airport after he got behind on rent while working as a bill collector. Perry now lives in the 17-acre West Paces Ferry compound once owned by staunch segregationist and Heart of Atlanta Motel owner Moreton Rolleston, who took his fight against the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to the Supreme Court and lost. That Perry resides in his former home is even more poetic, Rembert writes, considering Rolleston's deed once stated "You cannot sell to niggers."
The crux of the story covers a familiar thread. That being the stark division between Perry's harshest critics and most loyal fans. Or, more importantly, the vast gray area between black folks who deem Perry the bee's knees and those who think his comedic caricatures are the worst thing to happen to black America since Stepin Fetchit.
Spike Lee's old "coonery" buffoonery critique comes up, as well as Perry's major studio expansion with the recent purchase of a large swath of Fort MacPherson at the behest of Mayor Kasim Reed. But here's the twist: The story eventually builds up to an insightful point wherein Rembert — personifying the cultural ambivalence that surrounds Perry the successful businessman vs. Perry the questionable auteur — decides to address the racial baggage head on:
I was suddenly hit with the reality that I would need to be honest with Perry. I knew I had been wrong about him, to some degree, and I wanted him to know that. But I’d also have to tell him that I spent years disliking him and his work, thinking his characters were negatively affecting me as a black person in a white world. That I knew black people were often judged by what people saw or heard, more than what they knew. That I felt black people were often collectively judged by their perceived failures instead of their perceived successes — the latter of which have long been treated as exceptions. That I knew research existed that analyzed the complicated relationships black people have with the images we see of ourselves on the screen, telling us that those images can inspire, but they can also cause great anxiety. That some black people took black characters merely as “entertainment,” but others saw them as images that they needed to instill racial pride, strengthen racial identity, counter racism, and be role models.
A decade of thoughts about Tyler Perry ran through my mind in that moment, and even if he’d made me laugh in Brooklyn, I thought I owed it to him — and myself — to say that, for years, when he was the foremost black person presenting black characters and telling black stories, I thought Tyler Perry’s films and shows made my life harder.
You'll have to head over to NYMag to read Perry's direct response and Rembert's resolution. Suffice it to say, Perry is as aware of the criticism as he is self-aware.
In short, Rembert uses the age-old intellectual debate between W.E.B. DuBois and Booker T. Washington to contextualize the dilemma Tyler Perry poses for some African-Americans, which boils down to "whether good fortune and success is dependent on some approval from whites," he writes, or whether it's fair to use "a group of select blacks to represent the whole" race.
"We’re a century removed from those thinkers — but in some ways, we’re still debating those ideas, and Tyler Perry’s work is at the center of it," Rembert continues.
Indeed, it is.