To Brand and Rebrand: Questioning the Futurity of Tyler Perry

Leah Aldridge considers where things might go for Perry in this contemporary moment. She questions: Can we expect to see Perry rebrandin order to broaden his appeal to more mainstream or international markets? What might such changes mean for both his representations of blackness and for his domestic media empire? In doing so, she encourages us to think of Tyler Perry’s image as central to discussions about celebrity, branding, blackness, consumption, marketing, and (international) distribution.

The Case for Calling George Lucas the “White Tyler Perry”

Incomparing and contrasting Perry’s media influence with that of another famous director, Paul Reinsch concludes the collection by reframing the media discourse around Tyler Perry’s work and career to consider him alongside a comparable media mogul: George Lucas. What might the creator of Star Wars and the creator of Madea possibly have in common (aside from a possible penchant for high fantasy)? In closely analyzing the critical reception, aesthetics, and ideologies of Perry’s For Colored Girls(2010) and Lucas’s Red Tails(2012), Reinsch exposes how each filmmaker ultimately negotiates a particular nostalgia for Classical Hollywood Cinema while also maintaining a particular intrusiveness.

“Who I Am Is Conflicting with This Dress I Got On”: Madea’s Intimate Public and the Possibilities and Limitations of False Disguise

Rachel Daniel explores Madea’s popularity among Black women and also demonstrates how the character successfully functions at the center of Perry’s media output. She explores the many complicated and often contradictory layers of appeal that Perry’s performances of Madea encourage. In doing so, she grapples with some of the ideological and political limitations of this character by investigating Perry’s use of drag as a “false disguise” to perform Madea. Her exploration crests around the investigation of specific social and cultural values that motivate Perry’s unique construction of his famous character. In Daniel’s theorization, Perry’s fan base around Madea represents a powerful, critical, and vocal discourse community--an intimated public--that has supported the media mogul and his contested character despite rampant critiques of the character’s flawed presentation or of Perry’s motives in constructing her.

From the Margins to Center Stage: Tyler Perry’s Popular African American Theatre

If Perry now functions as a platform onto himself, his career began with seemingly much less broad, but no less significant, aspirations. In her analysis of taste, class, and the popular, in Chapter TwoRashida D. Shaw places Tyler Perry’s career within the context of a Black performance and theatre history that extends back to the nineteenth century, as she centralizes the history of the “Chitlin Circuit” or “Urban Theatre.” After establishing a literary cultural history that frames and restages the popularity, appeal, and reception of Perry’s plays, Shaw’s analysis more closely explores the ramifications of Perry’s behind-the-scenes role and onstage presence at the 2012 Tony Awards during a year that resulted in numerous historic successes for not only African American theatre-makers, but also for African American–centric productions in general.

Bring the Payne: The Erasure of the Black Sitcom and the Emergence of Tyler Perry’s House of Payne

Continuing a television studies analysis of Perry, Artel Great argues in Chapter Eight that from both a critical and an industrial perspective, the sitcom Tyler Perry’s House of Payne(TBS, 2006-2012) represents acomplex but no less problematic contribution to the history of Black televisual authorship. Precisely because there has been a pronounced dearth of Black representation on television, Great demonstrates that the politics of thirst best characterize how Black audiences engage the few existing images of televisual blackness. Despite several unprecedented industrial achievements (such as surpassing The Jeffersons[CBS, 1975-1985] as the longest running Black sitcom), when considered within the context of the history and formal structure of the Black sitcom, House of Payne digresses as itrejuvenates the narrative conventions and visual cues of uncritical Black minstrelsy. Rife with missed opportunities for teaching complex lessons about Black subjectivity, esteem, and interiority, Perry’s sitcom succeeded, then, mostly because of the continued omission of blackness on television.

“Tyler Perry Presents …”: The Cultural Projects, Partnerships, and Politics of Perry’s Media Platforms

Samantha N. Sheppard provides a broad and establishing consideration of how Perry functions in and across different media industries. Sheppard analyzes Perry’s different “practices,” “partnerships,” and “politics” as she explores some of the ways in which Perry maximizes his name recognition and brand across different platforms like theater, film, television, straight to DVD, and video on demand. While Perry’s brand has been instrumental in marketing his high volume of creative projects, other directors and writers now also seek an association with him so that they might leverage their own works. In this way, Sheppard theorizes that Perry has become a media platformonto himself. In complicating and destabilizing the assumption that a partnership with Perry will naturally lead to success, the chapter concludes with an analysis of the production and marketing of one of Perry’s affiliated projects, Tina Gordon Chism’s 2013 comedy Tyler Perry Presents Peeples.

Epilogue

Miriam J. Petty contributes a brief reflection on her personal and professional engagement with Perry’s controversial character Madea. She thinks about Madea as a figure that allows Perry the freedom to cross otherwise uncrossable lines and boundaries, and to play generically, iconographically, intertextually, cross-culturally, visually, intergenerationally and performatively. Playing in this multitude of ways allows him to bring Madea forth in all of her taboo, ideologically vexed, contradictory glory. Ultimately, the one act enables the other; their interconnectedness is at the core of Perry’s significance as contemporary cultural phenomenon.

Spike and Tyler’s Beef: Blackness, Authenticity, and Discourses of Black Exceptionalism

Moving the conversation about Perry to a more meta-discursive level, Karen M. Bowdre’s chapter features an examination of the careers of Spike Lee and Tyler Perry.The way we discuss Black Hollywood and independent directors, argues Bowdre, reinforces a (Black) American exceptionalismthat materializes as a flawed tendency to evaluate and elevate one Black director at a time. Bowdre demonstrates that while at the onset Perry and Lee may seem worlds apart both artistically and ideologically, both directors have benefited from a similar system of exclusion.

One Man Hollywood: The Decline of Black Creative Production in Post-Network Television

Aymar Christian and Khadijah Costley White theorize Perry’s place in the television history, explicitly in the context of his niche production system and industrial marketing practices. Christian and Costley White critique Perry’s dominance in the televisual landscape and the numerous ways in which his direct control over his media entities has compromised not only his content but also his company’s ethics and labor practices. Given that Perry’s television successes occurred concomitant with the fragmentation of key media marketplaces and given the lack of structural changes surrounding his productions, Christian’s and Costley White’s chapter ultimately questions (and redefines) the extent to which Perry has truly been a game-changer in the television industry.

“All My Life I Had to Fight”: Domestic Trauma and Cinephilia in Tyler Perry’s Archive of Feelings

Tyler Perry is the most prominent media personality to make a career out of representing African American women’s experiences with abuse and trauma. Focusing on affects, Ben Raphael Sher closely investigates Perry’s cinematic representations while simultaneously theorizing Perry’s cinephilia, or passionate love of cinema. In making clear the relationship between domestic trauma and cinephilia in the play Madea’s Class Reunion(2003), the film Madea’s Family Reunion(2006), andin Perry’s introduction to The 2006 Black Movie Awards, Sher addresses the widely held suspicion that Perry’s work capitalizes on the traumas of Black women. This chapter complicates these criticisms by suggesting that Perry’s representations of suffering Black women have less to do with a pathological desire to punish Black women and more to do with Perry’s complex fantastical and personal identification with them as a trauma survivor himself. Sher uses Perry’s trauma narratives to articulate a critique of the larger cultural lack of representations of male survivors of abuse.