Whatever the New Yorker’s rationale for commissioning a piece on Tyler Perry, the “critic-proof” producer and director of Black popular theater and television—now a darling of the mainstream; and beloved by sections of Black audiences—the article offers a useful take on the race, sexual, moral,, and class politics of a contemporary Oscar Micheaux figure who has built a lucrative alliance with a major Hollywood studios.

For Hilton Als, who wrote the piece, there is “no depth of field” in Perry’s characters (who, he suggests, don’t exist in the real world), and Perry is “not doing the Black community any favors” with work that is “intellectually substandard.” Yet even Als concedes Perry’s financial success and his large, particularly Black working-class, following.

Here’s an excerpt:

‘ . . .  Although many of Perry’s plots ostensibly revolve around the idea of female self-actualization, his heroines, instead of finding themselves, are bullied by Madea into a kind of social conformity that has little to do with whatever character traits they exhibit. What’s most offensive to Madea, in her universe of no-good men and the women who love them because they can’t love themselves, are those women who try to catapult themselves above what she sees as their station in life.’ 

To access the article, you need a password, but a short video on The New Yorker website usefully summarizes some of the issues raised in Als’s essay.