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 (he is a darling of the mainstream), but it is good take on the race, sexual, moral and class politics of this present-day Oscar Micheaux who has formed a lucrative alliance with a big Hollywood studio. For Hilton Als, who wrote the article, there is “no depth of field” in Perry’s characters (who don’t exist in the real world) and he is “not doing the black community any favors” with work that is “intellectually substandard.”  Yet even Als has to concede that Perry is financially successful and has a huge, particularly black working class, following.

The piece needs a password, but a video, posted on The New Yorker website, summarizes some of the issues discussed in Als’s excellent essay.