I've been reading a lot of articles from The Onion's A.V. Club site in my spare time lately. Their features and interviews aren't always the most in-depth reads, nor is the cut of their jib particularly sophisticated, but it's a good antidote to Pitchfork and an excellent time-waster for a pop culture junkie like myself. Today I read two pieces that so succinctly and accurately articulated two ideas that I had been wanting to express for a while now, the first in reference to filmmaker Tyler Perry. I've mulled over and over in my head about how much I do not like Mr. Perry and his works and feared that it was simply because of racism that I disliked him so much. Why should I have so much a problem with a successful black man who markets himself much in the same way Donald Trump does? In the A.V. Club's review of TYLER PERRY'S Meet the Browns, they summed up why:
"It's Tyler Perry's aesthetic in a nutshell: strong, suffering female protagonists, no-good men, clear-cut ethical quandaries, schizophrenic tonal shifts handled as gracefully as bumper-car collisions, and a complete absence of moral ambiguity. Perry continues to see the world in black and white, to critics' chagrin and his fans' delight." If you've ever seen Diary of a Mad Black Woman or only watched ten minutes of it, you'll know exactly what they're talking about. There is no better way to describe the mood of a Tyler Perry film than to compare it to a severe mental disorder. Just take a look at the bi-polar poster series for DOAMBW, and you will probably have no idea whether or not the film is an overwrought melodrama or a goofball comedy. It's both. Tyler Perry's films are an exercise in sacrificing any and all forms of subtlety and complexity in favor of tired-and-true formulas (no matter how well they may or may not fit amongst each other) that we know as "crowd pleasing." I am not trying to imply that crowd pleasing in and of itself is a bad thing, but I feel that as Mr. Perry's ever-growing empire of self-promotion continues to climb, so too will the assertion that plays and films, despite being deeply, deeply flawed, are the quintessence of "black entertainment." I've read sources (that had escaped me now) that his TBS sitcom "House of Payne" is the most watched cable sitcom of all time and Perry has plans to start his own TV network in the future. It's hard not to condemn Tyler Perry's work without condemning his audience and it's hard not to condemn his audience without condemning black people, or at least that's what it feels like I'm doing. I'm tempted to talk about great works of so-called black entertainment like Kanye West (I know, I know), early Spike Lee, The Wire, In Living Color, and Chappelle's Show, but we all know these have mostly white audiences*. A show like The Wire, and please excuse me for talking about it so much lately, has been critically lauded multiple times as being one of the if not the best show on television ever and yet it struggled each season to attract viewers. And yet I have no doubt that Tyler Perry could take a crap in front of a video camera and make millions from it. It's absurd. It's infuriating. It's completely understanding. Does anyone else dislike TYLER PERRY as much as I do and have as hard a time as I do articulating it?
Oh shit, I was also going to talk about this other article about the trouble with modern Southern Rock, but I'm just going to go ahead and say something entirely different about music. You know, as much as I regret having listened to shitty bands like KoRn, Staind, and, to a lesser extent, Tool and Nine Inch Nails (their older stuff still holds up in my opinion) back when I was in high school, when they put out an album it was almost always AT LEAST an hour long. Now I understand the all-killer, no-filler mentality ,and I appreciate it, but there's no justifying calling something an LP if it's not at least 50 mins long (I'm looking at you Twin Cinema). No wonder people aren't buying CDs anymore.
Okay time for bed I'm tired.
*I know this is only based on conjecture, but bear with me.