PZ's Pics
Meet Tyler Perry

Tyler Perry’s achievement is a simply outstanding and also counter-cultural presentation of Christian themes and values, in dramatic form. It sometimes surprises me how many white people do not know about Mr. Perry and his movies. It’s almost as if his movies exist within such a definite cultural niche that only ‘insiders’ know about them. And that is even though they are consistently the box office leaders for the first weekends on which they are released. So what am I talking about? Well, Diary of a Mad Black Woman and Madea’s Family Reunion and Daddy’s Little Girls and Why Did I Get Married? and now, the newly released Meet the Browns. These are all movies of stage plays, which originated from “urban theater”, as it’s called, and which are the contemporary form of the “gospel plays” that have flourished in the African-American community. Diary was Perry’s breakthrough movie.  It’s pretty schmaltzy and parts of it could almost define the “chic flic”, but its explicit Christianity also defines what it is to be counter-cultural. See it, if only for the church service at the end. Reunion, which was based on a stage play that is better than the movie and is also available on DVD, climaxed with a speech to African-American young people that only Perry could have gotten away with.  Daddy’s Little Girls, which also featured an appearance in the pulpit by Bishop Eddy Long, was a little grittier, a little more assured as a movie, and took a volatile theme to the proper limit. All of these movies are fascinating to compare with the stage plays. Thus, for example, the movie Diary has a slightly less Christian ending than it did on the stage.  And Family Reunion is less explicit religiously on the screen than it was within urban theater. I believe that Madea Goes to Jail is in production right now.  In that particular play, which Mary and I were able to see in its first production, Perry includes his first white minister as a positive role model.  And the performance of “Jesus Loves Me," in the jail, with a conversion taking place on stage, is extremely moving. In addition to his plays and his movies, Perry also produces a television show, on the TNT channel Wednesday nights, entitled “House of Payne.”  The comedy is a little broad, and the spiritual message is definitely toned down. It was Perry who learned quite soon in Hollywood – and voiced this in all sorts of forums – that TV sitcoms could not have the name of "Jesus" uttered within the script.  He is trying something in “House of Payne,” and trying to reach a larger audience than ever.  For myself, I find the show a little weaker than the movies. Tyler Perry also wrote a New York Times best-seller (it was #1 for about three weeks) called Don’t Make a Black Woman Take Off Her Earrings.  He autographed a copy of it for me, which sits on the coffee table in the Rector’s Study at All Saints. When I stood in line with 250 African-American women to meet Mr. Perry, and finally had my chance, and gave him a long spiel about how his work had helped and inspired the students at Trinity, he looked up somewhat amusedly at this clerical-collared white face, and said, “I receive that” … which seemed like the perfect and only possible response to my long and whirring intro! Well, go out and rent Why Did I Get Married?  It tells the truth!  Mary and I watched it recently, and even though we are not a part historically of the culture from which it is speaking, the reality of the marriages portrayed is powerfully the case.  Perry hides nothing, discloses just about everything, and all through the lens of a practicing and committed Christian.  He has suffered, so he knows what he’s talking about. I sometimes wonder, parenthetically, how a European audience would "hear" what Perry is saying. These movies reflect such a naturally conceived Christian viewpoint about people and life – they bring God so effortlessly and constantly into the conversation of everyday characters – that I have to wonder, how would a secular British person receive the work?  Dumbfoundedly, I think.  Yet, Europeans might derive tremendous and active hope from the message of these films. Can we get Tyler Perry to come to All Saints some time and speak to us? He is a little too “big” just now for that to happen probably, but I am honestly paging you out there.  Any chance we can make contact with the man?