Tyler Perry did not become a billionaire media mogul by making fine art. He did it by mass-producing plays, films and TV series about scorned Black women and their dysfunctional families who ultimately find succor in Christian lessons in forgiveness, dignity and self-worth. And as mesmerizing as it’s been to watch this New Orleans-born, former temp worker who never finished high school write, produce, direct and act in much of this work – not least as the tart-tongued, pistol wielding granny Madea – the work ethic didn’t exactly endear him to highbrow consumers who expected more of a 53-year-old Black man who rightly crows about opening one of the industry’s largest studio lots on a former Confederate army base that’s played host to everything from Marvel epics to Bad Boys for Life to Coming to America 2.
Spike Lee would set the critical tone against Perry a decade ago, blasting his work as “coonery” and “buffoonery”. But when Perry, who got the last laugh by naming a sound stage after the She’s Gotta Have It director, took risks, the audiences for films like For Colored Girls weren’t nearly as robust as they were for the Madea franchise. “I would love to go do a movie that’s as powerful as Schindler’s List,” he told an audience at a Goldman Sachs conference four years ago. “I wrote a script in 1995 about a Holocaust survivor and a jazz singer. But I knew what I was building I had to focus on … so that I could build all these other things to stand on.”
