the boys all pause

what i wrote back then (june 2010):  the twittersphere was all...a-twitter after this week's episode of the boondocks aired.  aaron mcgruder's satirization of tyler perry was hilarious and blatant.  but some people were turned off by what was perceived as homophobia.  if all you heard was riley punctuating sentences with "no homo" or if you felt queasy because grand-dad didn't want to kiss winston jerome, i can kind of see where you're coming from but then that means that you missed the point.  i'm not going to proclaim that i know what aaron mcgruder was thinking but here is what i had to say in response to a question posed about tyler being "publicly outed" over at parlour magazine.

tyler perry outs himself every time he dons the madea get-up. i had refrained from joining the debate on twitter because let’s face it, debating within 140 characters is limiting & frustrating and it’s so easy to be misconstrued. anyway, i loved that episode. contrary to some people’s belief that it was homophobic, i think that the denial of any homosexual tendencies is self-hating and in a way, homophobic.

but that’s not even why i don’t like tyler perry. aside from the same story line that seems to run through everything he does (can you grow/expand some?), i’m offended by his caricature of black women. yes, the most obvious caricature is madea (i don’t know why people still think men dressing up as women is still funny. and why couldn’t he get a black woman to play the matriarch?!) but all of the 1.5 dimensional women fall into the 3 stereotypes of black women – the mammy (sheila/jill scott), sapphire (angela/tasha smith) and the jezebel (trina/denise boutte). these characters are from “why did i get married?” but they are reoccurring in almost all of perry’s works.

rants aside, i am still optimistic about “for colored girls…” because he is just producing it. the story is already written and he would be hard pressed to twist shange’s vision.

 now:  umm.  what can i say that hasn't already been said?  i plead the 5th.