Urban Chameleon news
In an interview last night on 60 Minutes Tyler Perry responds to Spike Lee's remarks about his work being coonery. I have to say after watching the entire interview I decided to try and back off a little on Tyler as it is clear that he is creating work that relates to HIS experiences (not mine) and should be able to. The problem is because all Black people are grouped together by skin color we even forget that we are individuals and that one person should not have to be responsible for representing the entire race. Now what would be great is if we could have an equally successful mogul as Tyler representing ANOTHER perspective of people of color. Then maybe the rest of us could breath and not be so worried that white people think the images being put out by one powerful Black man reps us all....can I get an amen?
spike dont speak for all of us and tyler dont speak for all of us..its not their job to do that. we are diverse as any culture so the representations we see will always speak to some of us. i had an uncle just like mr brown. he an exageration we can all see that. its very dangerous when a black man goes against another one in public.. what is his point do he not want tyler to work. if folks didnt like his product they wouldnt buy it.
ReplyDeleteits like when the naacp spoke negatively about the so called blackspotaion all they succeded in doin was putting black folks out of work. if spikes stuff was what folks liked he could be in tylers position. he sounds like he's hatin. peace
It's interesting that the Beverly Hill Billys
ReplyDeletecan be on but Amos and Andy Can't.
Wake Up People.
Amos and Andy was one of the funniest and most beloved television and radio shows of all time.Alvin Childress(Amos), Tim Moore (Kingfish) and Spencer Williams Jr. (Andy) were three of the finest comics of all time.Where are there Stars on the Hollywood walk of fame. The truth is, Amos 'N Andy and Tyler Perry's House of Payne is no more demeaning to African Americans than The Beverly Hillbillies was demeaning to southern whites. I hope the cast from the House Of Payne gets there Stars on the Hollwood walk of Fame.
ReplyDeleteI agree with all of the points made in this article. Comedy is extremely hard and the fact that black people choose to call some of our best comedians buffoons as opposed to geniuses shows a lack of vision. We're a diverse people from diverse backgrounds. We should be able to have out Cosbys AND our Medeas, just like white people can have their Quincys and their Don Knoxes.
ReplyDeleteThe reason why Spike Lee made the movie,Bamboozled, is because he felt that the only visible images of Blacks in the media today are nothing more than modern day Minstel Shows. I agree. Minstel Shows were extreme exaggerations of Blacks. Are you trying to tell me that it is not an extreme exaggeration that 98% of rappers are drug kingpins (or so they claim) and no sista on The Maury Povich Show can correctly guess who their baby's daddy is? BET sucks!!! Black Hollywood should stop being so extreme. Blacks in todays movies are either ghetto or living in Baldwin Hills. Why not make more movies about the Black majority, the middle class?
ReplyDeleteThat's unfortunately the problem! A majority of black folks in this country are not middle class. There is also an education problem we are suffering from. Our personal realities may be diferent from this but irrelevant to facts. But to your point I find it interesting that rap can be aspirational for both poor and rich folks but progressive Black films don't seem have the same affect.
ReplyDeleteWell, how many shows are there about white middle class people on TV? Usually they're either very rich or very poor. I would say that TV in general doesn't care about representing the middle class. That's why I really like "Girlfriends." It was like, yes a cross-section of black women. Then it got canceled. :(
ReplyDeleteI agree that we need better representations of black people in pop culture. But I don't agree with dismissing today's black comedies as "minstrel." They serve a purpose, too.