Tyler calls out Spike by EURnews
(WSJ) – Tyler Perry’s films have often courted controversy with their subject matter, but with few exceptions, Perry himself has stayed out of the fray, letting his work do the talking. Until now: At the Los Angeles press day for his latest, “Madea’s Big Happy Family,” Perry offered a sharp rejoinder to Spike Lee, who has frequently criticized his films for supposedly pandering to stereotypes.
“I’m so sick of hearing about damn Spike Lee,” Perry said. “Spike can go straight to hell! You can print that. I am sick of him talking about me, I am sick of him saying, ‘this is a coon, this is a buffoon.’ I am sick of him – he talked about Whoopi, he talked about Oprah, he talked about me, he talked about Clint Eastwood. Spike needs to shut the hell up!” Lee couldn’t immediately be reached for comment.
Perry created an entertainment empire over the last decade, moving from stage plays to the silver screen, and is fueled by an audience that has been historically marginalized by Hollywood, but comes out in droves to support his films. While discussing a recent email sent from his website, Perry said he was inspired to write by what he feels is disproportionate criticism of his work that other popular, similarly ethnocentric shows and movies do not receive. “I was writing about just people and how hard people work to discourage people from seeing my work,” he explained.
“This is where the whole Spike Lee [thing] comes from – the negativity, this is Stepin Fetchit, this is coonery, this is buffoonery, and they try to get people to get on this bandwagon with them, to get this mob mentality to come against what I’m doing. I’ve never seen Jewish people attack “Seinfeld” and say ‘this is a stereotype,’ I’ve never seen Italian people attack “The Sopranos,” I’ve never seen Jewish people complaining about Mrs. Doubtfire or Dustin Hoffman in Tootsie. I never saw it. It’s always black people, and this is something that I cannot undo. Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBois went through the exact same thing; Langston Hughes said that Zora Neale Hurston, the woman who wrote Their Eyes Were Watching God, was a new version of the darkie because she spoke in a southern dialect and a Southern tone.”
Perry said he’s disappointed much of the criticism comes from within the black community, and finds most of it inaccurate or baseless. “I’m sick of it from us,” he said. “We don’t have to worry about anybody else trying to destroy us and take shots because we do it to ourselves. …And they go on to say that people of other ethnic groups or white people don’t go see my movies, and that’s all a lie. I’m standing on stage looking at thousands of people, thousands of faces, with every race represented, and I’m tired of it. I’m tired of just laying down, tired of just being nice and letting them say whatever they want to say however they want to say it without people knowing what the intent really is.” Read More
