Spike Lee said in an interview with Oprah Winfrey that every ten years there's a renewed interest in black cinema and then it goes away and he's right. The first "wave" happened in the 70s with the Blaxploitation era started by Melvin Van Peeples Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song, in 1971, lasting to about the late 70s. The second happened in the mid 80s, ignited by Spike himself with She's Gotta Have It, in 1986, lasting into the mid 90s. And the present wave arguably (and I'm sure some will) started by Tyler Perry and Diary Of A Mad Black Woman in 2005.
In his recent interview on the Arsenio Hall Show, Perry repeatedly referenced his faith and spiritual grounding as a foundation for his success and its that religious foundation that has been the not so secret to his success. He simply tapped into an under-served demographic of primarily religious minded women. And as such his films serve more or less as his ministry or his testimony of his faith and beliefs as they're steeped in baptist christian values.
For the record, personally, I don't think Tyler Perry is a very compelling storyteller nor that great a filmmaker but there is an earnestness to his works that resonates with his audience. I feel its fair to criticize his films and TV shows based on their merits and weaknesses and there are many who do, very harshly, but for me the line is crossed when his works are posited as being detrimental to the black community as a whole. And for the last eight years or so this narrative has been pushed particularly in Black media, social networks and blogosphere. Its a criticism that's usually leveled at his films and TV shows but interestingly enough not his plays. I get the feeling that's because people aren't as inundated with advertisements and commercials for the plays as they are with the other mediums. It's also a criticism that isn't applied to others in the same way. Ewe Boll for example is universally regarded as a horrible film maker but his works aren't condemned as setting white people back or adversely affecting Europeans in any way.
But all of that doesn't negate the fact that for the better part of a decade Tyler Perry been the most consistently successful and high profile black figure to hit Hollywood other than Will Smith and Oprah Winfrey. But Smith is an actor and producer not a writer or director (although After Earth is his first writing credit) and Oprah is a talk show personality and producer, she neither writes nor directs. Perry is the only person to achieve the level of success he has as a writer/director which is the same position Van Peeples and Lee were in when they kicked off their respective surges in Black cinema. Perry's formulaic comedies have been such a success that Hollywood, riding the wave as hard as possible, has three Black cast films in release running concurrently, The Best Man Holiday, Black Nativity and his Newest film A Madea Christmas. This is something I can't recall happening in the last few years or in the last fifteen years for that matter.
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