Growing up, my exposure to the outside world came via film. Be it television or the movies, that is how I learned about life outside of my immediate reality. It wasn’t until I was grown that I learned movies were more fantasy than reality.
Everybody in California was not like Gidget — living at the beach and surfing. Not every white person had a house like “The Beaver” with a mom in a shirtwaist dress and pearls. However, the positive images those films promoted were what most of America strived for — be they black or white.
By the time I entered my late teens, “Black Exploitation” films of the ’70s were the rage. My neighborhood was nothing like the ones portrayed. It was quiet and peaceful like any other neighborhood. I can still recall my mother talking about some famous politician who visited Watts in California and was shocked to see grass and flowers in what was perceived to be “the ghetto”!
All this prefacing comes from watching Tyler Perry’s Beauty in Black. He is the writer, creator, producer, and director of this hot mess of a series. The show’s premise is about a multimillion-dollar Black cosmetic manufacturer and the dysfunctional family that runs it. The main character is a woman who was put out of her home as a teen by her mother after a stepfather sexually assaulted her. The main character is currently working as a stripper. My interest waned as I watched the episodes due to the series’ usage of “Nigga” and “Bitch” to either begin or end literally every sentence. I’m not a prude, but the amount of profanity really showed a lack of creativity in the dialogue.
Many of us don’t know what it’s like to be really wealthy. So programs where people with money act no different from low-lifes living in hovels says more about the producer than anything else. Does Tyler Perry hold meetings where those words are bandied about? Are he and others living in multimillion-dollar mansions filled with visitors who spew those words with ease? There’s an old saying that you can take the “nigga” out of the ghetto, but you can’t take the ghetto out of the “nigga.” Tyler Perry obviously is out to prove that old saying true.
Years ago, when John H. Johnson owned and published Ebony/Jet magazines and people would write letters to the editor criticizing the contents for focusing more on positive images than on all our struggles, I now better understand why he did so. If people know better, they will do better.
Today we have folks like Tyler Perry who promote to the entire world the notion that we as Black people are intrinsically ingrained with the very stereotypical behaviors and characteristics that we fought so hard not to overcome.
The prolific use of foul language is creative laziness.
Tyler Perry, you know better, so do better!