TreaAndrea M. Russworm, Samantha N. Sheppard, and Karen M. Bowdre (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781496807045
- eISBN:
- 9781496807083
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781496807045.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Media Studies
From Madea to Media Mogul examines multi-hyphenate media mogul Tyler Perry’s unique role in contemporary media culture. Unlike the discordant, popular, and limited range of academic responses to ...
More
From Madea to Media Mogul examines multi-hyphenate media mogul Tyler Perry’s unique role in contemporary media culture. Unlike the discordant, popular, and limited range of academic responses to Perry’s work, the essays here are engaged with neither celebrating nor condemning Tyler Perry. This collection demonstrates that there is something inherently political about the intersection between understanding the pleasure as well as displeasure surrounding black popular cultural expression. This intersection is crucial not only to understanding Tyler Perry but also to how we think about race and identity in the 21st Century. The collection is organized around a core set of key concepts, because Perry’s image and productions are an invitation to interrogate and transform some of our most familiar disciplinary terms, such as affect, cinephilia, platforms, mogul, rebrand, and niche. Other concepts that Perry prompts us to reconsider, like the politics of respectability, centrality, exceptionalism, and disguise are informed by cultural studies traditions, while new perspective on terms like chitlin and gospel broaden our grasp on thematic concerns from black cultural traditions. Above all, what this collection aims for in offering this rubric for reading Perry are paradigm-shifting approaches that embrace the unexpected. This is a collection that deliberately brings these diverse approaches and disciplinary traditions together by arguing that Tyler Perry’s productions are unintelligible without them and that these critical perspectives reveal Tyler Perry as perhaps one of the most important figures in American media history.Less
From Madea to Media Mogul examines multi-hyphenate media mogul Tyler Perry’s unique role in contemporary media culture. Unlike the discordant, popular, and limited range of academic responses to Perry’s work, the essays here are engaged with neither celebrating nor condemning Tyler Perry. This collection demonstrates that there is something inherently political about the intersection between understanding the pleasure as well as displeasure surrounding black popular cultural expression. This intersection is crucial not only to understanding Tyler Perry but also to how we think about race and identity in the 21st Century. The collection is organized around a core set of key concepts, because Perry’s image and productions are an invitation to interrogate and transform some of our most familiar disciplinary terms, such as affect, cinephilia, platforms, mogul, rebrand, and niche. Other concepts that Perry prompts us to reconsider, like the politics of respectability, centrality, exceptionalism, and disguise are informed by cultural studies traditions, while new perspective on terms like chitlin and gospel broaden our grasp on thematic concerns from black cultural traditions. Above all, what this collection aims for in offering this rubric for reading Perry are paradigm-shifting approaches that embrace the unexpected. This is a collection that deliberately brings these diverse approaches and disciplinary traditions together by arguing that Tyler Perry’s productions are unintelligible without them and that these critical perspectives reveal Tyler Perry as perhaps one of the most important figures in American media history.
Soyica Diggs Colbert
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780252042775
- eISBN:
- 9780252051630
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5622/illinois/9780252042775.003.0011
- Subject:
- Sociology, Social Movements and Social Change
This essay examines how the production, consumption, and adaptation of Shange’s play impacts black feminist collectivity as a response to communal violence. In For Colored Girls, an adaptation, ...
More
This essay examines how the production, consumption, and adaptation of Shange’s play impacts black feminist collectivity as a response to communal violence. In For Colored Girls, an adaptation, filmmaker Tyler Perry commercializes Shange’s work, translating the radical form of the choreopoem into melodrama and normalizing the story of violence against women. In the decades between the premiere of the play (1974) and the debut of Perry’s film (2009), black feminists confront neoliberal assaults on collectivity. The adaptation of the play evidences the cultural impact of neoliberalism’s focus on individualism, transforming Shange’s play from a black feminist sacred object into a commercial one.Less
This essay examines how the production, consumption, and adaptation of Shange’s play impacts black feminist collectivity as a response to communal violence. In For Colored Girls, an adaptation, filmmaker Tyler Perry commercializes Shange’s work, translating the radical form of the choreopoem into melodrama and normalizing the story of violence against women. In the decades between the premiere of the play (1974) and the debut of Perry’s film (2009), black feminists confront neoliberal assaults on collectivity. The adaptation of the play evidences the cultural impact of neoliberalism’s focus on individualism, transforming Shange’s play from a black feminist sacred object into a commercial one.
