Tyler Perry is quite a fascinating fellow. Born in New Orleans, he grew up under abusive conditions – from his father, at least. Perry’s mother instead exposed him to church, installing young Tyler with a conscience and decency. But at times this was hardly any salve for the molestation Perry otherwise endured. Without even completing high school, little suggested Perry might become one of the most powerful men in entertainment.
His turnaround came from the Queen of Entertainment Herself, Oprah Winfrey, whose televised discussion on the cathartic act of writing inspired Perry to take up writing himself – just after looking up “cathartic” in the dictionary. Using his own tortured past as inspiration, Perry started writing letters to himself, which became a musical, which led to community theater. Moving to Atlanta and joining the African-American community’s am-dram “chitlin circuit,” Perry produced his first play in 1998. That was “I Know I’ve Been Changed.”
Through the years perfecting his writing, with no formal training, Perry’s success came swiftly – though not immediately. But no one can argue with earning $100 million in live theater ticket sales, especially when theater (amateur, niche market theater at that) is sort of a lost medium. Well, Perry found a receptive audience in the region’s African-American community, open to his message of family and unconcerned with Perry’s artlessness. It’s in serving this underserved audience that Perry wrote twelve plays in basically as many years, doing well enough to get even Hollywood’s attention.
Many have criticized mainstream film for catering to an imagined white, male, middle-class audience [citation needed], and so Perry provides a counter example. Adapting his third play for his first film, Diary of a Mad Black Woman spoke to moviegoers who aren’t often catered to: urban, black, middle-aged, female. None of those descriptors applies to me. I have never kept a diary (I blog, which is much worse), I am rarely mad, and I am surely neither black nor a woman…I’m barely even an “of a.” So in critiquing Diary of a Mad Black Woman, certain qualitative statements may not be accurate.
I shall consider the overall plot, to ground us all, then get into dissection. Helen Simmons-McCarter (Set it Off’s Kimberly Elise) is the titular black woman, not yet mad, but rather happily wed for 18 years to Atlanta’s most ridiculously successful attorney, Charles McCarter (corroborated by Steve Harris’ attorney role on “The Practice”). Then one day, entirely out of the blue, Charles forces Helen out of his mansion and demands a divorce. Helen moves in with her long-estranged family, becomes self sufficient again, learns to overcome and forgive Charles, and enjoys a much more fulfilling romance with perfection incarnate, Orlando (“Soul Train” host Shemar Moore).
That’s Diary of a Mad Black Woman in its broadest stroke, which doesn’t suggest it’ll be anything more than your standard middling romance/drama, the likes of which my mom seems to prefer over the movie-referencing nonsense I support. (Hmm, maybe there is something to this underserved movie clientele which I, Average Moviegoer, cannot grok.) Certainly the movie as presented by Lions Gate fits that mold. Director Darren Grant (who otherwise seems wholly taken up with music videos) films events precisely as you’d imagine from that plot summary. Apart from a few crane-happy establishing shots, we get mostly mid-level close-ups, actors chatting in over-the-shoulder static debates. The greatest visual play comes in the innumerable romantic montages, where Grant grants us that sort of buttery dream filter not seen in film since the 1930s. So in a great many ways, Diary of a Mad Black Woman is as middlebrow and generic as movies get.
But then there’re the giant “ifs.” Most obviously, the entire cast is black (I shan’t say “African-American,” lest there’s some Canadians in here or something). Because movies are so often whitewashed, we then get this as the flipside, films inhabited 100% by specific other races. There’s something to specialization, though I lament that there’s enough of a schism for something like “black cinema” to even need a label, but whatever.
The all-black cast is an artifact of Tyler Perry’s involvement, as are all of the interesting elements. No surprise, since while he didn’t direct this film (having zero familiarity with this technical medium), Perry wrote it, produced it, and acts in it. In light of his secondary future career as a film director, it is easiest to cite Diary of a Mad Black Woman as Perry’s auteurist statement. Go back to your Jaheim videos, Grant.
Certainly Perry’s input informs Diary with a certain outsider art appeal, likely carried over from his stage plays. Grant’s flat staging thus is beneficial for not getting in the way. Of note, though in summary Diary sounds like a drama, in practice it’s a melodrama. And let’s just look at that summary again (where I now paraphrase my own paraphrasing):
“After 18 years of perfect wedded bliss…” Diary is formed upon extreme exaggerations, in every aspect. It’s not enough for our heroine Helen to leave a happy marriage…it must have been the most flawless matrimony known to man, at least in pure material terms. That includes Charles’ ridiculously opulent mansion, his cachet to do basically anything in Atlanta (his own personal fiefdom)…and his ability to wholly turn against Helen when the adulterous whim inexplicably tickles his fancy. With reference to a prenup, and Charles’ plot-convenient legal omnipotence, he ends two decades’ of marriage in under five minutes, most efficiently booting Helen out with but the clothes on her back, and a U-Haul full of more useless clothing.
In most narrative in any form, this sort of event would have some layers of complexity underneath it – say, exploring Helen’s marital blindness, her complete naiveté, something. Instead, in under 10 minutes, Perry has moved through all this as his set up. Charles is 100% an unreconstructed villain, cruel to the nth degree, and as superpowered in his own way as the Dark Lord Sauron (Helen legally is denied from getting a word in edgewise during conversation). This stuff is melodrama, it’s a soap opera, it’s Mary Worth, it’s the strongest possible emotions felt as fully as possible as often as possible.
There is surely some tonal inelegance at play in Diary…at least, by the traditional definitions of what makes a good narrative. It’s too simple, says a person used to finding depth. There is nothing to Diary beyond the surface, which is awkward when it decides to still have all those story niceties: a theme and subtext and a moral and all that. Under Perry’s hand, that stuff is stated outright. All we’re missing is a big flashing “THIS IS THE MORAL” sign (or Samuel L. Jackson popping up to announce “Message!”). For one thing, there’s Helen and her diary – and what a blunt device it is, allowing her character to do voice over monologues constantly, laying her emotional turmoil bare in the simplest terms. They say it’s a common sign of a first-time screenwriter to over-rely upon voice over, especially from the main character – though like any device, it can be used wisely (Apocalypse Now, Fight Club, Double Indemnity, Kind Hearts and Coronets, countless others). This isn’t one of those examples.
Here’s the danger as I see it with Diary of a Mad Black Woman: Roderick Rules: By most standards, it is not an especially good story (to say nothing of movie) because it employs cheap devices amateurishly. But it has been as hugely popular within the U.S.’s African-American community as Perry’s plays. (Perry’s work, I understand, has had NO distribution outside of the U.S., to show just how niche it is.) Oh, and Perry’s work is niche…and I ain’t in that niche. But find the right target, and they won’t care about obviousness in acting or script or direction. Our hypothetical middle-aged black woman (diary or madness optional) isn’t concerned with film as an art form. Her concerns, her life concerns, are more distinctly like Helen’s (only, you know, realistic), and so she judges the result in those terms.
For a movie with “Black” in the title, there is little here which speaks directly in racial terms. Instead, Perry’s eternal message is one of family and religion – those two most essential elements, so of course I’ve barely explored them. When people talk of “values,” they mean something like this. In her estranged new life, Helen finds a local gospel church. Indeed, once the movie’s over, she’ll have introduced newly-ex-husband Charles to the faith, for true resolution comes from peaceable solutions, not earthly victory. On its own, this is an uncontroversial message – and understand it’s a lot more agreeable if you go in already agreeing with these conclusions. (Preaching to the choir and all that…) They say Christians (or those of any faith) are underserved by commercial films, which try to avoid anything decisive. No doubt by allying himself with his strong professed faith, Perry fills a niche.
It’s just a shame it’s so damn hard to make quality entertainment when going limited like this. I think it’s a righteous task, but maybe impossible…I also think the most successful religious movies, as films, are usually a little more divisive, like Monty Python’s Life of Brian or The Last Temptation of the Christ. (Then there are cynical and abhorrent things like Mel Gibson’s Passion of the Christ, which I won’t address further…) In its way, Diary of a Mad Black Woman is the cinematic equivalent of those cutesy cherubic figurines, or the paintings by Thomas Kinkade (an example, though prepare to vomit on your keyboard in aesthetic terror). “Kitsch” would not be an inappropriate word. Joyous and uncomplicated to the artistically disinclined, utterly without merit for the avante garde. Tyler Perry is the anti-Seventh Seal, even if crises of faith inform both. Tyler Perry reassures, he supports a preexisting temperament.
Oh that preexisting temperament…it makes Diary as beyond criticism as any fanboy-approved blockbuster, and like Transformers 2 those who “don’t get it” are shut out. This is a reductive argument, but let’s see how it plays out. This is where the racial element comes into play – culturally. Diary of a Mad Black Woman espouses the good elements of Southern black culture. So we don’t simply get “church” in some generic sense; we get pure Gospel, with its ecstatic “Mmm-hmms” and dancing and music. There’s plenty of soul, and a decided rejection of more recent hip-hop. With a love of the montage’s narrative shorthand, Diary at times is this close to becoming a full-blown musical. Hell, at least once its characters join together for a dance number…only this isn’t the sort of movie with enough stylization to justify such silliness.
Combined with its undercurrent of melodrama, that makes Diary pretty lumpy, tonally. It’s almost like a variety show. And that’s to say nothing of its other major form – as a comedy.
Here’s where the conversation about Tyler Perry truly starts, because it’s as a comedy where Diary of a Mad Black Woman boasts franchisable elements. Serving the comedy is Perry’s most famous creation…Mabel “Madea” Simmons.
Madea (Tyler Perry in a fat suit) is Helen’s grandmother, and the mater familias to the entire extended Simmons clan – whom we’ll meet more of over time, with Madea forever the master of ceremonies. Her role in Diary is peripheral at best. Actually, Madea and her brother Joe (Tyler Perry in a different fat suit) are just about the closet cinematic figures I can think of to being true comic relief. I’m thinking in the sense of Shakespeare’s gravediggers, laff-generating buffoons wedged artlessly into a heartfelt storyline. Madea’s style of enormously broad comic hijinks can occur on a dime. There is zero transition between dance numbers, moments of Helen weeping, and Madea running through an old minstrel routine. This is perhaps best highlighted by a late scene, where Helen listens to a lengthy discourse on forgiveness…and then Joe farts. That’s probably the most random and artless fart joke I’ve encountered in the wild, which is saying something!
Okay, so I used the word “minstrel” in summarizing Madea’s function. Oh, but that is loaded! Let’s hold onto that argument for now (maybe for a sequel), and simply examine Madea without qualifiers. She is outspoken, loud and given to regional idioms (“You hun’ry?” is one of her first lines), and she carries a gun. As per Wikipedia’s phonetic example, she’s prone to proclamations such as “Halleluyer praise da lort!” (They said it that way, not me!) For all of her wise-fool buffoonery, and run-ins with the law, at day’s end Madea dispenses with homespun wisdom to underline Perry’s point.
As played by Perry, Madea has all the actorly subtlety of a recurring “SNL” character. Her voice is nasally, but Perry does nothing to hide he’s simply a dude in a drag act. Actually, that fat suit is barely even there! As I understand it, this minimalist/amateurish makeup is exactly as you’d see Madea on the stage – so you can’t fault ‘em for not keeping true to the original. Madea is a patently artificial construct, at odds with the melo-seriousness of the Helen plot.
Madea is a Mammy. Yeah, I’m touching upon controversial elements. Hardly any of her humor is original, and barely funny to my white boy mentality – though I did laugh most heartily when she compares Charles to Ike Turner. Actually, what makes Madea presumably work for her intended audience is an element of familiarity. She’s an archetype, a grandmotherly figure familiar to many. Not to me, sadly! Forget rambunctious joy de vivre, my grandmothers were the ice queens! (Tyler Perry movies: For airing personal familial grievances.) Madea’s familiarity also comes from recycling old black forms of humor. There is an unabashed “yo mama so fat” routine in here, alongside similar outdated comic moments.
But if you’re not married to the idea of comedic evolution, of laughing at the new simply because it’s the new, I can see where the comfort comes in this. There’s perhaps a reason “comfort food” is popular amongst Madea types. And comedy is one of those tricky things, like horror, which is exceedingly subjective, and more so with culturally-dependent yuks. I’ve been the sole non-ethnic non-giggler at work-mandated screenings of Soul Plane (seriously), and a lot of that is because I’m very white. Like, I’m actually surprised my DVD player could even read Diary of a Black Woman.
I wish to return to the melodramatic soap opera at Diary’s center before taking my leave of it. It isn’t enough for Helen to free herself of Charles by finding family, church and work. She must also find love. Enter Orlando, the anti-Charles, the most perfect embodiment of the human ideal imaginable: He is attractive, loves his family, loves God, always says precisely the right thing (this detail is so extreme, Helen actually lampshades it), and is unequivocally dedicated to Helen without reserve. Orlando is a sort of Marty Stu wish fulfillment for Perry as a writer, and for his swooning middle-aged woman audiences just as much. This bland characterization is another example of Perry’s outsider origins; no trained writer creates blatant self-avatars like this. (Though credit to Perry for playing a third character – now minus a fat suit – a father and husband who seems a little more frail.) But just speaking as a guy, must these romantic movies always create such unrealistic Ken doll ideals?! Oh yes, I’m well aware of the female counterargument, so let’s just drop it all.
Sticking with the notion of Perry as an untrained novice somehow given access to the big leagues…The story is a simple case of divorce and romance. This does not demand complicated plotting. So when plot does artificially rear up, it’s most obvious. In order to make his point about Helen’s newfound forgiveness, Perry subjects Charles to that most convenient of plot maladies – complete paralysis. All courtesy of a deus ex machina criminal – yeah, it doesn’t even have anything to do with the story; it just happens. And in one court scene immediately following upon another court scene, which is damned awkward. Though Charles’ physical recovery is just as sudden – a church miracle, the sort of “Magical Healer Man” presentation of God that’s not worth critiquing. So between all this, and the initial conditions of Helen’s marriage, etc., there’s a whole lot we must accept from this story.
Not knowing the franchise’s wider course, I can’t say what’s indicative of Perry’s films to come. With Madea Simmons as the continued element, it’s likely we won’t see melodrama continue as it has. It’s likely we could go into a complete Big Momma’s House sort of realm. Or with Perry staying on as the creative engine, things could remain in this particular soul-funk – for if you’re rewarded for committing some very specific narrative sins, why change ‘em?
RELATED POSTS:
• No. 2 Madea's Family Reunion (2006)
• No. 3 Meet the Browns (2008)
• No. 4 Madea Goes to Jail (2009)
• No. 5 I Can Do Bad All By Myself (2010)
• No. 6 Madea's Big Happy Family (2011)
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