US magazine once asked the question, “Spike Lee: Why is He so Angry?” Apparently, some African-Americans aren’t living up to Lee’s vision for a new black stereotype. “I think there’s a lot of stuff out today that is coonery and buffoonery. I see ads for ‘Meet the Browns’ and ‘House of Payne’ and I’m scratching my head. We’ve got a black president and we’re going back. The image is troubling and it harkens back to Amos ‘n’ Andy.” Lee’s remarks at the 14th annual Black Enterprise Entrepreneurs Conference were aimed at filmmaker and television sitcom creator Tyler Perry.
In an interview with CBS’s “60 Minutes,” Perry responded, “All these characters are bait – disarming, charming, make you laugh bait. I can slap Madea [a female character he’s played on stage, film and TV] on something and talk about God, love, faith, forgiveness, family, any of those.”
Lee suffers from the mindset of most Utopians: that human beings can be molded to fit a vision that self-proclaimed leaders have for them. The Soviet Union had a similar plan to create a “new Soviet man.” After seventy years, that social experiment succeeded in creating a nation of chain-smoking, cynical alcoholics.
Oprah Winfrey weighed in on Perry’s behalf, “I think [Perry] grew up being raised by strong, black women. And so much of what he does is really in celebration of that. I think that’s what Madea really is a compilation of all those strong black women that I know and maybe you do to?”
When I was a kid growing up in the early 1960s, my East Los Angeles neighborhood had a real life Madea. Since most of us were latchkey kids with working parents, the woman we all knew as Bamma sat on her porch, keeping a watchful eye on us as we played. If we struck a playmate, used bad language or talked back to an adult, she’d swoop down from her perch, take us by the hand and led us to a small tree nestled by the side of her house. She would point to one of its long, pliable branches and say, “Pick a switch.” After a couple of whacks across the backside, we knew better than to cross her. She was not above asking strangers to the neighborhood why they were there. In her mind, we were all her grandchildren, and she was in the business of keeping us safe while making us better human beings.
Spike Lee may prefer that African-Americans strictly follow the example provided by the power couple Obama, but our world would be a better and safer place with more real life Madeas.
– Mr. Curmudgeon
