film

Culture

Tyler Perry’s Museum of Blackness

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Tyler Perry’s Madea franchise is part of a collective of black, fat drag, comedy-dramas. These films bear six distinguishing features: 1) they are considered “successful” because they gross more than their production costs; 2) they are accompanied by an R&B/gospel soundtrack, and 3) include casts of popular black actors and actresses who are well known within African American communities. Also characteristic of these films are 4) the use of multiple and arguably watered-down Protestant messages about the importance of faith in God, couched in comedic performance, to appeal to mass audiences. An additional feature is that 5) the black church is the space where a significant turning point and/or the film’s resolution occur. Most notably, these films are characterized by 6) the donning of intricately designed fat suits by black men (Tyler Perry, Martin Lawrence and Eddie Murphy) to parody black women.

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Culture

See Me, Feel Me: Remembering Ken Russell, 1927-2011

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Russell is continually, even post-mortem, called “provocative,” “controversial,” and “iconoclastic.” And at least a few of these obits have noted his conversion to Roman Catholicism all those years ago, though he was never quite settled in his faith. Certainly there was religious content in his films—the nuns and priests in a sexual standoff in The Devils (1971), Anthony Perkins’ creepy street preacher in Crimes of Passion (1984)—but it was the human experience that Russell so strangely charted that leaves me thinking of his “religious” nature. He portrayed the depths of human depravity and desire, of lust and liking.

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