You know that it was going to come to this. Pundits who had long compared Tyler Perry’s films to those of Spike Lee insisting that the only skills Perry had mastered were those of coonery and buffoonery finally get to hear Perry respond to Spike Lee’s own comments about the matter on 60 Minutes.  Perry is upset and ticked off because he feels that there are those in the community that do not want to know that those characters exist.  On the contrary; Spike Lee has shown his own characters from the ghettos of the Northeast, as opposed to those in Atlanta, that have engaged in a more sophisticated form of coonery and buffoonery that Tyler Perry does not want to portray, and conveniently hides that fact.

Many of the characters from Spike Lee’s films were ignorant and at best, sophisticated buffoons.  The only difference is that Spike Lee shows up in his films, or has an actor like Denzel Washington become the protagonist and work on his behalf, and bring some perspective and resolution to the buffoonery in the film.  That is the only thing that seperates Spike’s films from thsoe of Tyler Perry.  In essence two directors are fighting against each other but are in essense the pot calling the kettle Black, because they both are shortsighted and fall short of the mark.  Spike Lee’s films taught us about racism, first Black against White, and then later on, Whites against other Whites.  Tyler Perry’s films teach us about God, though in strange and controversial ways because he alternates back and forth from dressing up like a woman and appearing as himself.

Both directors engage in what are essentially, predictable and monolithic filmmaking.  Spike Lee in essence denigrated Tyler Perry and said that his tactics date back to Amos and Andy.  However you have to ask the same reliable and predicatable questions about Spike’s motives though.  First off why now, Tyler has been doing this schtick, rhetoric, tomfoolery, whatever for a while now, why hate on the man at the top of his career?  If Tyler Perry does not evolve he will fall back into irrelevance just like Spike Lee did five years ago.  The second question I would have to ask is that considering that Spike Lee went to school and was in essence the Kanye West of his generation, why would he expect anything different from Tyler Perry to begin with?  This is like Kanye West hating on Young Jeezy, it just does not make any sense.

I am not saying that Tyler Perry’s films are right; clearly he needs to evolve and embark on more ambitious efforts.  However, he has attempted the latter and no one has come out to support him.  So Spike Lee should talk to those other 30 or so Black filmmakers that are bringing the intellectual heat that he conveniently avoids, open up a television studio and get his own work on cable I mean even Ice Cube tried his hand at doing so and put his money where his mouth is.  Spike Lee should also put out something that isn’t freaky and sexually deviant as he has done in the past and show African-American women in a positive light as well …