For Colored Girls [trailer] & "For black men who have considered homicide after watching another Tyler Perry movie"

[kamille]

[achali]

As someone who hasn't read the play, after seeing this trailer my question is: so what's the story about?

[kamille]

(09-15-2010 10:52 AM)achali Wrote:  As someone who hasn't read the play, after seeing this trailer my question is: so what's the story about?

No doubt. Thanks for mentioning the OG play. The movie is an adaptation of the play for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf written by Ntozake Shange (poet, playwright) and was adapted into a book, I think not too long after. It's actually a string of stories, specifically poems, that Shange weaved together and infused with dance. So, the play deals with a lot of different issues very narrowly from a woman's perspective -- you got angst, empowerment, motherhood, sisterhood, spirituality, identity, sexuality, relationships... etc. and they all intersect at different points; or, transcend is probably a better word... Each theme is represented by a woman and the narrative switches perspectives from one woman to the next until converging at the end.

What's cool about the play and just like any interpretation of poems is that the the performances and adaptations are so fluid, so every time you encounter it, you could possibly unearth a different sentiment. I was able to see Jasmine Guy's production of it down here in Atlanta earlier this summer. Shange talks here both about how the play came to be and about the revision process as the play went from city to city.

I can imagine that the movie is going to be somewhat vignette-style as well. I'm curious to see the actresses' interpretations in this format -- with them having to essentially lock-in their interpretations for the scenes; and I'm also curious to see how that will mesh with the interpretations of readers who dig the text and the play.

[achali]

Thanks for the thorough perspective. Even though I haven't read it yet I wonder how that vignette style will translate to film. That alone sounds like one of Perry's biggest artistic challenges... ever.

[kamille]

(09-15-2010 02:51 PM)achali Wrote:  Thanks for the thorough perspective. Even though I haven't read it yet I wonder how that vignette style will translate to film. That alone sounds like one of Perry's biggest artistic challenges... ever.

I know. Ever in life. I was trying to think of some vignette-style movies I've seen (for a point of reference), at first I could only think of "Love Actually," but then I realized "Crash," "Babel" ... maybe even "Traffic" all have that multiple-stories-in-one element in them. Man, those transitions have to be seamless.

[achali]

I wonder if going from dressing like women to serious scripts will benefit Perry. Rather than starting from a point of not dressing like women and being "compromised" (see Dave Chappelle video below). Does he have a (personal) advantage since no one really has or knows what to expect of him when dealing with a more "serious" story like "For Colored Girls"?

[kamille]

Would you tease out what you mean by "benefit" a little for me?

[achali]

Pretty much just related to the video and what happened to folks like Dave, Martin, Eddie, etc.

[kamille]

Some people are starting from a place of no expectation and others from a place of low expectation.

From what I can gather, I think there’s a general perception from Tyler Perry’s target audience that he is somehow removed from the historically “emasculated comedian” narrative that Chappelle speaks of, because of the fact that he has ownership of the Madea role and brand from conception to execution, and by extension, ownership of his ratio of masculinity and femininity. So, I think that if there is a perceived benefit there, it comes irrespective of when in his career he decided to dress like a woman in his roles (whether in the beginning or end)– so long as there is “ownership” and it’s not thought of as being directly imposed upon him. Or, put another way, his timing may be secondary to his mode of execution.

For those who haven’t forgotten that Madea was borne out of economic necessity among other things, I think the conversation sits squarely in the display of his associations with masculinity and femininity. Tyler Perry’s movement from dressing like women in roles to writing and directing serious scripts could been seen as just a lateral move on his continuum -- where the likelihood of him continuing to dress like women in roles (sans some sort of reconciliation) and continuing his brand of character development is high. In this case, the benefit or advantage would be difficult to gauge.

[achali]

RELATED
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SOURCE
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/07/AR2010110704428_pf.html

For black men who have considered homicide after watching another Tyler Perry movie

By Courtland Milloy
Monday, November 8, 2010

Can anyone name a movie that came out recently starring a black man who wasn't a sociopath? Someone who had a terrific screen presence, like a young Paul Robeson? And he portrayed a character who was complex and fully drawn? Did he respect black women, too?

Anybody see that movie? I didn't. But surely it's out there somewhere, right? An alternative to those Tyler Perry films portraying black men as Satan's gift to black women? But where is it?

Maybe I didn't hear about it because of all the buzz over Perry's "For Colored Girls," which opened Friday and is based on Ntozake Shange's 1975 stage play, "For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf."

Or maybe I didn't hear about it because I was retching too loudly after seeing "For Colored Girls" - and reading so many inexplicably glowing reviews.

"This movie is powerful," Demetria L. Lucas wrote recently in Essence, the nation's premier magazine for black women. "It is incredible. The performances in it are astonishing, but most of all, this film will leave you lifted."

Me, I thought the movie should have been renamed: "For Black Men Who Have Considered Homicide After Watching Another Perry Movie."

"Oscar buzz, breaking news," read the Hollywood Reporter on Friday. "Will 'For Colored Girls' blindside Tyler Perry's critics?"

Too late. I was blindsided while watching the movie, especially when superstar Janet Jackson appeared onscreen looking like Michael Jackson with breast implants.

"Don't laugh," says Shadow and Act, an online publication about black films and filmmakers. " 'For Colored Girls,' an Oscar contender?"

Oscar for what?

In the category for best infection of a black woman with a sexually transmitted disease that renders her infertile. . . . And the winner is: black man.

For best down-low, double-dealing husband who has sex with wife while sneaking around having sex with men on the streets. . . . And the winner is: black man.

For best portrayal of a guy who at first seems nice but turns out to be a rapist. . . . And the winner is - OMG, his third of the night - black man!

"You may need some time alone after viewing 'For Colored Girls,' " wrote Tonya Pendleton for BlackAmericaWeb.com. "Whatever you may think of the fact that it was Tyler Perry who finally brought the award-winning 1974 Ntozake Shange stage production to the big screen, it will move you."

So will ex-lax.

"You will want to know that two kids get thrown out the window by their father," wrote Jane Nosonchuk for Hamptonroads.com. "The scene is well done."

Do I hear another Oscar nomination?

"The men in the movie are all bad guys except for the cop," Nosonchuk wrote. "They are a means to an end rather than any lead characters. Also, a back-room abortion may disturb some."

You think?

What an awful year for movies featuring black actors. Samuel L. Jackson in "Unthinkable." Thoughtless would be more like it. "Brooklyn's Finest" had a nice cast, with Don Cheadle and Wesley Snipes. But Richard Gere and Ethan Hawke got top billing. "Our Family Wedding" with Forrest Whitaker was okay. But how many black wedding comedies can you watch? Even preacher T.D. Jakes is coming out with his own copycat wedding movie next year.

Surely Spike Lee and Denzel Washington could team up for a sweeping historical drama - say, a black sharecropper's son, educated in a one-room schoolhouse built by slaves in Alabama, who grows up to become one of Wall Street's most powerful CEOs.

Smarter than Gordon Gekko and more complex. With a cameo appearance by former Merrill Lynch chief executive Stanley O'Neal.

Maybe you saw the kind of movie I'm talking about. If not, maybe it's time to make one.



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SOURCE
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/09/AR2010110907246_pf.html

After Perry's 'Colored Girls,' there's plenty of bashing to go around

By Courtland Milloy
Tuesday, November 9, 2010

Tyler Perry fans are calling me a "Perry hater" because I criticized his new movie, "For Colored Girls." But check out what some of his defenders are saying - and tell me who's hating whom.

"Are you saying that black men do not rape black women?" one woman wrote in response to my movie review, which ran Monday. "Are you saying that there are no down-low black men in America?" (meaning men who cheat on their wives and girlfriends by having sex with other men).

"If you are and other black men are saying that, then I respectfully ask you to take off your blinders."

Dear reader: If you don't think rapists and cheaters come in all colors, then take off your blinders. Perry is assisting Hollywood in doing nothing more than projecting the evil of the world onto black men, making us look worse than we are so others can feel better about themselves.

Another reader wrote: "I viewed the movie with five other retired women. We had lunch and discussed the movie after the viewing. Four of the five experienced domestic violence at the hands of black men. Most of us knew of cases involving other forms of incest, abuse, deceit or black-on-black crime."

She went on to surmise that I just didn't want to "expose the dirty laundry that Black Women have had to deal with; including the racism and extreme sexism from the general population."

Jeepers creepers. For decades, Hollywood has been waving the same dirty drawers in the black man's face, one black-man-bashing movie after another - including last year's "Precious" and now Perry's "For Colored Girls."

So where is the movie "For White Girls," bashing white men? Stories of white men kidnapping and abusing white girls are in the news. And maybe the Lifetime channel will make one of them into a TV crime drama. But be assured that if it does, the show will feature more than enough good white men to make that one evildoer come off as an aberration.

Another reader wrote: "I'm sorry you are angry by the way Tyler portrays black men in his films; but can you tell me why African American women now have the highest new HIV cases (67 percent, to be exact)? Or why African American women have the lowest percentage of domestic violence reported, although they are abused more often than their counterparts? If you cannot give me an intelligent answer besides the usual slavery response, then we as African Americans should stop bashing each other in the media."

All right already, I confess: Black men hate black women. After all, what black man could love his mother, grandmother, wife or sister? None. Why? Because Tyler Perry said so.

Amazingly, the reader is so intent on keeping the onus on black men that she minimizes, if not dismisses altogether, the impact of the nation's most enduring and racially oppressive criminal enterprise: slavery. You want to air dirty laundry? Start with that.

I saw the movie at the AMC Magic Johnson theaters in Largo, with a predominantly black audience. At first, most folks seemed giddy with anticipation - the mood having been set by a trailer for Martin Lawrence's horrid-looking follow-up to "Big Momma's House," in which he is made up to look like a bloated black woman with breasts down to her knees.

Hardy har har.

Before long, however, women in the audience began to gasp and moan, cursing under their breath at the endless spectacle of black male cheats, thieves, liars and abusers.

One of my readers explained: "Perry tapped into an interesting niche of emotionally scarred women who need to find a way to punish their abusers, and he gives them that emotional outlet."

Which brings me to a question posed by a man.

"My wife wanted me to go with her to see it over the weekend, but I resisted because I thought it would be a movie for women. Maybe my wife will go with the girls and come home and appreciate me more. You think?"

No.