The Brand Keeping Oprah in Business
January 4, 2016 7:17 PM   Subscribe

 
This is a very good article. It is a matter on which there is utterly no need for me to have an opinion, and I read with great interest, simply for the sake of watching how the author thinks. That is good writing.
posted by ckridge at 7:35 PM on January 4, 2016 [10 favorites]


I love Rembert.
posted by k8t at 7:46 PM on January 4, 2016 [1 favorite]


The anecdote about Congressman John Lewis made me start crying.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 7:54 PM on January 4, 2016 [1 favorite]


Tyler Perry is the man. Hilarious
posted by jeffgilden at 8:14 PM on January 4, 2016


I have very complicated feelings about Tyler Perry. Disagreements with his viewpoint on gender and sex aside, I think he is unwittingly caught in the age-old "practical versus ideological" battle that minorities in entertainment have always faced. Like, Aziz Ansari comes at it from the other side with his decision to not do an Indian accent. He talks about it in Master of None and this episode of Fresh Air, and he basically doesn't do Indian accents because he feels like it plays into a stereotype. But he doesn't begrudge the actors who do, because they are getting a chance to actually make money acting and there just aren't that many other roles.

I mean, ultimately the major problem here is not Tyler Perry or Indian accents or stereotypical "faaaaahbulous" gay characters or any of that, but a very White, very male, very cishet-centric entertainment industry that doesn't offer opportunities for entertainers and creators outside a very narrow set of stereotypes. Would there be as much issue with Tyler Perry if there was a wider variety of movies out there with Black roles and Black producers presenting different points of view? I mean, there probably would, but it would likely focus less on the racial aspects and more on the misogyny.
posted by Anonymous at 10:29 PM on January 4, 2016


I enjoyed that piece a lot, thank you
posted by smoke at 2:19 AM on January 5, 2016


I'm glad I read that. Thanks for posting.
posted by wittgenstein at 5:06 AM on January 5, 2016


Really interesting article. We probably hear a lot more about him here in Atlanta than other places, but I really didn’t anything about him, I just knew of him.
posted by bongo_x at 9:52 PM on January 6, 2016


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