Screening God

Abstract

Tyler Perry’s films propagate two dangerous myths by virtue of their success—the myth that his works celebrate black identity in general and black female identity in particular by foregrounding black women in his story lines, and the myth that his films function as a forum for prophetic discourse with theological messages of Christian redemption. Needless to say, a black film producer with a black-owned entertainment empire, who hires and directs an all-black cast, writes story lines with black female protagonists, reaches a black female audience, inscribes Christian messages in his narratives with a black church evangelical drive, does not a womanist theologian make. The two myths are integrally related because of the way in which Perry’s theology functions to perpetuate controlling images of black women. Indeed the black church is used to support and undergird the moral lessons he has for women. “His projects, arguably like the black church itself, are steeped in a narrow, Christian moralism that idealizes benevolent male leadership.”¹ Perry’s works are heuristic for demonstrating why race, class, gender, and sexuality are particularly theological problems. Perry’s own identity politics are so fundamental to his theology of forgiveness and redemption that his politics ultimately eclipse the intended theological underpinnings and yield instead a masculinist logic and anthropocentric ideology.