film Q&As
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KarenBowdre.pptxKaren Bowdre
“Spike and Tyler’s Beef: Blackness, Authenticity, and Discourses of Black Exceptionalism”
Karen Bowdre
This essay is an examination of Spike Lee and Tyler Perry using their public argument as a point entry. Lee made comments about Perry, without mentioning the latter, at a conference in May 2009. He felt that Perry’s work was “coonery and buffoonery” with troubling images and harkening “back to Amos ‘n’ Andy.” (180)
Perry responds to these attacks and one is particularly interesting. “It’s attitudes like [Lee’s] that make Hollywood think that these people do not exist and that’s why there’s no material speaking to them.” (181)
My analysis is that the beef, problem or grudge, “between Lee and Perry is rooted in director discourses and the ways a director’s blackness can often pivot around ideas of authenticity, region, and Black exceptionalism.” (181)
Karen Bowdre
I consider popular definitions of beef
Biggie Smalls viewed beef as a “life and death battle that endangers even those around you.” (182)
Royce 5’9” “describes beef as a ‘literary game written in rhyme and validated through belief.’” (182)
I posit that the beef between the two men is a “media construction of an exaggerated antagonism.”
Their beef highlights how the two men often overshadow the “ability of other filmmakers to gain considerable media attention” and this “obscures the creative work of several other Black directors,” especially Black women.
Karen Bowdre
When this “argument” starts, Lee has lost some steps with his films critical and financial reception. In 2009, Perry is experiencing financial success with most critics openly hostile and/or dismissive of his films.
Regarding authorship, I note that one of the challenges with auteur theory is who is permitted to be a director/auteur. Perry is typically dismissed because “his films lack technical savvy and/or creativity.” (185)
Perry is aware of how critics receive his films and he often states he does not make his films for them and their awards. Remember here his exclusion is based on the fact that his films do not “conform to ‘bourgeois esthetic judgement.” (185)
Karen Bowdre
Interestingly, the business aspect of Hollywood enables Perry to have a type of freedom with his films, final cut privilege, that usually only auteurs receive.
I posit another troubling aspect of auteur theory is the media’s tendency to treat African American directors as if “there can be only one.” While other Black directors do receive some media coverage, it is not to the degree that the Black director has.
Due to the racist history of film, when African Americans entered the industry many wanted to create “positive” images. However, “Blackness is not a fixed term” and has a “constellation of productions, histories, images, representations, and meanings associated with [a] Black presence in the United States.” (187)
Karen Bowdre
The idea of authenticity or authentic blackness is tied to creating “better” images of African Americans. For example when Lee portrayed the issue of colorism in School Daze (1988), his blackness was questions. For Perry, “his use of comedy (a genre with a complicated history and links to minstrelsy), Madea, and his class politics have been among reasons why critics question his blackness.” (188)
Blackness is complex. Perry positions himself as being authentic because of his large African American female audience and Lee cites his realness with films that “tell the truth.” (188)
Karen Bowdre
Historically and even today Black communities are portrayed as monolithic. This means issues such as class, levels of education, and region are often dismissed.
Riché Richardson examines the issue of region within African American communities and details the ways Black masculinity has been demonized since the end of enslavement.
She insightfully posits Malcolm X positions himself in contrast to southern Black men like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. This type of discourse is hierarchical in nature and places Black men from the north as more authentic than those from the south. It also employs the “house Negro” and “field Negro” dyad.
Karen Bowdre
During an interview with Oprah, she asks Lee about his differences from Perry. She plays a clip of Perry mentioning that he is from the rural south and Lee is from the urban north.
Lee pushes back against this critique and states that his parents are products of the south. He goes onto say his differences with Perry are a matter of style and taste.
Here Lee elides his education, specifically his training at NYU film school. And as we know from Bourdieu, taste isn’t random.
Karen Bowdre
These director discourses work to further differentiate Lee and Perry from other Black directors. This plays into the false notion of Black exceptionalism. While the concept may seem benign, it is racially biased because it makes talented African American an anomaly and divorces from their communities of origin.
There are similarities with the “exceptional Negro” and the media “Magical Negro.” These type of characters mysteriously appear and disappear. In the context of this discussion, the “exceptional Negro” enables directors like Lee and Perry to be separated from other Black filmmakers and Black theatre.
Lee linked to Woody Allen and Jim Jarmusch
Perry a surprise because critics never considered his theatre success.
Karen Bowdre
In spite of their past feud, the men share problematic portrayals of Black women. Perry has many of his female characters go through extreme trauma and suggests that with the love of a good man, everything will be alright.
Lee claims he desires to create strong Black women but continually compromises them sexually within the narrative.
Perry can be a complicated character because of his work. I often find it problematic and yet his achievement of his own studio is something that cannot be denied.
