I have, until now, maintained a mostly laissez-faire attitude when it comes to Tyler Perry. His films are awful, but they’re not aimed at me, they don’t impact films I do care about and it’s easy to let them go. In the larger conversation of the state of black film in America the works of Tyler Perry trouble, but as a regular moviegoer (or even a film critic – I simply skip his films), Tyler Perry is worth maybe an occasional joke or snide comment.
But something just riles me up about his new poster, for I Can Do Bad All By Myself. It’s a riff – fuck it’s a rip-off – of the classic Straw Dogs poster, and that’s kind of making me furious. Perry has done arty alternative posters for his films before – the last one had a bird made of smoke or some shit – but the idea that he would appropriate one of the classics for a fucking Madea movie…
I don’t even get the point of it. Is the Tyler Perry audience really that tuned in to the work of Sam Peckinpah? Is Perry even familiar with the work of the great director or was the image just a striking one that jumped out at him at Blockbuster while he was renting Davey & Goliath VHS tapes?
To see the full poster, visit Cinematical. Be prepared to punch anyone who praises this poster without knowing it’s a full scale rip-off.