I don’t know how many of these movies there are now but the character Madea is in every title, she is also the focus of the trailers and ads. HOWEVER in the actual movies Madea makes up like five minutes of screen time, not only that but rather than a comedy the rest of the movie is a torturous kinda of moralizing soap opera trying to teach you a lesson or something.:rolleyes:
This approaches false advertizing, going by the trailers you’d think you were going to a comedy about a cantankerous old woman, only to find yourself in a non-comedy moral lesson drama.
Haven’t there been enough of these damn things that an enterprising young buck or doe could edit all of Madea’s 5-minute appearances together into a debatably-hilarious feature-length film?
The demographic these movies are marketed towards understand what they’re buying a ticket for: Tyler Perry’s unique blend of family friendly wacky comedy and drama.
Check out their box office grosses, they make a LOT of money. There happens to be a large African-American population in this country, and he makes movies that that demographic enjoys a great deal - mostly because he’s one of the few people making family-friendly AA films (not movies about drug dealers/gang bangers/etc that many black directors/artists are successful with.)
It’s a niche, and he’s filling it like nobody else.
On the rare occasion that I have watched a Madea movie, I’m always reminded sharply of the Cosby Show from way back when.
The characters are portrayed as middle class, educated, ambitious, etc., instead of your typical ghetto, poor, working class types. And of course there’s the injection of Madea comedy that is sort of family friendly (whether it’s FUNNY is a different argument) - it’s a pretty sharp contrast to many of the existing black movie director’s works, and I can see where it does fill a certain niche. Not too gritty or depressing, doesn’t reflect poorly on AA people (in general)… nothing too offensive.
The irony is as much as everyone loves Madea, I’ve never met a black person that saw them in theaters; my sisters and cousins have ALL the bootlegs. I don’t remember any of the guys in the family mentioning them, and my brother than I have long wondered why a black guy in drag is supposed to be so hilarious (since Flip Wilson’s Geraldine).
Then what is the purpose of the deceptive advertising then?
This is like having a movie called Space Warrior Bob, with the trailers and TV ads featuring nothing but space based scenes of this apparent scifi movie. You go to the movie to find it a romantic comedy where near the end the lead Bob drinks too much cough syrup and hallucinates 5 minutes of space adventure.
The trailers have Madea in them so that everyone in the target demographic knows it’s the new Tyler Perry movie, and everyone outside the target demo knows it’s the new Tyler Perry movie, so they can either see it or not see it. If you didn’t have Madea, they might think it was something else and then see or not see it by accident. So Madea is like the sticker on an apple that says it’s a Fuji or a Honeycrisp. You don’t eat the sticker, but you want the sticker there anyway.
What makes you think “ghetto” is typical? I think you need to rethink your wording or explain what you mean because it sounds like you think most AA are “ghetto”.
