““Woman Thou Art Bound””: Critical Spectatorship, Black Masculine Gazes, and Gender

Problems in Tyler Perry's Movies

Author(s): Robert J. Patterson
Source: Black Camera , Vol. 3, No. 1 (Winter 2011), pp. 9-30
Published by: Indiana University Press
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2979/blackcamera.3.1.9

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“Woman Thou Art Bound”:
Critical Spectatorship, Black Masculine
Gazes, and Gender Problems in
Tyler Perry’s Movies

R obert J. Pat terson

Abstract
Despite Perry’s claim that his oeuvre defies Hollywood formulas, his works succeed
precisely because they rely on the racial, gender, sexual, and class ideologies and
discourses that produce these problematic stereotypes. This essay builds upon black
feminist notions of intersectionality to analyze how Perry’s films interpellate black
women into submissive gender roles vis-à-vis the nuclear family, while simultane-
ously grappling with feminist political and theoretical issues such as sexual abuse
and domestic violence that may structure (black) women’s oppression. Perry’s works
operate within a patriarchy affirmation–critique dyad: struggling to critique patri-
archy as a system, they instead identify only its most blatant and egregious manifes-
tations as problematic. Furthermore, Perry’s success hinges on his and the audience’s
inability or unwillingness to connect the particularly egregious manifestations of
black patriarchy, specifically physical abuse and sexual molestation, with a more
ubiquitous system, namely, submissive gender roles and expectations. With feminist
bell hooks’s theory of black looks as a foundation, this essay posits that Perry’s works
betray their stated goals of being transformative by not addressing this conflict, as
demonstrated in a few suggestive scenes where Perry might have produced a differ-
ent representation.

H owever we may feel about the ideological or aesthetic quality of Tyler

Perry’s films and/or plays, we cannot dispute the enthrallment, or
even obsession, that fans and critics alike have with Perry himself, his alter
ego, Madea, and his corpus of works. Perry’s dramatic rise to financial suc-
cess—from rags to riches—demonstrates how perseverance, hard work,
and opportunity intersected to transform him into the mogul he has be-

Robert J. Patterson, “ ‘Woman Thou Art Bound’: Critical Spectatorship, Black Masculine
Gazes, and Gender Problems in Tyler Perry’s Movies,” Black Camera, An International
Film Journal, Vol. 3 No. 1 (Winter 2011), 9–30.

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10 black camera 3 :1

come.1 His ascendancy to fame and popularity, unparalleled by any Afri-

can American cultural producer short of Oprah, further suggests that as a
playwright, director, studio owner, and actor, Perry manufactures a prod-
uct that consumers ostensibly demand. Mike Paseornek, Lionsgate’s presi-
dent of production, testifies to this demand with his cheeky claim, “Madea
is one of Hollywood’s top actresses.”2 Yet, given the long-standing prob-
lematic history of black representation in Hollywood, cinema, and televi-
sion, and despite Perry’s success, or perhaps because of it, pressing
questions remain concerning the products that Perry disseminates and the
audiences that consume them. How, for example, does Tyler Perry, as did
Flip Wilson in The Flip Wilson Show (1970–74); Wesley Snipes in To Wong
Foo: Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar (1995); Martin Lawrence in the
trilogy Big Momma’s House (2000), Big Momma’s House 2 (2006), and Big
Mommas: Like Father, Like Son (2011); and Eddie Murphy in Norbit (2006),
participate in the commodification of black female sexuality by perform-
ing, that is, cross-dressing, as a black woman? Considering the racist, sex-
ist, heterosexist, and classist history of representation that Donald Bogle
and Ed Guerrero3 have richly detailed, does Perry’s work, which purports
to contest Hollywood’s (stereo)typical representations of black people, suc-
ceed in not reifying a history of minstrelsy, toms, mammies, coons, and
bucks? In what follows, I argue that despite Perry’s claim that his oeuvre
challenges Hollywood formulas, his works succeed precisely because they
rely on the racial, gender, sexual, and class ideologies and discourses that
produce these problematic stereotypes. I then turn to the question of the
audience’s horizon of expectations, as Jauss would have it,4 for Perry’s work
and consider the value of the messages Perry dispenses to children and
families in his films.
Although critics have vociferously condemned Perry’s representations
of race in his films and television shows (House of Payne [2006–present] and
Meet the Browns [2009–present]), they have been less adamant in their criti-
cism of the intersections of race, gender, sexuality, religion, and class in Per-
ry’s works. Expressing his disapprobation with Perry’s representation of race
in The House of Payne, a show that has garnered the highest ratings in televi-
sion’s history, film director and critic Spike Lee contends that Perry’s work
contains elements of “coonery and buffoonery” and that his “image[s] [are]
troubling and hark back to the days of ‘Amos-n-Andy.’”5 While Lee rightfully
captures the complicated historical trajectory by which we ought to consider
Perry’s films, my chief concern in this essay is not to lambast Perry for nega-
tive representations of black people, although the works readily lend them-
selves to such an endeavor. My analysis considers the cultural and political
stakes of his problematic racial representations. I further examine how the
categories of gender and sexuality inflect the vector of racial representation.

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Rober t J. Pat t er son / “ Woman Thou Art Bound” 11

To that end, two more specific concerns animate this discussion; first, build-
ing upon black feminist notions of intersectionality, I will analyze how Per-
ry’s films interpellate6 black women into submissive gender roles vis-à-vis the
nuclear family, while simultaneously grappling with feminist political and
theoretical issues such as sexual abuse and domestic violence that may struc-
ture (black) women’s oppression. I argue that Perry’s works operate within a
patriarchy affirmation–critique dyad, wherein his works struggle to critique
patriarchy as a system, and instead identify only its most blatant and heinous
manifestations as problematic. Second and related, I insist that Perry’s suc-
cess hinges on his and the audience’s inability or unwillingness to connect
the particularly egregious manifestations of black patriarchy, specifically
physical abuse and sexual molestation, with a more ubiquitous system, that
is, submissive gender roles and expectations. Using feminist bell hooks’s the-
ory of black looks, I posit that Perry’s works betray their stated goals of being
transformative by not addressing this conflict, as demonstrated by a few sug-
gestive scenes where Perry might have produced a different representation.
Although Perry’s work appeals to a broad range of demographic
groups, Perry professes to target African American church-going women,
an audience whom he rightfully argues Hollywood historically has ne-
glected.7 Tapping into the cultural reservoir of African American religios-
ity, Perry’s faith-based films and plays often articulate a “crisis of faith”
and offer “a moment of redemption” for his characters.8 These crises of
faith, more often than not, revolve around issues of domestic violence (I
Can Do Bad By Myself [2007], Madea’s Family Reunion [2006], Diary of a
Mad Black Woman [2005]); sexual abuse, including child molestation (I
Can Do Bad By Myself [2007]); and familial dysfunction (Madea’s Family
Reunion [2006], Daddy’s Little Girls [2007], I Can Do Bad By Myself [2009],
Why Did I Get Married? [2007], Why Did I Get Married Too? [2010], The
Family That Preys [2008]). Such issues, if left unaddressed and silenced,
engender and perpetuate self-defeating, pathological behaviors. As Perry
himself has indicated, his goal is to “take this work, do a silly character,
and put these great messages inside of them so that when children see
them, families see them, they can walk away with a great message.”9 By
identifying with Madea, who functions as a source of wisdom, or as Toni
Morrison would have it, an “ancestor figure,”10 viewers of Perry’s film theo-
retically would leave with strategies not only to resist their own oppression
and demoralization, but also to live empowered lives.
Perry’s films undoubtedly provide beneficial and self-empowering
wisdoms, yet I would like to further interrogate his proposition that his
works provide “a great message.” A cursory analysis of Perry’s work might
suggest that he undertakes the ambitious task of dismantling the more
ubiquitous system of patriarchy through his unequivocal denouncement

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12 black camera 3 :1

of domestic violence and sexual abuse. In doing so, he uses his works to
“break the silence,” a pertinent black feminist phrase, that seems to struc-
ture women’s oppression and provide models for communal and individ-
ual healing for his characters. Yet, as Byron Pitts observes, Perry’s
formulaic plots typically have a “fairy tale ending, a happy marriage, a rec-
onciliation, often delivered with a dose of gospel music.”11 These marriages,
I argue, paradigmatically articulate the patriarchal affirmation–critique
dyad that persists throughout Perry’s work. Celebrating marriage’s cul-
tural, political, and economic values, Perry’s appropriation of the marriage
plot suggests that marriage solves women’s (and men’s) social problems.
However, as I maintain, he renders marriage uncritically because he never
entertains the possibility that the institution of marriage itself warrants
interrogation. Instead, he suggests that women in particular need to con-
form to the expectations of heterosexual marriage and, thus, undermines
his potential to dismantle black patriarchy. More to the point, Perry’s en-
dorsement of marriage actually re-entrenches women in the grips of the
patriarchal ideologies that facilitate, if not cause, their oppression. In addi-
tion to the more obvious choices through which to address this marriage
trope, namely Why Did I Get Married? and Why Did I Get Married Too?, I
will analyze Madea’s Family Reunion, a movie that seems particularly rel-
evant because it embeds many discourses on black women, gender, and
family that have persisted in black culture and that continue to warrant a
more rigorous black feminist analysis.
Although Perry’s works at times call into question the more acrimoni-
ous effects of black patriarchy, his simultaneous interpellation of his audi-
ence into normative gender ideologies and roles demonstrates an ongoing
struggle in black expressive culture to articulate notions of black family
and gender that simultaneously eschew both normativity and pathology.
While the putative pathological nature of black families has been a long-
standing feature of American discourses about black families, and repeat-
edly has found expression within the black scholarly community,12 Senator
Patrick D. Moynihan’s report The Negro Family: The Case for National Ac-
tion13 (1965) gave new life to this thesis by identifying black “family values”
as a national, political priority. In what has proven to be a controversial
(though arguably fascinating and at times compelling) report, Moynihan
argues that a series of institutional factors, including the underemploy-
ment of black men, combined with the employment of black women,
causes black families to deviate from the white American nuclear family
model. This employment inversion, according to Moynihan, emasculates
black men, who, unable to fulfill their patriarchal bread-winning roles,
abandon black women, thus leaving black women increasingly dependent
on welfare and children without a “proper” family model/structure. The

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Rober t J. Pat t er son / “ Woman Thou Art Bound” 13

children later repeat this pattern, thus perpetuating a cycle of poverty

among the black lower classes. Because Moynihan believes the family unit
sets the foundation for people’s future opportunities and successes, this
“inverted” structure, what he erroneously terms a matriarchy, in a patri­
archal American society, places African Americans at a decided social
disadvantage.
Despite Moynihan’s ostensibly liberal intent, Roderick Ferguson, Mi-
chelle Wallace, Hortense Spillers, and Deborah McDowell have argued com-
pellingly that his depictions of black families as “matriarchal” “tangles of
pathology” unfairly indict black women for the deterioration of black fami-
lies.14 Implied throughout his report is the notion that if black women would
let their men “strut,” that is, be the financial and managing heads of the
households, the men would not leave, the children would be properly social-
ized, and the cycle of poverty would be effectually disrupted. Despite the
scholarly interrogation of Moynihan’s assertions in the 1960s, 1970s, and
1980s, and the proliferation of African American (women’s) writings in the
1970s that problematized Moynihan’s claims, Moynihan’s proposition that
the restoration of black families and family structures vis-à-vis marriage
would function as a cure-all for black people’s social and political problems
has maintained cultural currency since the 1960s, and is evidenced across a
wide range of African American cultural texts. The Cosby Show’s success, for
example, during the 1980s and early 1990s, arguably appealed to (white)
Americans because of its implicit claim that by adhering to the nuclear fam-
ily structure and its values black people could achieve middle-class status
and be free from the vicissitudes of economic exploitation that racism and
sexism compound. As the show’s critics have remarked, one danger of the
sitcom’s failure to engage in explicit dialogues about race, class, and gender
struggles for blacks in America was that not doing so “ignored the effects of
institutionalized racism and alleviated white fears and guilt about social and
political problems facing African Americans.”15 Throughout the twentieth
century, television’s and film’s interrogations of black “family values” have
been problematic at best, even when black people transitioned from being
background characters in predominantly white families (Beulah [1950–53])
to being the primary cast (Good Times [1974–79]).
In the specific context of African American cinematic production,
both television and film—including civil rights–era movies, blaxploitation
films, black “family” films, black documentaries, independent films, and
sitcoms—writers and directors alike have repeatedly brought the black
family to the screen not only to contest the notion that black families are
dysfunctional and pathological, but also to indoctrinate viewers with
“family values.” As Valerie Smith notes in her seminal analysis of familial
discourses in black documentary films, all too often the representation of

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14 black camera 3 :1

black families in nondocumentary films reaffirms the normativity of the

nuclear family.16 In doing so, they simultaneously, either implicitly or ex-
plicitly, promote heterosexist and sexist ideologies that disproportionately
disadvantage black women. For example, whereas The Cosby Show, casting
a black family that embraced upward mobility and remained rather re-
moved from the explicit racial and economic issues, contrasted signifi-
cantly with its predecessor Good Times, which had a working-class black
family that consistently discussed the racial and economic strife that
plagued their lives, both shows shared a common bond; however varied
their family styles were, they embraced and reified the strong black patri-
arch as necessary for black families’ success. As Bogle notes:

John Amos played James with warmth and intelligence. What made his char-
acter all the more affecting was that he was no blind victim to the system.
James understood its workings, which made him feel at times all the more
trapped and frustrated. Yet he was the head of his household. The children
treated him with respect. And Florida seemed determined that his home be
his castle; that while the outside world might try to emasculate him, within
the walls of their apartment, he would always have the last word.17

As the patriarch whose wife defers to and encourages his authority, Amos’s
character suggests that although the white world may not value his pres-
ence, his family understands his role within the home and what it ought to
be in society at large.
While Phylicia Rashad’s role as Claire Huxtable often vociferously ad-
dressed issues of sexism, and Claire and Cliff often made decisions in con-
junction with each other as equal partners, Cliff Huxtable (sometimes
subtly) remained the head of household and, like James Evans, had the
final say. Indeed, I recognize the writers’ desires not to portray problematic
single-parent black households that for too long had been a staple in the
industry. However, the sociopolitical stakes of their representations in gen-
eral, and Tyler Perry’s in particular, lie not in the degree to which they rep-
resent positive and negative images of black families (for such an argument
hinges on a problematic binary, one that arguably misses the broader and
more important point), but rather in their very definitions of what consti-
tutes “positive” and “negative” images, and how those characterizations
align with and diverge from problematic gender norms and codes. In other
words, while to some a black woman submitting to her husband’s authori-
tative rule may be a “positive” (and biblically justified) representation of a
black family functioning with the man in his rightful place as head-of-
household, there is little “positive” about the oppressive gender ideologies
undergirding that conversation.

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Rober t J. Pat t er son / “ Woman Thou Art Bound” 15

Given the crises of black families and gender roles that plague aca-
demic and popular discourses, Perry’s interrogation of black families and
gender relationships in his works and his desire to engage in productive
conversations about these matters should not come as a surprise. What is
startling, and perhaps unsettling, however, is Perry’s obliviousness to the
myriad of feminist and queer studies as sites of inquiry that compellingly
suggest that the nuclear family has functioned as a site of oppression for
(black) women, despite arguments for its utility and demands for its resto-
ration. Although Perry does not position himself as a (black) feminist film
producer, critic, or scholar per se, familiarizing himself with the nuances
of (black) feminist inquiry might behoove him particularly as he positions
himself, and is positioned, as a central figure that addresses political, cul-
tural, and social issues that are especially relevant to black women, black
men, and black communities.
By not conceptualizing sexual abuse and domestic violence as inextri-
cably linked to a more complicated web of gender and familial discourses,
Perry’s representations of black women, family, and gender roles ultimately
rearticulate heteronormative patriarchal fantasies that re-inscribe the
same oppressive phenomena and ideas he aims to critique and eschew. If,
as Valerie Smith has compellingly argued, black feminism “illuminate[s]
the specific impact of constructions of blackness on the abuse to which
men submit women” and “critiques constructions of masculinity and fem-
ininity more broadly,”18 such a paradigm instructively might have helped
Perry to avoid rehashing Moynihan and E. Franklin Frazier’s notions of
pathological family structure because those paradigms would compel him
to call into question family structure at its root.
If, as Moynihan has contended, the matriarchal leadership of African
American communities contributes to their social dysfunction, Perry’s char-
acter, Madea, as matriarch par excellence in Madea’s Family Reunion, prob-
lematizes the notion that matriarchal leadership is necessarily dysfunctional,
while simultaneously revealing how black female familial leadership can still
ingrain patriarchal values. On the one hand, the term matriarchy, as
Hortense Spillers has compellingly demonstrated, underscores how the in-
stitution of slavery and its subsequent legacies have disrupted American pa-
triarchal laws and gender roles for African Americans, thus placing women
in social positions and relationships that typically have been designated for
men.19 On the other hand, the term erroneously suggests that African Amer-
ican female-lead households are somehow free from the pervasive influence
of (black) patriarchy, that women wield a particular type of political power
within a patriarchal society, and that maternal genealogical descent lines
hold the same power and value that paternal ones do. From Madea’s roles as
head of household, caretaker, wisdom-provider, and hell-raiser, she typifies

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16 black camera 3 :1

the image of the strong black woman—one who is fully functional in the ab-
sence of a man. Even the marketing of the movie Madea’s Family Reunion
reinforces the notion of Madea’s matriarchal status when it remarks, “Based
upon Tyler Perry’s acclaimed stage production, ‘Madea’s Family Reunion’
continues the adventures of Southern matriarch Madea. She has just been
court ordered to be in charge of Nikki, a rebellious runaway, her nieces, Lisa
and Vanessa, are suffering relationship trouble, and through it all, she has to
organize her family reunion.” This endorsement captures the appeal that
Madea has for her viewers; despite all of life’s complications, including caring
for an ill-mannered brother, rehabilitating a teenage foster child, providing
shelter for her nieces and counseling for several familial members, she man-
ages to organize a successful family reunion, one that reinforces the histori-
cal and contemporary importance of family.
Madea embodies what one of the movie’s characters, Vanessa, reveals
is the black women’s motto—black women “always do what [they] have to
do, even when [they] can’t do what [they] want to do.” The motto demon-
strates the triadic tension between duty, responsibility, and obligation that
animates not only Madea’s character, but several of the other women char-
acters in Perry’s works. Perry believes not only that his work, as “a compi-
lation of strong black women,” attests to the historical triumphs black
women have made, despite the grimmest of economic, social, and political
circumstances, but also that “the reason it works is because people see
themselves.”20 While honoring the triumphs of black women merits com-
mendation, Perry might want to consider more carefully the vexed rela-
tionship that the figure of the strong black woman (as mammies too) has
had to America at large and the African American community as well. In
other words, despite the strong black woman’s triumphs, she too has suf-
fered because the image itself functions to erase her particular experiences
of oppression in life in so far as it privileges her ability to be a self-sacrific-
ing surrogate.21 By celebrating Madea’s strength, Perry’s work suggests that
black women’s surrogacy, their mammification, somehow is less problem-
atic when staged in the context of black relationships because they are in
fact doing what they historically were always supposed to have been
doing—holding their families together.
Such a suggestion fails to grapple with the larger issue, which is how the
overarching paradigm of women’s roles in families positions families as sites
of women’s physical, emotional, economic, and cultural oppression. So even
while Madea’s wisdom contributes to Lisa fleeing her domestically violent
relationship and Vanessa entering into a productive heterosexual one, we
never get a chance to witness Madea’s internal development and struggles, as
we do other characters. Where, for example, does Madea retreat in order to
recuperate and to refill her fountain of wisdom? In whom does Madea

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Rober t J. Pat t er son / “ Woman Thou Art Bound” 17

confide? Beyond her family, what are Madea’s personal interests? I raise these
questions not only because the movie fails to provide any answers, but also
because the absence of answers perpetuates the problematic image of what
Michelle Wallace has aptly phrased “the myth of the superwoman.”22 To sug-
gest that Madea’s sole interests lie in her family, that her pleasure derives
from what Patricia Hill Collins phrases “other-mothering,”23 myopically re-
inforces the limited roles that America and Hollywood have conceptualized
for black people and again calls into question Perry’s self-professed goal of
refuting Hollywood stereotypes.
By articulating an untold story of black life and catering to a black fe-
male audience that Hollywood has neglected, Perry believes his work coun-
ters Hollywood’s representation of black families and exclusion of black
(female) viewing audiences. Yet, as Lubiano has persuasively suggested, Per-
ry’s “reality based” films, rooted in a particular vernacular experience, do
not necessarily counteract Hollywood’s exclusion or representation. Consid-
ering the slippery slope between reality, representation, and authenticity, Lu-
biano has admonished, “representations are not reality; simple, factual
reproductions of selected aspects of vernacular culture are neither necessar-
ily counter-hegemonic art nor anything else.”24 Indeed, far from counterhe-
gemonic, Perry’s works repeat a history of mammies, as just one example of
the stereotypes Perry reifies, by re-inscribing recognizable racist, sexist, and
heterosexist codes that resonate with his viewers, or that he perhaps wants
his viewers to internalize. Perry’s interventions into discourses of black fami-
lies, gender, and sexuality falter because they fail to escape the normative and
heteronormative ideals they attempt to criticize and highlight. Even in the
films in which Madea is explicitly absent, there exists the Madea-type figure
that is the backbone of the community and/or family, as seen in Alfre Wood-
ward’s role in The Family That Preys.
In addition to Madea’s Family Reunion’s uncritical celebration of the
myth of the superwoman vis-à-vis the black matriarchal figure, the film uses
that black matriarchal figure as an exemplary instrument for black patriar-
chy not simply to demonize black women, but also to demonstrate how black
women’s investment in patriarchal values contributes to their own oppres-
sion. In Breaking the Silence: Toward a Black Male Feminist Criticism, David
Ikard has suggested that one reason why patriarchy persists in black commu-
nities is because women themselves, through their investment in patriarchal
ideas, become (unintentionally) complicit in their own oppression.25 While
Ikard’s work forcefully considers the relationship between agency and vic-
timhood, and insists that their participation is often unintentional, the term
complicity itself suggests that women have a willful knowledge of their par-
ticipation in their oppression and, while highlighting their agency, at times
blames them for their oppression.

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18 black camera 3 :1

Given the naturalization of gender and sexual ideologies, however,

one should be skeptical of the idea that women knowingly participate in
their oppression because many people, including Perry, do not conceptual-
ize the gender roles as oppressive, but rather as “natural” and “normal.”
Therefore, it is difficult, if not impossible, to suggest that women are know-
ingly participating in “wrong-doing,” when they in fact view those behav-
iors as normal/natural. For this reason, I prefer the term investment, for it
captures the broader notion that women are receiving a return on their
actions, yet acknowledges the point that they are in fact acting as agents.
However, in the case of The Family Reunion, the term complicity not only
demonstrates the patriarchy critique–affirmation dyad, but also ade-
quately grasps a mother’s endorsement of her daughter’s abusive relation-
ship, for she understands that her daughter’s material privileges are
necessarily tied to her physical and emotional abuse and submission. Be-
yond understanding, she actually encourages her daughter to withstand
the abuse or to alter her behavior so she does not “cause” it.
While Madea’s impending family reunion unifies the movie’s plot,
equally important subplots propel the film. These subplots are the wedding
between Lisa (Rochelle Ayetes) and Carlos (Blair Underwood) and the de-
veloping courtship between Vanessa (Lisa Anderson) and Frankie (Boris
Kodjoe). On the one hand, Perry’s juxtaposition of these two relationships
draws attention to the ways in which gender ideologies, familial configura-
tions, and social class intersect to complicate marriage and relationship
ideals. For example, Victoria’s attitude toward Carlos reflects the notion
that as an attractive, wealthy stockbroker, Carlos is a better man than
Frankie, who is a city bus driver. On the other hand, although the film
demonstrates the grave dangers of associating one’s value with one’s work,
it falls short of sustaining a larger critique of the institution of marriage,
which is the very site at which the problem of this conflation arises. To
elaborate, Carlos, while financially stable, is also abusive, assaulting Lisa
both physically and verbally, whereas the single-parent Frankie embodies
a compassionate though still patriarchal masculinity. Although Frankie
could never provide the material comforts that Carlos can to his fiancé,
Carlos’s fiancé must pay a high price for these accoutrements. The movie’s
opening scene not only foregrounds the centrality of Lisa and Carlos’s rela-
tionship, but also foreshadows the specter of violence that characterizes it.
Regardless of how egregious Carlos’s behavior is, viewers understand
why perhaps he behaves in the ways that he does; he gains social currency
in a patriarchal, sexist society by controlling his soon-to-be wife. What is
less clear, at least initially, is why Lisa’s mother, Victoria, encourages Lisa
to remain engaged to Carlos even after Lisa reveals the domestic violence
that defines their relationship. When Lisa tells her mother that “he hits

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Rober t J. Pat t er son / “ Woman Thou Art Bound” 19

me,” her mother responds, “when,” as if to suggest that certain circum-

stances might render Carlos’s behavior acceptable. Lisa then tells her
mother “often,” only to be further bewildered by her mother’s accusation
and justification: “Then you must stop doing what you’re doing to make
him angry. Women sometimes have to deal with things to be comfortable.
Be a good wife. Do what the man says, and you’ll be comfortable.” Her
mother’s advice confirms Carlos’s notion that Lisa’s behavior, her unwill-
ingness to submit to Carlos’s patriarchal authority, provokes the beatings
she endures. Beyond this point, however, is the correlative notion that Lisa
must also abide by Carlos’s rules to receive the financial benefits that will
provide her with a “comfortable” life. For Victoria, neither happiness nor
physical security is nearly as important as material comforts. In fact, she
ironically suggests that they are the price Lisa must pay in order to be fi-
nancially stable. Here, we see the epitome of female complicity in patriar-
chal oppression in so far as Victoria knowingly compels her daughter to
invest in an oppressive relationship in order to accrue the benefits in-
scribed therein. For the record, Victoria wants Lisa to see herself as an
agent in her relationship, gaining financial power, despite the physical and
emotional battering she suffers.
Perry’s characterization of Victoria’s participation in Lisa’s oppression
demonstrates how Victoria’s internalization of patriarchal values renders
her a viable mechanism for perpetuating them. Victoria’s character dem-
onstrates the fundamental contradiction of the African American matri-
arch figure in a patriarchal society. Rather than subverting patriarchal
roles, she instead reifies their importance. In so doing, she not only orches-
trates her daughter’s misery, but also demonstrates how the uneven distri-
bution of economic resources that makes women financially better off
married than single informs their participation and investment in what
may prove to be their own oppression.
The movie’s end, with Lisa calling off the wedding, only after throwing
hot grits on Carlos and beating him with a skillet, demonstrates how Lisa
withstood the grips of patriarchy by using her extended familial network
as a source of empowerment. The movie nevertheless culminates with a
marriage—Lisa announces to the crowd that she will not marry Carlos,
Frankie proposes to Vanessa, and a wedding ensues as planned. On the
one hand, the juxtaposition of Frankie and Vanessa’s relationship with
Carlos and Lisa’s demonstrates how women’s and men’s investments in
particular gender roles and ideologies compel them to enact and partici-
pate in counterproductive behaviors. For example, the central critique that
Perry levels against Lisa and Carlos’s relationship pertains to their static
notions of gender roles. Perry further maintains this point by suggesting
that Frankie and Vanessa’s relationship succeeds, not only because of their

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20 black camera 3 :1

love, but also because they are less invested in gender roles than Lisa and
Carlos are.
Despite the differences that emerge between their relationships, how-
ever, the same ideologies propel their developments, attuning us yet again to
this patriarchal critique–affirmation dyad that drives Perry’s works. When,
for example, Vanessa asks Frankie, “What do you want?” further accusing
him that “all men come for something,” Frankie replies, “Some men come to
restore,” thus reinforcing the putative restorative power of patriarchy.
Whereas Vanessa’s question to Frankie launches a more pervasive critique of
men as a part of a patriarchal system, Frankie’s response shifts the conversa-
tion from a macroscopic level (society and patriarchy) to a microscopic level
(individual men). In doing so, Frankie’s response captures what seems to be
the hermeneutical error that pervades Perry’s corpus of works. Rather than
interrogating how the issues he raises are symptomatic of more pervasive
problems endemic to a larger institution, that is, marriage and family, he lo-
cates the problem solely within these individual instances inside of these in-
stitutions. Moreover, Frankie’s response also suggests that Vanessa’s
“restoration” depends upon a man, without whom she could not be happy
and empowered. To that end, the marriage plot maintains its cultural cur-
rency, implying that women’s success and happiness lie within the confines
of the heteronormative nuclear family.
Although Perry aims to show a personal transformation that transpires
in Vanessa, and underscores how dealing with the trauma of her past is es-
sential to her ability to have a healthy interpersonal relationship, I call into
question the significance of men being the catalyst for women to engage in
these processes. How, for example, would Vanessa’s transformation have
been different if she had undergone it irrespective of a man? In other words,
why does a woman need a man? If a woman’s happiness is contingent upon
finding a “good” man, but few “good” men exist, what are the implications of
this phenomenon for a woman’s happiness? If Perry were to focus on the is-
sues that concomitantly drive his plots, he would have the opportunity to, in
fact, provide representations of black women, gender, and families that ex-
tend beyond the typical representations that Hollywood has produced. Black
women have already seen themselves sacrificing, suffering, and overcoming
within the strictures of (white) patriarchy; situating these representations in
the context of black patriarchy does not revolutionize the representation.
Black women have concerns and desires that extend beyond their familial
roles and obligations, yet Perry’s representations suggest not only that their
families should be their primary focus and responsibility, but that their lives
are somehow incomplete without these particular types of kinship ties. Such
thinking oversimplifies the complexity of black women’s subjectivity, as well
as the concept of family itself.

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Rober t J. Pat t er son / “ Woman Thou Art Bound” 21

The representation of successful women as overbearing emasculators

in Why Did I Get Married? and Why Did I Get Married Too? not only har-
kens back to Moynihanesque discourses about black families, further ex-
tending the issues of abuse, patriarchy, family, and gender that the analysis
of Family Reunion has heretofore foregrounded, but his correlative conten-
tion that these women must submit to patriarchal authority in order to
have successful relationships recenters any black patriarchal discourse that
his work might actually disrupt. The film’s story line revolves around four
couples, Patricia (Janet Jackson) and Gavin (Malik Yoba), Angela (Tasha
Smith) and Marcus (Michael White), Mike (Richard Jones) and Sheila (Jill
Scott), and Terry (Tyler Perry) and Diane (Sharon Leal), attending an an-
nual retreat to ponder the question the movie’s title asks: why did I get
married? Through the conversations that the couples have with each other,
the men with the men, and the women with the women, Perry suggests
that marriages function best with a male head of household, and that when
women fail to adhere to their prescribed roles and responsibilities in these
relationships, they disturb this norm and become ill suited for partner-
ship; if they want to remain married, they, like Lisa in Madea’s Family Re-
union, must submit to patriarchal authority or remain unhappily single. A
persistent theme throughout Perry’s work is that women, with the excep-
tion of Madea, cannot be happy if they are single.
While the films show how both the men’s and women’s behaviors con-
tribute to the vicissitudes of married life, they simultaneously hold the
women particularly responsible for the relationships’ antagonisms because
of their unwillingness to adhere to specific gender roles regarding mother-
hood, work, and sexual fulfillment. Perry might have used Angela’s role as
a primary breadwinner to call into question the normativity of the male-
breadwinner family model that sociologist Stephanie Coontz argues
emerged post–World War II and that has constantly been in flux since
women entered the workforce in large numbers.26 Rather than exploring
how Angela and Marcus should reconsider their investment in this patri-
archal economic dynamic, Perry ultimately concludes that Angela should
be less nagging and more “wifely.” That Angela falls back into these domes-
tic roles at the end of Why Did I Get Married? and Marcus is restored to the
position of primary breadwinner in Why Did I Get Married Too? reinforces
Perry’s continued support of the patriarchy affirmation–critique dyad.
Although both Marcus and Angela engage in extramarital affairs, Mar-
cus’s belief that Angela does not reflects a more broadly conceived cultural
phenomenon where women’s fidelity and monogamy are assumed, and
men’s are not. While Terry agrees to give Marcus a shot for his sexually trans-
mitted infection, he admonishes him not to have sex with Angela, not merely
to conceal the fact of his infidelity, but also to protect her health. He suggests

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22 black camera 3 :1

that Marcus’s idea of “stepping out on [his] wife without protection” met-
onymically represents a larger cultural phenomenon that has contributed to
“black women having the leading new number of HIV cases.” No sooner
than we might commend Perry’s social advocacy on this pertinent issue,
however, the movie regresses into an affirmation of patriarchy. Rather than
scolding Mike in a similar fashion, Terry responds only to express his jeal-
ousy that Mike is having sex while he is not. These two responses again dem-
onstrate the narrative inconsistencies that complicate the transformative
representations Perry aims to show. While the concern for disease control
and the correlative desire to prevent (re)transmission remain obvious, it is
not clear why Terry does not impart the same advice to Mike. While Terry’s
exchange with Mike clearly has a comical element, it also has graver cultural
implications. By not having Terry rebuke Mike as he does Marcus, Perry
leaves the viewer to wonder whether or not Perry understands that the pos-
sibility of sexually transmitted infection is always already present. In other
words, would Mike need to contract a disease, like Marcus does, in order to
be advised similarly? The casting of this second scene undermines, to some
degree, the initial censure Terry renders because the whole subtext of his ad-
monition is predicated on his rightful claim that people ought to be proactive
about their sexual choices to avoid later being reactive to the consequences of
those choices. Yet instead of encouraging Mike to act proactively, he shirks
his responsibility.
While Marcus successfully avoids transmitting his infection to An-
gela, the climactic dinner scene admissions and revelations confirm that
his belief in women’s fidelity and monogamy, rooted in his overarching
ideas of patriarchy, prohibits him from imagining that Angela might have
contracted and transmitted the disease to him. When Angela accuses,
“You got it from Walter,” Marcus asserts, “I’m not gay.” Besides reaffirming
his heterosexuality, Marcus remains unable to conceive of the possibility
that he in fact could have gotten this sexually transmitted infection from
Angela because of his assumptions about gender roles. Indeed, Marcus
may never have thought Angela was engaging in extramarital affairs, and,
because he knew that he in fact was having sex outside of his marriage, he
thought he had contracted the sexually transmitted infection. His subse-
quent attempt to strangle Angela, however, compels us to recall the double
standard surrounding fidelity and monogamy in heterosexual relation-
ships. While he may have been careful to avoid sexual relations with An-
gela so he would not infect her, his motivation, as I suggested earlier, has as
much to do with self-protection as it does with spousal concern. Were he
that concerned for her well-being, he arguably would not have had unpro-
tected sexual intercourse, as Terry noted. When Angela has the audacity to
disrespect her husband by knowing she has transmitted this disease to him

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Rober t J. Pat t er son / “ Woman Thou Art Bound” 23

and not informing him, she demonstrates how “evil” she is, according to
Marcus, and Perry implies that Marcus feels this is yet another example of
his masculine authority being subverted and thwarted. As a producer,
Perry had to execute this scene with finesse, and in some respects perhaps
he could not have avoided some type of problematic representation. If, for
example, Angela had given the disease to Marcus, and Marcus was not
having extramarital affairs, we would then perhaps argue that his repre-
sentation oversexualizes black women or diminishes the claim that black
men’s sexual infidelity is jeopardizing black women’s sexual health; in this
instance, it would be black women’s own lascivious behaviors that contrib-
ute to their increased rates and incidences of sexually transmitted infec-
tions. While casting both as participating in these behaviors does not
necessarily occlude this reading of black women’s sexuality, it does refocus
the issue on to patriarchal control and authority, both of which lie at the
center of the film’s plot.
Whereas Marcus and Angela’s communication, financial, and sexual
problems intertwine to complicate their marriage, Diane and Terry’s trou-
bles hinge especially upon motherhood, work, and sexual intimacy, three
areas in which Diane fails to fulfill her gendered responsibilities. Rather than
celebrating Diane’s success as a lawyer, the film instead correlates her profes-
sional accomplishments with her personal failures. Perry represents Diane as
an uncompromising black woman, who, instead of being grateful for having
a hard-working, earnest, and loving black man, works assiduously to push
him away. By juxtaposing Terry as a doting black man who simply wants to
spend quality time with his wife against Diane as woman who would rather
read her e-mail than be intimate with her husband, the film reinforces the
reoccurring image of the unsubmissive black woman as the primary source
of antagonism in the film. For example, although they have one daughter,
motherhood is not Diane’s sole priority. Rather, Diane appears to have com-
promised, and the movie itself indicts Diane by casting her preference to ad-
vance her career over serving as someone’s mother as an odd choice. The
continuation of this matter and its subsequent resolution in Married Too re-
affirms the critique of Diane. Even at the end of the film, when Terry threat-
ens to leave Diane because of her work schedule, Diane reduces her work
hours and presumably spends more time with Terry. As does Angela in her
marriage, Diane submits to the demands of patriarchy, thus maintaining her
marriage and reaffirming her husband’s patriarchal authority.
Whereas the ending of the film intimates that Diane yields to Terry’s
demands, Why Did I Get Married Too? further clarifies this fact by show-
ing that Diane has undergone a reverse tubal ligation so that Terry might
have the baby boy that he always wanted. This resolution demonstrates an-
other way in which Perry’s films fix black women within a male patriarchal

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24 black camera 3 :1

gaze, thus controlling their sexuality. If, for example, Terry and Diane had
determined that they wanted to have another child, why did they not
adopt? Given the pain associated with these procedures, the possibility of
the reversal not working, and the uncertainty of a fetus’s sex, this represen-
tation reminds us of the ways in which men exert control, both literally
and metaphorically, over women’s sexuality. Although Spike Lee criticizes
Perry for his racial representation, Perry’s representations of gender and
sexuality at this particular moment ironically recall Lee’s in his movie
She’s Gotta Have It (1986). In other words, this propensity to control Di-
ane’s sexuality begs the question that Jaime asks Nola when he rapes her in
She’s Gotta Have It: “Whose pussy is this?” While I am not equating Nola’s
rape with Diane’s reverse tubal ligation, I am arguing that both scenes
demonstrate the larger cultural context wherein men control women’s sex-
uality, or punish women for not yielding to this compulsion. Undoubtedly,
Diane has agency and could make a different decision. However, as the
movie is scripted, her only option to remain in this particular relationship
is to submit to her husband’s demands. If Perry wanted to depict a chal-
lenge to the status quo in this instance, he might have had the couple adopt
the second child. Doing so would not only guarantee the child’s sex, but, in
terms of engaging contemporary familial dynamics, would encourage
viewers to consider the construction of family in ways that extend beyond
the normative nuclear family. Instead, his representation exemplifies why
black feminist scholars have argued compellingly that the nuclear family
functions as a site of oppression for women.
Although Mike and Sheila’s relationship, unlike the other two discussed
thus far, identifies the male’s behavior as causing the marriage’s failure, the
representation of Sheila as an overdependent woman who needs male affir-
mation no less reifies the ubiquity of the patriarchal affirmation–critique
dyad in Perry’s works. Without a doubt, Mike’s character fulfills the villain
role and all might agree that Mike’s behavior toward his wife is particularly
egregious. However, I wanted to juxtapose Angela and Marcus’s and Diane
and Terry’s relationship with this one in order to further my claim that all of
the relationships fall into an analogous problematic that does not assist Per-
ry’s goals of being transformative. Put another way, less critical spectators,
for example, might view Terry as simply wanting to “spend more time with
his wife,” without considering the overarching patriarchal impulses that
compel or inform his desire to control her behavior. By contrast, Mike’s char-
acter leaves little, if any, room, for the audience to be sympathetic. Sheila’s
ultimate decision to divorce Mike, to reclaim her self and self-esteem, marks
Sheila’s beginning of her road to discovery. She, in effect, rises and finds her
voice: she begins to exercise and lose weight; her confidence is restored, and
her outlook on life improves. Through her divorce, she becomes the poster

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Rober t J. Pat t er son / “ Woman Thou Art Bound” 25

woman for women subjected to the verbal and, as the sequel makes clear,
physical abuse of a man.
Perry’s instructive intervention here provides a viable alternative to
domestic violence, and helps women locate alternatives to marriage, but
the ending weakens its utility. Although Sheila divorces Mike and makes
an important journey toward self-discovery that grapples with the psycho-
logical abuse that Mike had made legible on her, Sheila’s liberation comes
in the form of a man, Troy, whom she marries within a year. The issue here
is not that Sheila remarries, but rather that her happiness is intricately tied
to marriage. Why, for example, we might ask, if Perry desires to liberate
women from abusive relationships and domestic violence, would Perry not
develop the story line that lead her to get into and remain in an abusive re-
lationship? By situating Sheila in another marriage by the end of the film,
Perry makes an important critical move. As is the case with Frankie and
Lisa in Madea’s Family Reunion, his critique focuses on the microscopic,
but does not extend to the macrocosm—Sheila’s problem has more to do
with this particular man and not the patriarchal system of which this man
is a part and wields power. In doing so, he not only recenters the notion
that women’s happiness is predicated on their productive relationships
with men, but he also fails to consider that the institution of marriage itself
might warrant further interrogation, one that would in turn generate more
fruitful discussion about the alternative possibilities for adult relation-
ships. The lack of critical commentary on marriage as an institution in a
movie that focuses on this particular question is striking.
Despite Tyler Perry’s professed aims of providing authentic, transfor-
mative representations of blackness, these representations, reifying static
patriarchal gender notions, undermine the transformative aspects of his
project and further define blackness in monolithic terms. Yet Perry’s suc-
cess raises several questions that critical spectatorship scholarship contin-
ually debates regarding the film evaluation process for viewers. Writing
about black female sexuality in films, for example, Michelle Wallace has
argued that “the construction of gender relations has been sadly predict-
able, controversial, and even retrograde”27 precisely because it fails to grap-
ple with complex questions about blackness as it intersects with the
categories of gender and sexuality, and instead relies on the all too familiar
trope of heteronormative exclusionary blackness. This observation, which
holds true in Perry’s works, begs the question of to what extent the audi-
ence members adopt Perry’s views on gender, resist his views, or simulta-
neously adopt and resist his perspectives.
Returning to a point I proffered earlier, I want to reiterate that the natu-
ralization and normativization of traditional gender roles and heteronorma-
tivity contribute to the phenomena of audience members (and producers)

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26 black camera 3 :1

being uncritical spectators when the foci are gender and sexuality. On this
issue, bell hooks suggests: “Critical, interrogating, Black looks were mainly
concerned with issues of race and racism, the way racial domination of
Blacks by Whites overdetermined representation; they were rarely concerned
with gender.” Although “[a]s spectators, Black men could repudiate the re-
production of racism in cinema and television,”28 they viewed women with a
patriarchal gaze, and, even more problematically, as filmmakers they did so
as well. As a result, hooks further contends that black women have to work
on developing an oppositional gaze to resist this gender objectification. Ac-
cording to hooks, developing an oppositional gaze is a process, one that does
not necessarily depend on their racial and gender identities, for as she right-
fully argues, “many Black women do not ‘see differently’ precisely because
their perceptions of reality are so profoundly colonized, shaped by dominant
ways of knowing.”29 Thus, hooks’s analysis captures part of the reason Perry’s
works appeal to his targeted audience of black women (and those who believe
black women should occupy the roles in which Perry casts them): they are so
interpellated in dominant ways of knowing that they do not necessarily
question or find the gender roles and ideologies problematic. If, as I have sug-
gested throughout this essay, those roles are indeed troubling to relation-
ships, then a more critical perspective will be required not only for the
viewers but also for Perry himself.
Critical spectatorship,30 therefore, requires not only recognition of the
objectifying gaze, but also looking back in a way to subvert that gaze. This
recognition and subversion not only apply to women and audiences, but also
to spectators across gender lines and filmmakers as well. A problem with
Perry’s works is that neither he himself nor his audience necessarily sees his
work as needing critical spectatorship, and therefore neither asks the ques-
tions that I raise throughout this essay, questions that complicate uncritical
celebrations of his work. Of course, I am not discounting the possibility that
Perry’s audience members may exercise Jacqueline Bobo’s theory of negoti-
ated reception, whereby black (women) spectators identify the cinematic ex-
periences that cohere with their own and reject those that do not. It is also
possible that some audiences do call into question some of Perry’s represen-
tations. Whatever critique they may launch, however, has not been a vocifer-
ous outcry against what seem to be rather problematic aspects of his
representations of black women, gender, and families. A variety of factors,
including a seemingly impenetrable investment in black patriarchy, as well
as the helpful cultural work surrounding issues of domestic violence, child
abuse, and molestation that he does address, has helped to eschew criticism
from everyone except those whom Perry refers to as “the black elite.”
To be the transformative producer and filmmaker that Perry argues he
already is, Perry and his audiences will have to ask a different set of questions

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Rober t J. Pat t er son / “ Woman Thou Art Bound” 27

and demand more rigorous responses. Until Perry’s work can substantively
and substantially address more pressing matters, including how his plots re-
inforce the fact that masculinity is an affair between men in which women
are the units of exchange, how the Madea character unsettles essentialist no-
tions of gender and sexuality that the rest of the works cohere to produce,
and how the religious discourses Perry employs further instantiate the op-
pression of women, he will be amiss in thinking that his works are transfor-
mative, cathartic, or transgressive. While they may have transformative,
cathartic, and transgressive moments, too many are bound to a history of
oppressive representational discourses and, thereby, function in ways to bind
their targeted black female audiences to patriarchal subjugations.

Notes

1. During the early 1990s, Perry experienced a variety of financial setbacks that
rendered him both jobless and homeless. Although his plays, films, and television
shows have garnered him much financial success, his work initially did not fare well in
theaters because the subject matter did not attract theater goers. In 1998, however,
with the production of I Know I’ve Been Changed, Perry entered the urban theater cir-
cuit, using the Madea character to pave his way to success. See Margena Christian,
“Becoming Tyler,” Ebony, October 2008, and Sonia Murray, “The Talented Mr. Perry,”
Essence, February 2009.
2. Mike Paseornek, quoted in Christian, “Becoming Tyler,” 75.
3. Both Bogle’s and Guerrero’s books historicize the representation of black peo-
ple in film. See Donald Bogle, Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, and Bucks: An In-
terpretive History of Blacks in American Films (New York: Continuum, 2001), and
Edward Guerrero, Framing Blackness: The African American Image in Film (Philadel-
phia: Temple University Press, 1993).
4. See Hans Robert Jauss, “Literary History as a Challenge to Literary Theory,” in
Toward an Aesthetic of Reception, trans. Timothy Bahti (Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 1982).
5. Spike Lee, quoted by Byron Pitts during interview with Tyler Perry on 60 Min-
utes, CBS, October 24, 2009.
6. I am referring to Louis Althusser’s notion of the ways in which ideology, by pur-
porting to be what it represents, assists in the subjection of subjects. In this case, I specifi-
cally use the term subjection to signal ideology’s role in subject formation and subject
subjugation. Throughout the essay, I insist that Tyler Perry employs patriarchal and sex-
ist gender ideologies and discourses, and consequently contributes to the continued dis-
enfranchisement of women. Given the entrenchment of patriarchal and sexist ideologies
within American culture, the notion of interpellation adequately grasps the subtle and
not-so-subtle ways that ideology is perpetuated and persists. See Althusser, “Ideology
and Ideological State Apparatuses” in Critical Theory Since 1965, ed. Hazard Adams and
Leroy Searle (Tallahassee: Florida State University Press, 1992), 239–50.
7. In several interviews, including ones with Byron Pitts for CBS’s 60 Minutes,
October 24, 2009; Larry King Live, CNN, February 21, 2009, as well as in his interviews

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28 black camera 3 :1

with Essence and Ebony Perry has indicated that his faith-based plays initially targeted
black church-going women, an audience that he felt had been particularly excluded
from mainstream entertainment. By integrating religious ideas and comedy, Perry
hoped to appeal to this class of women, a group that undoubtedly substantiated his
early financial success. Perry’s current success, however, demonstrates that he has ef-
fectively marketed his works beyond an audience of black women, notwithstanding
their continued engagement with themes particularly relevant to black women’s lives.
8. Byron Pitts categorizes Perry’s work as such in his interview with Tyler Perry.
Tyler Perry, interview by Byron Pitts, 60 Minutes, CBS, October 24, 2009.
9. In his interview with Larry King, Perry explains he caricatures (my term) his
characters in order to make them humorous and appealing to the audience. Once he
grasps the audience with the characters’ persona, he then uses that character to insert
important commentaries. While I do not deny that Perry is able to do so, I want to
maintain that his doing so cannot be considered outside of the historical trajectory of
racial and gender caricatures and stereotypes that have contributed to the cultural
denigration of African Americans. Tyler Perry, interview by Larry King, Larry King
Live, CNN, February 21, 2009.
10. In her essay, “Rootedness: The Ancestor as Foundation,” Toni Morrison argues
for the centrality and importance of an elder in African American literature, one “whose
relationships to the characters are benevolent, instructive, and protective, and [who]
provide[s] a certain kind of wisdom” (p. 62). Morrison’s claim is that these figures neces-
sarily assist the characters in their development and journey, and that their absence often
contributes to a character’s ill-development. I extend this premise to African American
expressive culture more generally, contending that such figures appear consistently and
prominently throughout Perry’s work. Yet, as my patriarchy affirmation–critique dyad
thesis considers, the information that this figure imparts must be interrogated more
thoroughly to determine how (un)beneficial this information truly is. Toni Morrison,
“Rootedness: The Ancestor as Foundation,” in What Moves at the Margin: Selected Non-
fiction, ed. Carolyn Denard (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2008), 56–64.
11. Perry, interview by Byron Pitts.
12. E. Franklin Frazier, The Black Bourgeoisie: The Book That Brought the Shock of
Self-Revelation to Middle-Class Blacks in America (New York: Simon & Schuster,
1997).
13. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, The Negro Family: The Case for National Action
(Washington, DC: Department of Labor, Office of Policy, Planning and Research, 1965).
14. See Roderick Ferguson, Toward a Queer of Color Critique (Minneapolis: Min-
nesota University Press, 2003); and Deborah McDowell, “Reading Family Matters,” in
Changing Our Own Words: Essays on Criticism, Theory, and Writing by Black Women,
ed. Cheryl Wall (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1989), 75–87; Michelle
Wallace, Black Macho and the Myth of the Superwoman (New York: Verso, 1999); and
Hortense Spillers, “Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Maybe: An American Grammar Book,” in
Black and White in Color: Essays on American Literature and Culture (Chicago: Uni-
versity of Chicago Press, 2003), 203–29.
15. Donald Bogle, Primetime Blues: African Americans on Network Television
(New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2001), 284.
16. See Valerie Smith, “Discourse of Family in Black Documentary Film,” in Strug-
gles for Representation: African American Documentary Film and Video, ed. Phyllis Klot-
man and Janet Cutler (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999), 249–67.

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Rober t J. Pat t er son / “ Woman Thou Art Bound” 29

17. Bogle, Primetime Blues, 199.

18. Valerie Smith, “Telling Family Secrets: Narrative and Ideology in Suzanne Su-
zanne,” in Representing Blackness: Issues in Film and Video, ed. Valerie Smith (New
Brunskwick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1997), 206.
19. In her seminal essay, “Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Maybe: An American Grammar
Book,” Hortense Spillers argues that the experience of chattel slavery necessarily
blurred rigid gender distinctions between black men and black women because, un-
like American society at large, there was not a clear distinction between the roles black
men and black women performed. As Spillers further expounds, despite the circum-
stances that chattel slavery eventuated, black men and women continue to be mea-
sured as deviating from the American norm. She maintains that the Moynihan report
also uses this metric. Her essay explores the implications for such a comparative anal-
ysis, while delineating the pitfalls of this reasoning.
20. Perry, interview by Byron Pitts.
21. In Mammy: A Century of Race, Gender, and Southern Memory, Kimberly Wal-
lace-Sanders traces the historical circumstances that lead to the construction of the
mammy stereotype in American culture, as well as explaining how the American cul-
tural imagination reifies this stereotype as “the black woman.” Wallace-Sanders’s
project, like other engagements of the mammy, persuasively contends that much of the
information that exists about mammy comes from secondary sources and not the ac-
tual black women themselves. The danger here is that the image continues to be dis-
torted; likewise, Perry’s representation of Madea as either a strong black woman or
perpetual mammy inadequately captures the historical context in which both images
need to be viewed. Celebrating the image ahistorically perpetuates a history of black
female objectification and exploitation that the works would rather eschew. See Kim-
berly Wallace-Sanders, Mammy: A Century of Race, Gender, and Southern Memory
(Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2009).
22. In Black Macho and the Myth of the Superwoman, Wallace explains how stereo-
types surrounding black women, particularly those that depicted black women as over-
bearing and emasculating, contributed to the continued disenfranchisement of women.
23. Patricia Hills Collins utilizes the phrase “other-mothering” to capture how
motherhood, in black communities, extends beyond the responsibility of taking care
of one’s own biological child. The phrase draws attention to the ways in which black
women have served as caregivers for their grandchildren and other children within
the communities and demonstrates expanded notions of kinship. At the same time,
we might connect other-mothering to black women’s roles as mammies, considering
how the institution of motherhood itself is often predicated on a notion of self-sacri-
fice and self-denial. For a more complete discussion, see Collins, Black Feminist
Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment (New York:
Routledge, 2000), 173–83
24. Waheema Lubiano, “But Compared to What?: Reading Realism, Representa-
tion, and Essentialism in School Daze, Do the Right Thing, and the Spike Lee Dis-
course,” in Representing Blackness, ed. Smith, 106.
25. David Ikard, Breaking the Silence: Toward a Black Male Feminist Criticism
(Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University, 2007).
26. Throughout her book, Coontz details the historical changes that the institu-
tion of marriage has undergone, explaining how contemporary manifestations of gen-
der divisions within relationships are rooted in specific historical conditions. In

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30 black camera 3 :1

chapters thirteen and fourteen in particular, Coontz traces how World War II and its
aftermath altered marital responsibilities for men and women. She, for example, ana-
lyzes the laws that made it more advantageous not only for people to marry, but for
men to work, while women remained at home. Yet women’s entrance into the work
force during World War II, and the rise of feminism after World War II has continu-
ally embattled the male head of household/primary financial earner model that per-
sists even in the contemporary moment. See Stephanie Coontz, Marriage, a History:
How Love Conquered Marriage (New York: Penguin Books, 2006).
27. Michele Wallace, “Race, Gender, and Psychoanalysis in Forties Film: Lost
Boundaries, Home of the Brave, and The Quiet Zone,” in Black American Cinema, ed.
Manthia Diawara (New York: Routledge, 1993), 258.
28. bell hooks, “The Oppositional Gaze: Black Female Spectators,” in Black Amer-
ican Cinema, 290.
29. Ibid., 300.
30. Bobo’s work considers how black women receive cinematic images that coin-
cide with how they see themselves, as well as those that differ. She argues that black
women engage in a constant process of negotiation when watching films as a way to
resist their objectification and to challenge the racist/male gaze. See Jacqueline Bobo,
“Reading through the Text: The Black Woman as Audience,” in Black American Cin-
ema, ed. Diawara, 272–87. For a discussion of how black men, for example, resist their
objectification in black films, see Manthia Diawara, “Black Spectatorship: Problems of
Identification and Resistance,” in Film Theory and Criticism, ed. Leo Braudy and Mar-
shall Cohen (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 892–900. For a critical dis-
cussion of black spectatorship in the context of cinema’s public dimensions, see
Jacqueline Stewart, “‘Negroes Laughing at Themselves’? Black Spectatorship and Per-
formance of Urban Modernity,” in Migrating to the Movies: Cinema and Black Urban
Modernity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), 93–113.

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