Tyler Perry Responds to Spike Lee's Characterization of His Films as "Coonery and Buffoonery"

Must we always air our dirty laundry in public? Well, Spike Lee picked a fight of sorts with Tyler Perry earlier this year and he responded during an interview on "60 Minutes." Personally, I like Spike Lee's work -- "Miracle at St. Anna," "Do the Right Thing," "School Daze" and "Jungle Fever." I do like some of Tyler Perry's work -- "Dairy of a Mad Black Woman" and "Meet the Browns." I have had enough of Madea and I am looking for some serious work from him and not just comedy. However, I don't think that Spike Lee should have thrown him under a bus, at least not by calling his work similar to "Amos and Andy" skits. There are many African Americans who find some of his characters -- Madea and Mr. Brown -- demeaning and harken back to a period in the African American experience that we need to move away from, but there are also many who love his work.

Tyler Perry said, during his appearance on "60 Minutes" he said he was “insulted” and “pissed off” by Spike Lee’s criticisms of Perry’s hit TV shows and movies. Lee recently called Perry characters such as Madea examples of “coonery” and “buffoonery.”“I would love to read that [criticism] to my fan base,” Perry told "60 Minutes" correspondent Byron Pitts. “All these characters of mine are bait, bait to get people talking about God, love, family, and faith.”

Tyler Perry has an unbelievable gift for comic impersonations and making his audience laugh, but Madea and Mr. Brown are getting tired. Stuttering black men in colorful clothes feel really old -- a little like Amos n Andy. Surely, Tyler Perry can make us laugh with other characters than his usual bumbling black men. To his credit, maybe he has started to move away from these characters through a recent collaboration, "Precious" with daytime queen Oprah Winfrey.

As for Spike Lee, I could also make an argument that he tends cast lighter-skinned Black and/or Latina women as his black lead's love interests. Don't get me wrong, I have no issues with light skinned black women, but it seems that Spike Lee may have a problem with dark-skinned sisters. The reality is that using lighter skinned love interests only reinforces how the black community defines physical beauty and, in essence, socio-economic mobility. That's just as problematic as a bumbling black man like Mr. Brown.

These two men are bringing different things to the table. Tyler Perry has found a way to bring African Americans to the movie theaters, more than Spike Lee has. Spike Lee confronts racial discrimination in his movies and racial equality in Hollywood, still rarely examining his own regressive "color" politics. So, at the end of the day, I guess I'll take my chances with Tyler Perry and his business acumen, but I hope "Madea Goes to Jail" is the last of his movies to feature this big-breasted angry mammy. It's time to let her go. Really.