Tyler Perry Continued

The only good a Madea movie could possibly do would be to remind us that the scars of oppression are deep and enduring, often operating below the level of consciousness, then breaking out in the most bizarre manifestation of self-hate and self-sabotage, including pathetic images on the big screen.

Of course, Perry's fans don't see it that way. When I asked some women in the theater if they were at all uneasy about Perry in wigs, lipstick and rouge, they clucked tongues and rolled eyes in a manner that Madea her/himself would no doubt approve.

"Oh, please," snapped Darlene Johnson, 51. "It's just comedy."

Yeah, and misogynistic gansta rap is just music.

Said Sheena Young, also 51: "He's just multitasking. His initial budget didn't allow for him to hire all the people he needed so he played them himself. It's awesome."

I'm not taking away anything from the 39-year-old Perry's resourcefulness and ingenuity. He pulled himself up by the bootstraps from a low-income household in New Orleans, started writing and putting on stage plays about Madea (supposedly a composite of women in his life) and went on to become one of the most successful filmmakers in America.

He has a beautiful home and his own studios in Atlanta. He hires lots of young black actors and production personnel and makes considerable contributions to worthy causes.

He is awesome.

It's just that his movies are awful.

Here's a typical scene:

Madea's brother, Uncle Joe, also played by Perry, is a crusty old coot who breathes with the aid of an oxygen tank while smoking marijuana throughout the movie (he even wears a bong around his neck). Madea, ever the boss woman, scolds him mercilessly about the dangers of mixing fire and oxygen. And -- here's where the audience howls -- as Madea waddles past, her behind wide as a doorway, Uncle Joe cracks: "King Kong ain't got nothing on her."

How'd you like to see that on a movie marquee: Madea the black woman as King Kong? That's about as funny, say, as a dead monkey cartoon from the New York Post?

It's not a sign of respect but one of disdain to portray black women as some updated Jemima (that's what a white character in the movie calls her) from the antebellum South. Sure, all of Perry's fans claim to know someone like Madea. But in truth, we know nothing -- only that she is aging and irrationally angry, existing to clean up everybody's else's mess, a linebacker of a house servant whose unmet emotional needs remain a mystery even to the great Dr. Phil himself.

We may laugh at her, but the joke is on us.