Everybody Needs A Glass Of Water Today....To Chase The Hate Awayyyyy!!!

Soooo……

I read that Tyler Perry is making a movie of “For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When The Rainbow Is Enuf”. For the 5 out of 9 people who follow my blog who may not be familiar with the Ntozake Shange’s poem/play about the lives of several Black women, this is kind of a “big deal”.

A big deal in that the book and poster were fixtures in the homes of my mother and all her natural-haired, vegetarian, repertory theatre-acting, college educated, divorced, younger-lover-having, public-radio-listening, no-tv-having, food-co-op shopping, foreign car-driving, vitamin pill-popping, no-white-sugar-or-flour-eating, jazz concert-attending friends. I often thought that the cover art on the book was my own mother! As a precocious child, trying to navigate through all the stream-of-consciousness type expressions in the book proved difficult. I mean, I wasn’t old enough to have had those experiences, but reading the words made me feel like I was peeking through the keyhole at some serious grownfolks business and I needed to stop. Immediately.

Fastforward to adulthood and I can relate. Ntozake went IN with that work. All the way IN. So I can understand peoples’ – Black womens’ connections to and protection of her work. Their innate feeling that she was talking about not just the “lady in yellow”, but Sheryl Petterson from right outside Detroit. You know Sherryl. She’s somebody’s somebody. Hell, she might even be YOU.

Anyway, so I opened Facebook the other day and several women to whom I’m related in various degrees of closeness mentioned the upcoming Tyler Perry project. “Mentioned” may not be the proper operative word. More like “typed with vitriol and angst” – yeah…....

Oh, the Tyler Perry hate was RAMPANT that day. Folks had predicted his inevitable casting of Ciara and Beyonce in the lead roles. Madea was gonna make a debut. It was funny, no doubt. The snark in me ate it up like literary chum! Licking my chops at the puns, similes, clever innuendo….oh, it was a smorgasbord of cynicism with 32 oz Big Gulp of slushy haterade on the side.

But after digesting all the loathing and repulsion, I was left with a bad case of heartburn. Really. Here we are, back at the whole crabs in a barrel scenario.

That’s really all it is.

First of all, how do we know Tyler’s gonna be writing the screenplay? Who’s to say he’s directing it? How many of us Facebook movie moguls have the inside scoop to know exactly how this is gonna play out? As we’re sitting and typing and hating and signifying, Tyler Perry is constructing a media empire. He OWNS his studio.

OWNS.

Not leases.

Not borrows.

Not uses.

OWNS.

And when you OWN your OWN shit, you can hire who you want.

Who’s to say that Tyler Perry doesn’t understand the place that Shange’s work holds in the cultural hearts of generations of women? Who said he’s not gonna give an up and coming director, screenwriter, engenue – a little shine?

And you know what? At the end of the day, SO WHAT IF HE DOESN’T?

Because you’re typing on Facebook instead of submitting your proposal to him.

You tell ME what’s wrong with this picture!

Peace and love folks. And let’s ease up on the hate for one another. There’s room for all of us – if we just have enough faith and balls to try.