Madea, Humor, and Advice

I thought the most interesting part of Perry’s Don’t Make a Black Woman Take Off Her Earrings was Tyler Perry’s ability to give actual good advice while still not straying from his humorous tone. I’ve never seen a Madea movie, but I’ve always been aware of their existence in a sort of vague cosmic way, so before I started the book I knew it was going to be funny—it was essentially the musings of someone’s alter ego. I wasn’t wrong, but I also underestimated how much I’d take from it too. While some elements were purely for comedic value—i.e., poisoning husbands, using Vaseline for literally everything—there were more that weren’t. Stuff like “Whatever you’ve done in the past is done, and don’t be ashamed of it”, or “You know, it comes down to a point where you need to stop looking at your spouse or boyfriend to be your parent and to validate you and give you everything your parents didn’t. You got to go get that stuff for yourself” or “Let me tell you something—every line, every bag, every wrinkle, every pound you put on means you done learned something on this earth. You need to embrace it”. Lying underneath the entire book was the message that you should not only live for yourself, but live true to yourself as well. Pretty sound advice.

Which posed a question: why go about giving advice like this through humor? And furthermore, why is it more effective than the likes of middleschool classroom motivational posters or signs in beach house rentals? Perry himself (or really, Madea herself) describes it at the very end of the book: “But what I figured out what to do is that if you want to reach them—you make them laugh and then you can give them some of that same wisdom”. I think this is extraordinarily true—it’s sort of like a stealth attack of new knowledge. If you’re trying to impart wisdom to someone who is not necessarily responsive to it, being too obvious about it might unsettle them or turn them off of listening to you. When you use humor, though, it’s subtle. And not only that, it sticks with you better. It’s the same idea as making up ridiculous songs to remember something for a test or laughing out loud in the middle of a lecture because you thought of a joke your friend told you the night before. Good humor makes an impression; it sticks with you. So sound advice told through good humor likewise sticks with you, because you remember it for the humorous factor. Additionally, there’s the fact that the humor presents the advice in such a way that it is subjective. You don’t have to follow it all if you don’t want to, and you don’t even have to take it at face value, but its presentation in a humorous way means you get to decide these things for yourself. The alternative—blatant advice giving—does not leave room for much personal interpretation. And, ultimately, this is how the humor Don’t Make A Black Woman Take Off Her Earrings manages to work: it’s absurd at times and very funny, but it’s also very wise and very truthful. 

Madea's Absurdity

            Tyler Perry’s overblown caricature of an aging southern black woman, has somehow been the subject of multiple movies, plays, and even a book which spent time as a #1 New York Times bestseller. The mere mention of the name Tyler Perry conjures images of his cross-dressed alter ego, a character that he, for some reason, portrays himself. Perry’s first book was written from the perspective of Madea, though it would not make sense for him to do anything else, given the huge success that this character has given him. The book, Don’t Make a Black Woman Take Off her Earrings: Madea’s Uninhibited Commentaries on Love and Life, is written entirely from the perspective of Madea, so much so that the name of Perry’s creation would be more apt to be on the front cover of this book than his is. The entire book is written, as the title implies, as Madea’s commentary on basically everything imaginable, with her offering advice to readers throughout the entirety of the book as well. By using Madea, Perry can offer commentary on his own culture as an African American, but also gives him the ability to make the commentary from the perspective of a woman from another generation, allowing him to comment more on his own generation as well as the following. While Madea is clearly an overblown persona, Perry does still make commentaries on society and the culture of the times that do have some truth hidden behind the sheer ridiculousness. This book was written back in 2006, and while a lot of things have changed, and quite drastically, in part because of the financial collapse in 2008-2009. Back in 2006, however, teenage pregnancy was a much more prominent issue than it is today, and Perry’s commentary, while brief as most of his “chapters” are, is rather poignant. Writing as Madea Perry says “Back in my day, it was simple, you respected your elders and everybody … most of all you respected yourself, especially at that age, you had to act like a lady” (Perry, 86). While this discussion quickly devolves into her commentary on the names of children that Madea has begun to have a problem with, there is a part, however small, that may have been intended as some sort of serious social commentary.

In a way, similar to Hau’ofa, Perry uses this fictional, and clearly absurd character of his, to, at times, offer some sort of social commentary veiled by the fictional setting. Blatantly coming out and criticizing his own culture likely would not have been appreciated, and likely would have faced some serious backlash. If those same criticisms were voiced by a fictional character, known for being overblown and outrageous, and were followed by Perry’s attempt at a joke, then they are bound to be much more accepted then they would be otherwise. While he is, in a way, making a social commentary, Perry does so in a way that limits his audience a bit. The intended audience is clearly people from, or incredibly familiar with African American culture, so much so that Madea even calls out non-African American readers at multiple times throughout. After discussing the way in which she murders her husbands in a very thinly veiled manner, Madea states that “if you don’t understand something I’m saying here and you’re not black, you will have to ask somebody who is” (Perry, 48). Something similar again happens back in the commentary on teenage pregnancy where Madea says “These children, especially the ones that I see, pardon me, if you’re not black and you’re reading this, I’m talking about the people I see in my neighborhood” (Perry, 86) it’s as if readers are missing something right off the bat if they aren’t black, and while I’m sure it does add some comedic effect, it also make the entire book seem as if it is one gigantic inside joke that non-African American readers are missing out on.  

How Fiction Makes Madea Relatable

     When I began reading this book, I was immediately reminded of Dress your Family in Corduroy and Denim. Both books use humor and past stories from the narrator’s perspective to entertain and, to a certain extent, inform the reader. But I quickly noticed that Madea is a very different author than Sedaris. While both tell stories about their family and friends, Madea’s memories are often less offensive, more exaggerated, and overall, more acceptable. And then it hit me… Madea isn’t real. Through Madea and her fictional voice, Perry is able to basically say whatever he wants in a very straightforward and ridiculous way, without anyone thinking twice. The distance added to the humor is what makes Perry’s book more relatable and less offensive than Sedaris’.
     Part of Madea’s ability to be honest and straightforward is due to her pre-existing popularity. Although this is my first time exploring the Madea franchise, I knew what to expect due to trailers for her movies and comments from other people who have been exposed to her. And through this book, I could hear her voice in my head and envision her in these ridiculous scenarios. The brand consistency in the Madea franchise helps make the humor more understandable and less offensive because that’s just what audiences expect from her.
     Perhaps readers are less offended by Madea because she is just so exaggerated. The audience quickly realizes to take everything she says with a grain of salt. Some of the things she says are so ridiculous, like her mother being “almost as big as Paul Bunyan and his blue ox” (11) and her role playing games with her husband. But in a way, this ridiculousness makes her advice stand out because it is so serious, and oftentimes, useful and true.
     The funny exaggerations support her helpful commentary and life views and her humor allows these tidbits to not be taken seriously if one decides not to agree. For example, on page 27 she tells a girl “Baby, having sex with a lot of people don’t make you feel loved – it makes you a ho. And I ain’t never met a man who said ‘I’m looking for a nice ho to settle down with.’ So shut it down”. This sounds a lot like the advice I received from my mother a long time ago. When coming from my mother, I was a bit offended she thought 13 year old me would ever sleep around but when coming from Madea, the advice directed at someone else and stated in a humorous manor makes me as the reader feel less blamed and more comfortable. However, if a person decides to disagree, and finds having sex with a lot of people makes them feel loved, the exaggerations and ridiculousness of Madea makes them feel less offended and the can just take her advice as another piece of fiction.
     The fictional exaggerated humor of Madea actually helps make her more relatable and authoritative. Through reading this book I received some interesting and useful advice while laughing the whole time.

Subjective vs. Universal Humor

     Don’t Make a Black Woman Take Off Her Earrings is unlike other comedic works we have read because Tyler Perry, through the voice of Madea, is speaking very directly to us. As a book of advice, it allows Madea to address us as her audience and draw us into her world. Perry starts off by explaining the character of Madea, telling us she represents the grandmother figures he grew up with who would help to watch over the kids and give life advice. Madea gives plenty of advice, but she doesn’t perfectly fit the mold of a helpful old woman. To create the humor in the book, Perry relies on exaggerating Madea and what she says. For instance, Madea claims her mother was “six foot eight and weighed 410 pounds” (11). Madea herself is a very large woman who has been married several times, killed many husbands, eats nothing but fried foods despite her diabetes, and had a daughter so rotund she used to roll her around rather than carry her. Her advice is also humorously hyperbolic: for health, she says to use Vaseline for everything, and in relationships, she advises that when a man you’re trying to break things off with starts to act crazy, the solution is to be even crazier.

     Clearly, Madea is meant to be funny partly because she is so wild and unexpected. However, what’s interesting about Madea is that, as a character, she’s based on an in-joke. She is a caricature of a type of woman that only exists in a setting like the New Orleans neighborhood in which Perry grew up. This shows that Perry intends for the book to appeal primarily to a particular audience of older black people who would have had the same experiences. Madea speaks mostly to black men and women, so much so that she tells anyone else, “If you are not a black person and you don’t understand something, read that part to a friend who’s black and ask for an explanation” (XIII-XIV). The humor isn’t intended to appeal equally to everyone, and Madea suggests that humor is therefore not universal but dependent on shared experiences, in this case culture. She even says at one point that if “you happen to be a black person reading this and you don’t get it, oh, well, you’ve spent too much time away from your culture” (48). Perry implies that certain types of humor are subjective; if you don’t laugh at Madea’s humor, the reason isn’t that she’s not funny but that you’re not in on the joke.

     However, at the same time, Perry—and Madea—want to reach many audiences. Madea explains that she is writing this as a book of advice “to help people understand that you have to feel good about yourselves” (17). Even if you don’t understand or relate to everything (XIII), you can still find Madea’s wisdom helpful in its most important points. Perry himself has said that his audience is “…all. It's the middle class, it's the poor, it's the rich. It's all of them, and the young and old. And that's why my stories are the way that they are” (Beliefnet par. 1). While much of the message and the humor is directed at a particular audience, Perry uses more universal humor, like hyperbole, and general advice as a way of broadening his appeal to people of different backgrounds. So while some of Madea’s humor is subjective and group-specific, even at the very core of what Madea represents, it seems that other kinds of humor and truths transcend these boundaries. 

Madea the Bulldozer

I was a little confused when I began reading Tyler Perry’s, Don’t Make a Black Woman Take Off Her Earrings. I naturally thought that Tyler Perry would be narrating, or sharing commentary on the problems we face in life. After I realized that it was an elderly woman speaking…things started to make more sense. As a successful actor, director, and writer, it is clever of him to create this character. It allows him to say things that a respected man might not be able to say comfortably, but a sassy old black woman paves the way so the conversation can go a little deeper. I found Madea’s lifestyle and commentary is very funny. Tyler Perry slips in several jokes that touch base with many of the theories of humor that we have discussed. I also found the character Madea to just be funny in general. A large, loud old lady that says, does, and eats whatever she wants is just entertaining. It is interesting how her bulldozer personality is funny, and it is clever because it allows Perry to take the conversation down pretty much any avenue.

I found several of the sections of Tyler Perry’s sections to be funny, and saw that they related to the theories we discussed. Everyone likes to do a little homework on the person they are in a relationship with. Madea takes this to a whole new level. I felt a little uncomfortable when my girlfriend told me that she was snooping around on my old Facebook posts, but Madea claims that you need to talk their kindergarten teacher to see If they were standing like a man or crying on the first day(Perry 54). Perry is obviously playing with scale and overdoing the amount of research necessary, and this is honestly one of the least extreme ideas he has for relationships. I also thought that this book is relatable. Everyone knows that one friend that can eat whatever they want and still look like a toothpick. When Tyler Perry started talking about Madea’s diet I immediately thought of my friend Noah. I’ve been friends with Noah for around 10 years and he has always been extremely annoying when we eat. He eats so fast and so much, it gets pretty disgusting. He often challenges me to eating contests if we are out eating wings or he just challenges himself to eat another Chipotle burrito. Madea’s idea of exercise and eating is so absurd, but Tyler perry does have a point. People shouldn’t worry so much about what they eat or how they look and enjoy themselves every once and a while. While Tyler Perry’s Don’t Make a Black Woman Take Off Her Earring is a little absurd, it comes with a few serious life tips.

            

Thinly Veiled Death Threats and Failed Marriages: The Humor of Madea

            Tyler Perry’s Don’t Make a Black Woman Take Off Her Earrings presents a kind of literature that stands apart from everything we have read in class thus far.  It is not play or a novella critiquing society, nor is it an analysis by a classical philosopher that condemns humor and laughter as malicious.  Madea’s commentary is closest in structure to the short stories of Sedaris and Hau’ofa, which provide commentary through short narratives.  However, it stands apart for its unique narration and structure.  The introductory commentary from Perry states that the book is written entirely by Madea, a character in some of his movies.  This mixes the world of fiction with reality while establishing a clear basis for the reader to understand how the book is written.  Upon examining the table of contents, I noticed that the book is organized by subject matter that Madea is discussing.  In this way, it is structured like a book of advice so that the reader can find a topic they need help with and find a page with some advice. The character of Madea appears to be based on a culture of advice, supervision, and a little bit of gossip.  There were Madeas everywhere when he grew up, acting as protectors of the neighborhood. Perry mentions the essential roles they played in neighborhoods like his own, saying, “If somebody’s child was doing something wrong, Madea  got to them and straightened them out, or she would go directly to the parents, and the parents straightened the kids out” (X).  They were the law and order of the world that he lived in.  Establishing this facet of the character of Madea helps establish the basis for Perry/Madea’s humor.  It is based in a culture that supposedly no longer exists, but that does not make it inaccessible for the reader.  The topics covered by Madea are still relevant, and Perry's writing brings her to vivid life, where she does not need much extra explanation to be understood.  The cultural experiences that built Madea are easily communicated by Madea herself, ensuring that the reader will not be lost in her advice.

            What makes the humor of Madea interesting is the fact that Perry introduces her by saying she is unpredictable.  I would think that being told someone is unpredictable negates that aspect, but with Madea, I was still surprised by what she would say while giving advice and discussing her life experiences.  In her chapter on marriage, Madea says, “I was married eight times, and I stayed with every one of my husbands for life, for their lives. You see, they all died after some terrible arguments” (Perry 46).  This sentence started off in a way that was unexpected, with an elderly woman discussing the fact that she had more dead spouses than Henry VII.  However, failed marriages are relatively common in the United States, so the number was not too jarring.  The rest of the sentence, mentioning that she outlived every single one of the husbands and that their deaths followed arguments, is the unexpected part.  That many deaths following one woman is suspicious, and it carries the heavy implication that she had some hand in their death.  The fact that she later admits to her guilt in their deaths shows that Madea is very violent and not afraid to take the life of another person.  This sets her apart from the average elderly woman. 

            The Madea/Perry brand of humor is based on examining common experience that many people likely share and presenting it through the lens of an unpredictable elderly woman.  Madea’s views on life would be shocking no matter who was sharing them.  The fact that they are delivered by an older woman who is supposed to be an important neighborhood fixture makes them shocking and hilarious.  Using shock to make the audience laugh puts Perry/Madea’s humor into the category of incongruity. The expectations of a sweet little grandma are subverted by Madea’s unique brand of honesty and exaggeration.

The Genius of Medea's Message

Writing through the character of Madea allows Tyler Perry to speak freely on just about any subject. The character allows him certain freedoms, or a distance from the material he uses for his jokes and “real life” examples. Generally, people are okay with being lectured by an elderly woman on how they choose to live their lives, and if they aren’t, they will at least humor the woman and let her finish. If a middle-aged man were to lecture such a broad audience on love and life, people might not be so open to receiving his material. After all, what could a man know about chafing while wearing pantyhose?

I don’t know anything about the Madea movies, or even about Tyler Perry, but this book seemed to be an excellent introduction to them both. In the introduction and epilogue, Tyler Perry comes off as a good-natured guy who wants to use humor to impart a lesson to his readers—much like the other authors we’ve read. He accomplishes this through Madea. I don’t know what I was expecting of Madea, but I sure didn’t get it. She is not at all what I thought she would be (she’s almost dangerous), but somehow, I took her advice seriously. Underneath every joke about being a stripper, or only marrying (and killing) her husbands for money, there is some real advice on love and life. The best part of the advice, in my opinion, is that Madea’s character allows the readers freedom to take the advice or leave it. If you think it’s good advice, you take it. If not, you can dismiss it as coming from a crazy old lady and move on with your day. It’s a genius move on Perry’s part. He can say just about anything without having to worry too much. His views on love and life and perfectly veiled behind the character of Madea, and that subtle distance from the truth allows the humor to grab the audience’s attention and make them listen to what he has to say. This is all possible because the audience gets to listen to a film character they are familiar with and maybe are more likely to trust.