Letters to the Editor
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Chill out
I don't really care about all the other males discussed in this article, but Tyler Perry's Madea is just plain wonderful.
I learned about the series from my daughter. Her black friends explained to her that "Madea" is an abbreviation of Mama Dearest. As a 62 year old white grandmother, I love Madea, and suspect that most of the people writing previously haven't seen the movies.
Do yourselves a favor: rent a couple, relax and just have fun.
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Is There Nothing Left To Laugh At...
besides fart jokes and idiotic kids doing idiotic thing on Jack Ass?
I like Tyler Perry's character, Medea. She's funny, down-to-earth, and refuses to succumb to the thangs-of-the-minute. She has her own way of championing the values that mean the most to family. And I think that those black actors with the gripes are humorless prigs.
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Don't get Around Much Anymore?....or Ever?
Let's see....I just read "A man cannot credibly disquise himself as a beautiful woman -- even drag queen performers, who are plastered with makeup and false eyelashes...."
At the risk of seeming to contradict you, I'd refer you to the memoirs of The Lady Chablis (and the published accounts of several other folks). I don't know what most folks would think.....but I (if I had gone out on five and more dates with a "beautiful woman" before finding out "she" was actually not a woman) would think someone had done a admirably credible job of disguising himself.
And such things have happened and do happen. Live, as I do, near Fort Bragg, and you'll hear about this with surprising regularity.
Also...not all drag-queens are "plastered with make-up and false eyelashes"......not even all "real" women are. Of course, it's easier to convincingly impersonate someone who's already wearing a costume (Cher, Charlie Chaplin, Santa Claus or Diana Ross, say?).
THEN, I read:
"...Nothing similar exists for women dressing like men. When they do (Cate Blanchett in "I'm Not There", for example), they are doing an homage to men or portraying very young or delicate looking men (Tilda Swinton in "Orlando"). Whatever, they are not ridiculing men or portraying ugliness."
My first response is, have you ever heard of/watched Tracy Ullman or Amie Sedaris (or, for that matter, Lucy and Ehtel when they masqueeraded as their husbands?).
I suppose, of course,that one might claim that, in cross-dressing comic routines, men invariably "ridicule" women, whereas women are doing something which is, ummmm?... inevitably....oh, I don't know.....gentler, kinder, softer, nicer, etc...?
Well, I've used up my daily-quota of scare-quotes (which seem required when discussing this topic) on this posting, so I have to stop now.
More interestingly (and as I somehow forgot to mention in my previous posting), my 12 year old twin nephews are coming tomorrowto stay for ten days. What do Salon's readers think of that?
I know what I think. Whatdo you think?
Inquiringly yours,
D. Terry
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How odd
This is one of the weirdest combinations of brain-freeze and arcane knowledge I've seen in days:
"didn't the guy who played Jethro on "The Beverly Hillbillies" also play his twin sister, Jethrine"
(Max Baer, Jr.)
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The funny thing about Racism...
Why doyou persist in discussing things ion a black/white way?
People are people, stop dividing us into sub-groups. We know you sell ads by fomenting hate. This is just a soft sell version of as much.
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A Goldmine of Humor in Sassy Black Women
SBWs are the confluence of so many threads of humor, mostly respectful.
If anyone demonstrates a triumph of humor in the face of adversity it is black women. Add in black women's penchant for acting outrageous, their own sense of humor about themselves, and ability to say anything on their minds, and you have a goldmine of humor.
Guys speaking their minds seem aggressive and threatening, witness Eddie Murphy's Raw era or Chris Rock's shows-- even if these guys are slight in stature, as Rock is. Dress him up in female accoutrement and it softens the barbs, barbs so many black women stereotypically already revel in leveling at others. Older women, especially black women, have the built in level of matriarchal power and respect as well, for that 'reverence' angle.
Men respect women more than women think. but men respect women for different things than what women want men to respect them for. Respect is earned, not given automatically, which pisses off women to no end. That earning is based on what the respect giver deems worthy of respect. Notice, women choose this option of granting respect at their leisure and on their terms all the time. Yet they refuse to play by the same game anyway.
Black women are just funny, men can get away with stuff when in a dress, that they cannot when standing on a stage as a guy.
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"Men in Dresses" has been funny for 5,000 years.
Broad humor, cross-dressing, outrageously ridiculous costumes and makeup, exaggerated speech and movement, and stereotyped characterization have been part of every theatrical tradition around the world. There was Commedia dell'Arte for example. And we have Roman mosaics showing these satirical (from satyr) performances. There's Chinese Opera and Thai dance and Native American dance and all these traditions are ancient.
Why can't women or black people or white people or men or anybody at all not be made fun of? You start taking away the basic theatrical tools that have stood the human race well for 5,000 years and you're going to take away comedy and comedy's important role at attacking cruel and snotty and stupid people. If you don't like Madea, fine. But don't attack the tools for comedy.
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feminization
The suggestion that black men in dresses is an attempt to neutralize black male masculinity, i.e. feminize it, is INSANE. It is actual insanity. Drag is not uncommon comedic repertoire around the globe. Monty Python's vicious bag-weilding ladies come to mind.
Really the debate has alot more to do with what the black community sees or wants to see in 'Their Men' and is about black obsession with one's OWN masculinity. Despite all the post-modernish and existentialist runinations that black men in drag is a sort of American Neo-Colonialism, A Psychological Thriller. Perhaps there is a bit of what might be called paranoia in such sentiments: that anything offensive has a root in American (and Worldwide) anti-black racism. For example: the supposition -- was it Welsing? -- that black men calling each other 'baby' was indicative of internalized inferiority complex instilled by white supremacy.
With all this talk, I have to think some of this has to do with homo-phobia whithin the so-called black community. Any egress into depictions of Black Men as fundamentally hetero-sexual and masculine is presumed to be an assault on mind and sensibility. Even better is the depiction of black men as raw and hyper masculine, and even though such depictions then represent him as being honorable and just, that masculinity, itself, is prerequisite seems, if anything, to be a neo-colonial wound in its own turn.