Tyler Perry's Brokeback Mountain

"People feel the images [in his movies] are very stereotypical, and black people are frustrated because they feel we should be more evolved. But there are very few black images in Hollywood, so black people are going to his movies. That's the dichotomy. Tyler Perry is making money.''

- Viola Davis, Oscar Nominee

TYLER PERRY AS MADEA ''These characters are simply tools to make people laugh,'' the writer-director-actor says. ''And I know for a fact that they have helped, inspired, and encouraged millions of people.''

AAPP says: I am so tired of Tyler Perry's Madea Character. I don't get why so many black woman love his character. I don'rt get why tyler Perry needs to keep dressing up acting like a woman and acting like a fool. This character is nothing less than an overgrown black man acting out his issues in a granny outfit.

As Benjamin Svetkey, Margeaux Watson, Alynda Wheat noted in their recent article, about Tyler Perry; If you happened to buy a ticket to Tyler Perry's Madea Goes to Jail without knowing what you were getting into, you might think you'd stumbled onto a cheery comedy about an overgrown granny with anger-management issues. A black Mrs. Doubtfire, say, with car chases and reefer jokes. You'd never suspect that you had strayed into the midst of a culture war — one that's been simmering inside the African-American community since before blackface. ''I loved working with Tyler Perry, but he's a controversial, complicated figure,'' says Viola Davis, who costarred in Madea Goes to Jail and recently snagged an Oscar nomination for Doubt. ''People feel the images [in his movies] are very stereotypical, and black people are frustrated because they feel we should be more evolved. But there are very few black images in Hollywood, so black people are going to his movies. That's the dichotomy. Tyler Perry is making money.''

A lot of money. Jail has already earned more than $75 million, making it Perry's highest-grossing film to date. And his seven movies — starting with his 2005 big-screen drag debut as Madea in Diary of a Mad Black Woman — have grossed more than $350 million combined, putting him on track to join John Singleton and Keenen Ivory Wayans as one of the most successful black filmmakers ever. He may already be the most divisive. At a time when Barack Obama is presenting the world with a bold new image of black America, Perry is being slammed for filling his films with regressive, down-market archetypes. In many of his films there's a junkie prostitute, a malaprop-dropping uncle, and Madea, a tough-talking grandma the size of a linebacker (''Jemima the Hutt,'' one character calls her). ''Tyler keeps saying that Madea is based on black women he's known, and maybe so,'' says Donald Bogle, acclaimed author of Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, & Bucks: An Interpretive History of Blacks in American Films. ''But Madea does have connections to the old mammy type. She's mammy-like. If a white director put out this product, the black audience would be appalled.'' More HERE

AAPP says: I'm well aware that black men have been dressing in drag for sometime. This drag tradition with roots in minstrelsy goes back to '70s TV star Flip Wilson's Geraldine character, and most recently Tyler Perry's Madea. But i have to tell yah, Perry Should Come out of the closet, or... Just stop the Madea character.

Viola Davis was right when she said, "People feel the images [in his movies] are very stereotypical, and black people are frustrated because they feel we should be more evolved. She is also right when she said, there are very few black images in Hollywood, so black people are going to his movies.

That's is the dichotomy. Tyler Perry is making money... but at who's expense?

Last year director John Singleton griped to Black Star News, "I'm tired of all these black men in dresses ... How come nobody's protesting that?" And comedian Dave Chappelle told Oprah Winfrey that during a shoot with Lawrence, the writers and producers had twisted his arm to do drag. "'Every minute you waste costs this much money,'" he recalls them telling him. "The pressure comes in ... I don't need no dress to be funny," he said. Chappelle also suggested that their insistence amounted to a "conspiracy," and he got applause for implying a connection between cross-dressing and "Brokeback Mountain." More HERE

AAPP: Enough is enough. But that's my opinion. What do you think? Is this a true image of a black man?