Brittney Cooper - Pick Up The Phone

 

 

So, in the early 2000s, I became the first person in my family to graduate from college and to go on to pursue a PhD. [audience cheers and applause] 

 

Now, when you go to med school, you become a doctor. And when you go to law school, you become a lawyer. But when you go to grad school in the humanities, you become a critic. [audience laughter] Imagine studying for six years for the expressed privilege of telling everybody who's ever written or said anything what is wrong with what they have said. [audience laughter] Imagine further explaining this to your family at Thanksgiving. 

 

So, one of the ways that I would cope with this unfortunate turn of events, is that I would go to the movies, typically a matinee on a Wednesday. And my favorite filmmaker at the time was Tyler Perry. When I went to see Diary of a Mad Black Woman, I thought to myself, here is a man who understands black women who have been done wrong. 

 

When Kimberly Elise's character slaps the shit out of the husband that has been abusing her, I'm in theater hooting and hollering with all the ladies in there. But at the same time, I'm also becoming a feminist. And you know, I'm down for smashing the patriarchy and everything, but nobody tells you that the first casualty of a feminist analysis is movies. 

 

You hate them, because you see the patriarchy, absolutely, everywhere. You become a feminist and suddenly you can't like anything anymore. [audience laughter] You're a professional unliker of everything. [audience laughter] Or, as they say in the hood, I'm getting a PhD play a hating degree. [audience laughter] 

 

It occurs to me though that I like these movies, so I'm going to keep going, but I'm just not going to tell my feminist friends how much I like the movies. Because every time I talk to them, they're using language like tropes, and representations and how problematic the films are. But what I'm thinking to myself is, but in Daddy's Little Girls, Gabrielle Union's character snacks, fine ass, Idris Elba. And I don't know a straight black girl that don't want Idris. [audience laughter] And I'm also thinking, this feels a little bit like home. 

 

Tyler Perry built his career making these Madea stage plays, and there was like an underground economy of VHS dubs that you could get of these plays. So, I remember watching one of these plays with my auntie and her laughing hysterically. I'm sitting there going like, “The play looked a little low budget.” [audience laughter] but Madea is a gun toting, a pistol toting granny. And my granny was a pistol toting granny? So, it worked for me. 

 

But I was also starting to see what my friends were saying, because I went to see The Family That Preys, and the female character in that movie is so villainized that by the time her husband knocks the shit out of her, the women in theater are hooting and hollering again, but this time, I'm not hollering with them, because you know, I'm a feminist now and that's domestic violence. So, I'm starting to think, maybe me and Tyler might have to break up. 

 

Fast forward, I finished my PhD. I get a job as a professor at a big state school in the deep south. Tyler and I have broken up, but his star has continued to ascend. I'm trying to figure out how to wear this big old title as both a PhD and a critic, even though I come from people that don't really have fancy titles. So, I call up my girls, who are mostly first-generation PhDs themselves, and we form a crew and a blog called the Crunk Feminist Collective. [audience cheers and applause]

 

So, around this time, Tyler puts out a show called The Haves and the Have Nots. And like a good feminist, I tune in to hate watch the show. And as suspected, as expected, he gives me something to hate. So, the next day, I go to the Crunk Feminist Collective blog, and I pin a post called Tyler Perry Hates Black Women. 

 

Now, let me say that some high-profile feminists would be coming through and reading the blog, but I didn't really think any famous, famous people were reading the blog. So, imagine my surprise the next day when I get an email, subject line, Tyler Perry wants to talk to you. [audience laughter] I think it's a joke, right? But I open the email, I called the number back and it's not a joke. His assistant gets on the phone and she says, “Oh, he wants to talk to you.” [audience laughter] 

 

So, we set up a time to talk, the next day. And the day in between, I spend my time calling all my homegirls going, “What we going to do?” [audience laughter] And the consensus among the feminist cabal is finishing. [audience laughter and applause] 

 

They're like, “We have been waiting our whole careers for this, and you have been chosen, so you got to do that shit.” [audience laughter] And I'm like, “But it's Tyler Perry though.” So, the next day, I've now moved to New Jersey. I'm a professor at a state school in New Jersey. I'm sitting in my one-bedroom apartment with peeling paint. The person that lives across the hall from me is a grad student, because it turns out that professor money doesn't go as far as you think it does when you don't come from generational wealth. I'm waiting on a famous millionaire filmmaker to call my phone. I also have an intense need to pee, but I'm afraid to make a run for it. 

 

So, right on time, the phone rings. “Ms. Cooper, this is Tyler Perry.” “Hi, Mr. Perry.” “Nope, call me Tyler.” “Okay. Call me Brittney.” “Brittney, you wrote some things about me that I want to talk about.” “Well, Tyler, let me begin by saying that I've seen all of your films and I really respect.” “Nope, you said that I hate black women, and I don't understand how you came to that conclusion.” Deep breath. He really want to do this. 

 

All right, let's begin with The Haves and Have Nots. “Why in the first three minutes of that show do we have a maid, a sex worker and a rich black bitch? These are tropes of black womanhood.” And he stops me, he says, “Tropes? Let me explain something to you. You're talking to a man with a 12th grade education. So, I don't know anything about tropes. But when I was growing up, the person that lived next door to me was a maid and her daughter was a sex worker, and they were like the nicest people ever.” 

 

And so, then I realized like, “Oh, wow. Yeah, he's Tyler Perry and he's rich, and I'm not rich, but I have a PhD and he has a 12th grade education.” And so, all of a sudden, maybe the playing field is not so disparate as I thought. I also think to myself like, my mother was a single mother with a 12th grade education. And my uncle, who Tyler Perry is starting to sound like on the phone, also had a 12th grade education. So, I realized like, these are the people that raised me and let me switch my tack up a little bit. 

 

So, I say, “Tyler, you know, you and I have a lot in common. We're both from Louisiana. We were both raised in the church. We both had pistol toting grannies. We both had an abusive parent.” And he said, “Oh, wow, I didn't know that about you, but I just knew you were sharp. And now that I do know this about you, I don't understand why you don't understand what I'm trying to do in my movies.” And so, I say to him, “Okay, here's really my question. Why are the educated black girls in your movies such bitches to everybody?” And he says, “Well, because there was a whole branch of my family growing up. They all went to college and they all treated everybody like trash.” 

 

And I realized, damn, like, that's exactly the thing that I feared that having all of this education might make me unrecognizable to the people that raised me, because the thing that I loved about Tyler Perry's movies, is that he writes hard for working class black girls, the girls that work behind the counter at Waffle House, the church ladies. The grannies that press $20 into your hand when you come home from school, those are the kind of folks that raised me, and I wanted to be recognizable to them. 

 

So, I'm thinking about all this. And Tyler breaks in, “Brittney, something urgent just came up. Can I call you back? I'll call you back in 20 minutes.” And I'm like, “Okay.” So, we get off the phone, I run to pee and then I'm sitting in my house going, “Damn, he not going to call me back, because I was blowing this conversation and maybe being a little bit of a jerk.” But like he said, 20 minutes later, the phone rings. “Tyler, this is Brittney. Where were we?” 

 

So, with my 20 minutes of hindsight and hastily gained wisdom, I say, “Here's the thing I'm really trying to say, Tyler. Is it possible for you to uplift working class black girls in your films without throwing the educated sisters under the bus? Because educated girls love your movies, too.” And he says, “You know what? That's profound. Can I uplift one group without demonizing another group? I'm going to think about that.” 

 

And so, then, I said to him, “Now, if you want to keep talking about this, I'm a professional critic and I'm happy to offer these no pieces, I'm never calling your ass again.” [audience laughter] We both screamed, because it was like the realest moment in this conversation. [audience laughter] But he said, “I always like to talk to my critics. I learn a lot from them.” And I said, “Fair enough,” and we hung up. 

 

I was left thinking that the thing that connects Tyler Perry and me, is that we're both working class southern folks who, in our respective fields, have “made it.” And we want to do the kind of work that always honors the places where we come from. I realized that his work called up for me the fear that maybe I would be losing touch with the folks that meant the most to me. But what I also thought was that I'm used to men dismissing me, because I have loud opinions, and I'm brash, and unapologetic and I'm a feminist. 

 

But when this millionaire filmmaker read the little old blog of a not even thousandaire professor and heard me say that the way he represented girls like me in his movies essentially hurt my feelings, he didn't ignore me or act like he hadn't seen it or heard it. He picked up the phone and called me. And then, he listened, and called back and listened again until he could find something useful to make his art better. I had been so swift and sure to proclaim that Tyler Perry hates black women, and I was left to consider maybe listening is what love looks like after all. Thank you.