Courtesy of Ebony.com
Tyler Perry is riding high off of the success of his latest hit TV series, “The Haves And The Have Nots.” The soap opera has been a home-run with Perry’s core audience, netting a total of 2 million viewers to become OWN’s highest-rated show to date.
Sticking to his usual formula of mass stereotyping, Perry covers all of his bases. Bourgie Black folk? Check. Hardworking, southern church woman? Check. Privileged Whites? You got it. (There’s even an Hispanic maid.) But this time, there’s one group Perry threw into the mix that I never thought he’d give the time of day to: gay men. Aside from longstanding rumors about Perry’s own sexual preference, it’s surprising that he would address homosexuality at all, considering his fan base is predominantly Black Christian women.
In “The Haves And The Have Nots,” Perry doesn’t just address it, he goes there. His character, Jeffery, is a gay Black man who comes from a very wealthy family and is also trapped in the closet, R. Kelly-style. While being in the closet is a very real experience for many same-gender-loving people, particularly Black men, it didn’t quite sit well with me upon first watching the show, because I suspected Perry would more than likely take the opportunity to do what he does best: drench his character in so many stereotypes that it would turn into a television hate-fest. And that it did.
