Mythology and Affect : The Brands of Cinematic Blackness of Will Smith and Tyler Perry

Among barber shop and beauty salon philosophers and front stoop film critics, industry hyphenates Will Smith and Tyler Perry are topics of discussions ranging from the quality of their product to their rumored homosexuality. Smith, a rapper-actor-producer is now regarded as “the most powerful actor in Hollywood” with a “worldwide career box office of $4.4 billion” and salary of $25 million a picture. Tyler Perry has accomplished similar success as a businessman, generating millions of dollars with his Christian themed melodramas, sitcoms, books, DVDs and stage plays. With Smith’s success playing out on international terrain, Perry has chosen to focus on the largely ignored domestic demographic of black American females starved for narratives which speak to and reflect aspects of blackness. Currently, Tyler Perry has “[t]he most popular African-American show on TV...‘House of Payne,’” and has added the sitcom version of his film Meet the Browns to his TBS lineup. Despite what detractors may say, some of those salon and front stoop observers are consuming the Smith and Perry products. This paper examines how blackness is branded, and commoditized in our current neoliberal moment. By putting Will Smith and Tyler Perry in conversation with each other, I will explain how they operate as a brand which can be sold within a cultural industry that has historically and continues to marginalize “blackness” despite having made considerable profit from the same. This in turn will hopefully uncover some useful observations for televisual and cinematic artists of color as they navigate the cultural industries. black A-List actor would not work because “black doesn’t do well in foreign” and the project was dropped. The notion that the black cinematic and televisual are not profitable in the international marketplace remains a sentiment that is widely accepted throughout mainstream Hollywood and passed on from filmmaking generation to generation. In the United States, blackness is intrinsically caught up with whiteness, which means that to some degree, whiteness from a deterministic perspective continues in many ways to influence the scope and breadth of black representation. Included among the many ways blackness has been theorized, is its function as a “master sign”, a “movement”, and “a strategy of culture critique”.[1] Embracing all of these, it will be helpful to contextualize blackness, During a 2007 staff meeting at a prominent film production company several projects were discussed for possible production. This is a routine practice as screenplays, books, and other source material are regularly solicited, submitted and discussed for production consideration throughout the industry. One particular screenplay had made it through the fray and producers were actively attempting to get the project set up. Unfortunately, none of the A-list, 50-plus year old white male stars that had been approached for the lead role were interested. Then a producer mentioned that an A-list black actor of similar ilk had expressed interest in the project; this casting choice, however, would mean black casting for a few other key characters. With the international marketplace in mind, the producer sighed his reluctance and stated that the