The Butt of Tyler Perry’s Diary of a Mad Black Woman Joke

Tyler Perry’s comedy Diary of a Mad Black Woman is a film of forgiveness and freedom that follows the personal growth of a black woman named Helen as she heals from an 18-year-long marriage with her abusive and cheating husband, Charles, through the discovery of new love with a man named Orlando. While the film emphasizes the heartbreak and healing of Helen’s life as an example of winning against all odds as a black woman in America, its true focus is Helen’s transformation from an unloved housewife doomed by her abusive husband to a willing lover saved by the love of a good man. Rather than explore Helen’s emotional healing, Diary of a Mad Black Woman presents Helen’s relationship with Orlando as the dominant contributor to her eventual triumph. Furthermore, the film does this by perpetuating gender stereotypes and reinforcing the social acceptability of misogyny. By centering Helen’s personal growth and social success on her relationship with Orlando, Diary of a Mad Black Woman judges the patriarchy as essential to black womanhood and normalizes its confining expectations for women.

In Diary of a Mad Black Woman, Helen’s evolution from abused housewife to humble success is entirely dependent upon her relationship with her lover, Orlando. The film pays virtually no attention to Helen’s personal healing from her husband Charles’s abuse or the trauma of being displaced from her home and life. Helen’s confession in her diary that “Most days I don’t want to get out of bed, but I do” is the full extent of the film’s recognition of Helen’s survival and growth (Diary 46:26–46:29). The breadth of the film focuses on Helen’s blooming relationship with her brother’s friend Orlando. In fact, the very moment Helen confronts “being this low,” she has a chance run-in with Orlando that incites another meeting and then the commission of a romance (Diary 46:40–46:45). Although clearly intended as the dream husband of black women everywhere, Orlando himself is a problematic character. The climax of Orlando’s love confession to Helen is his admission that “I got it so bad for you, I’d go to the grocery store and I’d buy you feminine products, I swear I would” (Diary 1:07:56–1:07:58). Not only does this statement reaffirm gender stereotypes by suggesting something inherently emasculating about associating with feminine hygiene, but it presents overcoming this stereotype as an extreme, utmost expression of affection rather than base humanity. Similarly, Orlando phrases his proposal to Helen as an agreement that he will support her wholly upon the condition that she marries him, as if Orlando’s love for Helen is not free but rather dependent upon her matrimonial commitment to him. In Reid’s words regarding Spike Lee’s portrayal of Nola Darling in She’s Gotta Have It, “Men… determine her sanity” (p. 94). Fundamentally, Diary of a Mad Black Woman champions black womanhood as dependent upon the support of men, and by idealizing this disfigured form of feminine success, the film defines women by their relation to the patriarchy.

Ultimately, Diary of a Mad Black Woman distorts the public perception of black womanhood by defining it according to the patriarchy. Reid interprets “urban black folk comedy” like Tyler Perry’s humor as “any black-oriented comedy whose laughter is not evoked from an objectified racial other but might objectify other groups, such as women…” (93). Diary of a Mad Black Woman does just that by positioning black women at the center of the comedy. The film addresses black womanhood, but in making black women the butt of the joke, it fails to discuss the most significant factors of black women’s experiences. As such, comedy can and does attempt to confront issues of cultural significance, but certain humor, such as that in Tyler Perry’s Diary of a Mad Black Woman, undercuts the very topics presented.

Works Cited

Diary of a Mad Black Woman. Directed by Darren Grant, performances by Tyler Perry, Steve Harris, and Kimberly Elise, Lionsgate, 2005.

Reid, Mark A. “Black Comedy on the Verge of a Genre Breakdown.” Redefining Black Film, University of California Press, 1993, pp. 92–108.