Well, you've done it again. You've managed to pump out another Perry box office triumph. Two in one year is beyond commendable. It's a testament to your non-stop industriousness. And that's not a sardonic stab, that's "truly meant". And your fans, man o man... scurrying the streets like it's raining gold. I mean, you can hear them laughing from the AMC Theater in Brooklyn to the Magic Johnson Theaters on Crenshaw. That's pretty amazing and I'd be a fool to mock it.
But I don't want to waste a lot of time offering props for your commitment to bring the black community the moral correction you believe it needs: a barrage of high-school drop outs, teen pregnancy, deadbeat dads, single moms, infidelity within our bourgeoisie, climate change, unhealthy eating, diabetes, prostate cancer, obesity, AIDS, homophobia, whew... let me not get ahead of myself. Some of these are my concerns, not yours. Point is, there's a lot to correct and you have found resolution with humor and parable often found at a Sunday church program or the smoky venues of Moms Mabley, or Stepin Fetchit. I can't decide which. And that's not a sardonic stab, that's "truly meant".
Now I know you're not perfect and there's only so much a cultural custodian can clean up in one decade, but why? And with that I mean why THIS way? Do you believe black people are only open to moral restructuring if they see themselves outrageously [and some would claim buffoonishly] caricatured? You know, in order for their souls to be softened and readied for change? Do you believe black people have been historically dehumanized so much so that self-deprecating and communal degradation has become commonplace and has been infused into certain types of entertainment? What DO you believe?
You will most likely never hear from me after this. Trust me. And you certainly don't need my support or criticism. You have plenty to last a lifetime, I'm sure you know. But I am curious if you ever think about these things. Or if you're simply an entertainer with a moral mission to deliver by any laugh necessary. Or... and I'm serious about this: do you gloat that we dissenters [or believers] are way off the mark? That, in fact, you have a strategy? That for three years you inundate the community with buffoonish examples of their morally ambiguous lives until they become so exhausted by the glare that they demand a refund, THEN you unleash your Kong? A witty, intelligent look at black life where your audience doesn't get license to laugh in the aisles at someone's oversized breasts, but to take a good look at life without clownish coddling. Is that it? You will offer something so profound [and witty] it will leap them into the three-dimension? Where they belong?
And that's not a sardonic stab, that's "truly meant".
