Abstract
Popular media forms may be considered biblical in that they include veiled or explicit references to biblical texts, characters, and images. Yet, such usage is often understood as referring to biblical values that are necessarily reflected in biblical content. Tyler Perry’s film Madea’s Big Happy Family (2010) [MBHF] would seem to have little in common with the New Testament Epistles. The film explores the complex relationship dynamics of a contemporary African American extended family in crisis, while the Epistles provide instruction and advice to nascent Christian communities in the first and second centuries CE. No obvious linkage between this film and these texts exists. Yet, like MBHF, the New Testament Epistles, particularly the household codes, exhibit concerns regarding proper order within a patriarchal family structure, especially for women and children within the household. This chapter examines this film in light of the household codes. It illustrates how this film reflects and reinforces conservative, “Bible-based” notions of family and demonstrates how it upholds the stereotype of the strong black woman who takes on what is regarded as an inappropriate leadership role in the family.
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Notes
For a classic discussion of allusion, see Ziva Ben-Porat, “The Poetics of Literary Allusion,” PTL: A Journal for Descriptive Poetics and Theory of Literature, Vol. 1 (1976): 105–128.
For a discussion of the hoped-for coming of the Messiah in different communities, see John T. Carroll, The Return of Jesus in Early Christianity (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 2000).
On Haustafeln in African American biblical interpretation, see C. J. Martin, “The Haustafeln (Household Codes) in African American Biblical Interpretation: ‘Free Slave’ and ‘Subordinate Women,’” in Stony the Road We Trod: African American Biblical Interpretation, ed. C. H. Felder (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1991), 206–231.
For an overview of biblical scholarship on the Haustafeln, see James P. Hering, The Colossian and Ephesian Haustafeln in Theological Context: An Analysis of Their Origins, Relationship, and Message, vol. 260 (New York: Peter Lang, 2007).
For a review of recent scholarship in Pauline studies, see James D. G. Dunn, The Cambridge Companion to St. Paul (Cambridge, UK; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003).
On the roles of women in early house churches, see Carolyn Osiek, Margaret Y. MacDonald, and Janet H. Tulloch, A Woman’s Place: House Churches in Earliest Christianity (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2006).
T. D. Jakes, The Lady, Her Lover, and Her Lord (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1998), 62.
Patricia Hill-Collins discusses four key stereotypes of black women, including Mammy, Matriarch, Welfare Mother, and Jezebel. See “Mammies, Matriarchs, and Other Controlling Images” in Feminist Philosophies: Problems, Theories, and Applications edited by Janet A. Kournay, James P. Sterba, and Rosemarie Tong, 2nd ed. (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1999), 142–152. Also, see Michele Wallace, Black Macho and the Myth of the Superwoman (New York: Verso, 1990);
Joan Morgan, When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost: A Hip-Hop Feminist Breaks It Down (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2000);
and Kimberly Springer, “Third Wave Black Feminism?” Signs, Vol. 47 (2002): 1059–1082.
Mary Ann Tolbert, “A New Teaching with Authority: A Re-Evaluation of the Authority of the Bible,” in Teaching the Bible: The Discourses and Politics of Biblical Pedagogy, ed. Fernando Segovia and Mary Ann Tolbert (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1998), 168–189, 171.
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© 2014 LeRhonda S. Manigault-Bryant, Tamura A. Lomax, and Carol B. Duncan
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Junior, N. (2014). Tyler Perry Reads Scripture. In: Manigault-Bryant, L.S., Lomax, T.A., Duncan, C.B. (eds) Womanist and Black Feminist Responses to Tyler Perry’s Productions. Black Religion / Womanist Thought / Social Justice. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137429568_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137429568_3
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