“Tyler Perry Presents …”: The Cultural Projects, Partnerships, and Politics of Perry’s Media Platforms

Samantha N. Sheppard provides a broad and establishing consideration of how Perry functions in and across different media industries. Sheppard analyzes Perry’s different “practices,” “partnerships,” and “politics” as she explores some of the ways in which Perry maximizes his name recognition and brand across different platforms like theater, film, television, straight to DVD, and video on demand. While Perry’s brand has been instrumental in marketing his high volume of creative projects, other directors and writers now also seek an association with him so that they might leverage their own works. In this way, Sheppard theorizes that Perry has become a media platformonto himself. In complicating and destabilizing the assumption that a partnership with Perry will naturally lead to success, the chapter concludes with an analysis of the production and marketing of one of Perry’s affiliated projects, Tina Gordon Chism’s 2013 comedy Tyler Perry Presents Peeples.