Madea and Irony

     Overall, I enjoyed reading the opinions that Tyler Perry's alter-ego, Madea, shares in her "uninhibited commentaries on love and life." Madea employs several types of humor as she shares her stories, and I found each joke, witty comment, and sarcastic remark to be powerful in achieving her goal of reminding us that "life is sometimes hard, and you have to laugh your way through it" (xiv).

    Of the various types of humor that we have studied in class, I noticed irony most prevalently throughout this text. Perry's use of irony had several impacts on my interpretation of the text, both positive and negative.

    First, this use of humor was oftentimes successful in making me laugh out loud as I read. For example, in her description of her daughter, Cora, in the "Kids! (Enough Said)" section, Madea says, "I think she was about 98 pounds when she was born...just a little butterball. I didn't buy a stroller. I would just roll her down the street like a ball" (72). Evidently, it is easy to laugh at these descriptions because of the absurdity of the idea of a 98 pound baby rolled down the street by her mother. These descriptions caught me off guard in the best way, exemplifying the incongruity theory of humor. Lines such as these are unexpected and shocking, but because Madea writes with such conviction, we find humor in her stark irony.

    On the other hand, I sometimes found it difficult to detect when Perry was trying to employ irony, versus when Madea was stating something seriously. I wondered whether it was because I was reading Madea's thoughts (as opposed to hearing them aloud in one of the Madea's films/plays), or simply because Perry wanted certain lines to remain ambiguous. Ultimately, I found the meaning of some of Madea's ideas to be clouded or lost. For example, in that same section of the text, I found it puzzling to read of Madea's bag of belts. She describes the behavioral benefits of "whupping" one's children with a belt in her guide to parenting (78). She continues on to make the claim that she "doesn't believe in child abuse," evident in the fact that "the belt is whupping. The buckle is abuse," and therefore, cannot be one in the same (79). With these contradicting ideas, I felt it difficult to detect if Madea was employing irony at all in this section. Because of the humorous and ironic tones used to describe other pressing topics in the text, such as keeping a marriage "spicy," or finding a husband, I had hoped that she was using irony to make a statement about the abusive treatment of children. However, as the chapter progressed, I became less sure that this was an instance of irony, and slightly more confused on this chapter's contribution to the overall meaning of the text.