We admit not devoting much thought to the sensation that is Tyler Perry's Madea franchise (Diary of a Mad Black Woman, Madea's Family Reunion, and this week's Meet the Browns among others) beyond the actor-writer-director's garish drag stylings and Lionsgate's savvy in attracting one of moviegoing's most underserved audiences back to theatres every couple years. Thank God for Salon's James Hannaham, who today breaks down the Perry phenomenon for the controversial throwbacks to minstrelsy, misogyny and all-around insensitivity old Madea may actually represent:

When straight black comedians do drag, they aren't trying to make women look fabulous. They reach for the floral housecoats and the chartreuse polyester pantsuits. It's anyone's guess why the no-nonsense old ladies hold more appeal for them -- perhaps grandmotherly aggression and take-no-prisoners masculine attitude have more in common than meets the eye. The clumsy fashion sense is certainly a match.

[B]logger Darryl James sees the phenomenon as part of an effort to neutralize black masculinity. For him and a lot of other straight black men, gender-bending comedians are "castrated clowns," whose emasculation makes them palatable to white people and man-hating black women alike. "The black man in drag is one of the new coons," he writes.

Yikes! The ensuing shitstorm of comments is as theoretical and civil as you'd might expect from the Salon readership, but it underscores a reality that Perry and his less prolific black-drag contemporaries Martin Lawrence, Eddie Murphy and SNL's Keenan Thompson are, at the end of the day, handsomely paid commodities capitalizing on the minstrel tradition. And you know what? We're OK with that!

Because it sells. To dismiss Perry and Lionsgate -- who've worked together on five theatrical releases since 2005 -- is to condescend even more egregiously than a man wearing a dress; it suggests their audience is too ignorant to know it doesn't want what it wants. Lionsgate is responsible for a lot of atrocities, none worse than the Hostel duo and Crash, but it also has a proven marketplace to supply. And Perry's films are a market unto themselves, earning a total gross of $200 million. In other words, cultural commentators like Hannaham aren't the only ones parsing the question, "What's so funny about a black man in a dress?" All of Hollywood -- and an audience of millions -- stands to profit from an answer.

• The funny thing about black men in dresses [Salon]

Tags: gender illusionism | lionsgate | meet the browns | tyler perry