Mrs Brown and Madea: A meeting of culturally reviled phenomena

The most enticing monster mashup since Godzilla first headbutted King Kong will be with us in just a month’s time. Netflix has confirmed that Mrs Agnes Brown, Brendan O’Carroll’s pungently spoken Dublin fishwife, and Madea Simmons, Tyler Perry’s equally robust African-American matriarch, will be sharing the same screen before most crocuses have risen.

The news prompted much boho sniggering on the social media (some of it from your current elitist). Mention was made of the Book of Revelation. Others posted gifs from the film Armageddon. None of this will — or should — bother the two impresarios.

The project offers further confirmation that we are living in the Age of Endlessly Recyclable Intellectual Property. It asks interesting questions about whether it is possible to bring together largely discrete pop-culture fanbases. A Madea Homecoming is, however, most appealing as a practical demonstration of people power in action. Few cultural phenomena have been quite so critically reviled as Madea and Mrs Brown (again, occasionally by me).

Both sit at the centre of large families in working-class locales. There are notable differences. Though Mrs Brown is no pushover, Madea is a tougher piece of work

Their acolytes care not a twig for the sneers of commentators. They didn’t “respond to criticism” by turning the characters into icons of traditional comedy. They did that without thinking twice about those think-pieces in the New Ponderer. It is hard, even for those unconverted, not to greet the new partnership with some sort of crooked cheer. Sod the snoots.

Donald Clarke: Hey Francis, leave our pets alone

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How about a little break from Harry Potter controversies?

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Donald Clarke: It’s a Wonderful Life has been dogging my nightmares since my youth

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Donald Clarke: Cash is dying, and who will mourn the euro banknote?

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Few crossovers have had quite this dynamic. Evolved independently, Madea and Mrs Brown are startlingly similar characters. Yet there is only a tiny overlap in their core audiences. The occasional collaborations between DC and Marvel comics — Superman and Spider-Man shared the page as long ago as 1976 — do require some new physics, but no fan of one is unaware of the other. Madea is almost entirely an American phenomenon — and one that, even in the US, skews dramatically towards black audiences.

“I think the numbers could have been bigger had people who are in the white suburbs had the option to go to their own theatres to see it,” Perry has said of the Madea films. The average Mrs Brown fan would need to have travelled even further to investigate the Southern battle axe’s adventures. A Madea Family Funeral, the last episode, made fully 98 per cent of its theatrical haul in the US. Like root beer, aerosol cheese and hominy grits, she has not travelled well across the Atlantic. Few of the films even receive theatrical release here.

Some notes may, thus, be required before A Madea Homecoming lands. Like Mrs Brown, Madea first emerged in a play. Tyler Perry, now one of the most successful multi-hyphenates in the entertainment business, unveiled the character in I Can Do Bad all By Myself, staged at Chicago's Regal Theatre in 1999. Like Mrs Brown, Madea is based partly on the creator's mother. ("I often wonder – remembering my mother was always out working – if Mrs Brown is the mother I wish my own mam had been," O'Carroll told me in 2014.)

Both sit at the centre of large families in working-class locales. There are, of course, notable differences. Though Mrs Brown is no pushover, Madea is a tougher piece of work. Perry recalled the influence of his mother and aunt when discussing the character in 2012. “She would beat the hell out of you but make sure the ambulance got there in time to make sure they could set your arm back,” he said.

The new project attempts to mesh together fandoms that have hitherto had little to do with each other

The character returned for further theatrical outings before hitting cinemas with Diary of a Mad Black Woman in 2005. The critics were unimpressed, but polled audiences gave it a rare A+ "cinemascore". The pattern was set. The notices continued to be poor, but, made economically, the sequels never failed to accrue decent profits. In 2020, Perry was honoured with the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award at the Academy Awards. Meanwhile, Mrs Brown continued her own ascension from cult heroine to light-entertainment behemoth.

The demographical appeal is not quite the same. As Perry himself acknowledges, Madea has succeeded by speaking largely to black audiences. Mrs Brown has long had significant appeal to Irish fans, but it was the shift to the BBC in 2011 that really made the character a phenomenon. By the end of the last decade Christmas Day specials were topping viewing figures from the Shetlands to the Isle of Wight.

The new project attempts, nonetheless, to mesh together fandoms that have hitherto had little to do with each other. This time, with Netflix launching worldwide, Mr Perry does not have any distribution issues. Mrs Brown fans will watch in Derry and Dundee. Madea fans will watch in Detroit and Denver. Maybe this really is the wave of the future. Locate discrete fanbases and double your appeal.

What can we expect? Well, the press release does let the air from our tyres by warning that Mrs Brown makes only a “guest appearance”. Bah, bah, bah! I have my hands over my ears. I am not listening. The film in my head still ends with giant Agnes and giant Madea flinging lumps of the Empire State Building at one another. May they both prosper.

A Madea Homecoming is on Netflix from February 25th