Tyler Perry at the 2019 BET Awards: "Helping Someone Cross" as a Metaphor for Reaching Out to Help

There’s been plenty of discussion about Tyler Perry’s enthusiastic acceptance speech at last weekend’s BET Awards. Let’s talk about how he organized his speech: he told the story, drew a moral from the story, and repeated that moral in slightly different words throughout the speech. This gave his presentation thematic unity while adding to its emotional power.

He started by talking about his mother, whom his father abused physically. As a small child, Tyler watched her play cards with her friends. After one of the times his father beat his mother, he imitated the women's jokes so his mother would laugh.

Still a small child, Perry was walking to school one day and found a man struggling to cross at an intersection. The man said, “Will someone help me cross – will someone help me cross?” Perry said that moment, when the man needed help, “reminded me of my mother, bringing her out of pain, into laughter. To help her cross.” So he helped the man cross the street.

Perry then explained that, when he started his production company, he hired unknown actors: "God blessed me to be in a position to be able to hire them. I was trying to help somebody cross.” He built a studio in a poor neighborhood in Atlanta “so that young black kids could see that a black man did that, and they could do it too. I was trying to help somebody cross.”

He concluded: “It’s all about helping somebody cross.” 

Students of public speaking history will recall that Booker T. Washington used a similar metaphorical technique in his famous speech at the 1895 Cotton States Exposition: where he emphasized his theme by repeating the phrase “cast down your bucket where you are.”  Hey, it works, and we can learn a lot by studying creative public speeches of the past and present.

Perry had been introduced as an icon. He responded: “Rather than being an icon, I want to be an inspiration.”

Helping people to cross started as a story about an elderly man getting across the street but grew into a metaphor about helping other people advance, about holding out a hand to help people who otherwise could not succeed to fulfill their talents and ambitions and contribute something to the world.

Perry spoke energetically and without notes. Nevertheless, his speech was obviously prepared in advance. Good actors know how important it is to practice and every speaker should know the same thing. Let’s also note that Tyler Perry’s speech was very short: about four minutes. Booker T. Washington's speech was planned for about five minutes (although he obviously spoke a little bit longer). Short speeches sometimes carry the most power. 

P.S.: Note to my fellow communication specialists: rhetorical critics rarely pay much attention to organization. But speech organization can become the message.