It would probably be better for all concerned at this point if filmmakers chose not to make more films purporting to address the issue of racism. I can’t think of one that’s done it well.
One of the few such characters that still holds up (IMO) is Moses from The Hudsucker Proxy, precisely because he’s played as such a winkingly over-the-top version of this archetype (he can literally stop time!).
That just sounds like Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, and I don’t see why anything about that would be “problematic” today.
Re: the “magical negro” trope, I saw a trailer for an upcoming film that looks like it may be an interesting satire called “The American Society of Magical Negroes.”
Trading Places?
The black sketch show ‘The Astronomy Club’ on Netflix did a sketch called ‘Magical Negro Rehab’:
Trading Places is one of my favorite movies and yet it includes use of the n-word and Dan Aykroyd in blackface.
Oh, is this the place where I can rant about movies no-one has seen for decades?
I’ve been watching a lot of the “award-winning” section on Netflix, and it’s surprising how many beloved courtroom dramas just don’t stand up at all.
The one I watched last night was Primal Fear. As a vehicle for several great actors at the top of their game? Great movie. But the actual plot? Let’s just say it’s a split personality plot where the behaviour of the defendant, lawyers, legal system…all are completely wrong and make no sense and I’ll put the rest in a spoiler.
Primal fear: spoilers for a 1996 movie
Plot:
Edward Norton is a literal choirboy, found running from a murder scene covered in blood.
His defence attorney (Richard Gere) believes Ed is innocent as he is a shy, quiet type with a stutter.
However, more and more circumstantial evidence points to Ed, and later it is established that, yes he committed the murder, but he has a split personality, and it is the other, violent personality (Roy), that did the deed.
In court, the prosecutor (Laura Linney) and the jury find the split personality defence laughable. However, when Laura starts shouting in Ed’s face to provoke a reaction he flips into Roy and attacks her.
Then, in the judge’s backroom we are told that the case will be moved to a bench trial, Ed will be found not guilty by way of insanity, and will “probably be out in a month”.
In a final twist, in a one-to-one between Gere and Ed, Ed slips up and then confesses he was acting all along and he only has one true personality, the violent one.
Problems:
- All the times the defence are surprised with things in court? Yeah that can’t happen.
- Ed’s plan makes no sense. He clumsily commits a premeditated murder. Then he comes up with a “Jekyll and Hyde” defence, which should not have worked, but for numerous lucky events, beginning with getting a hotshot defence attorney for free.
- What was Laura trying to do, if not provoke a violent outburst?
- How does the violent outburst prove the split personality theory? All it proves is that he’s capable of violence, which is *essential* to the prosecution.
- No, you don’t get out in a month if you’re found insane. In fact, you typically spend longer in custodial care than pleading guilty. Which is why few people attempt this defence.
- Bonus: The way Ed gets found out at the end was stupid; an unbelievable slip up. Of course we could argue he wanted Gere to figure it out, and indeed he says so, but he does also say it was a legitimate slip.
See also Key & Peele’s “Magical Negro Fight”:
I’m not sure I’ve ever seen, or read, all of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. I didn’t realize the moral of the story was “he’s a rapist and abuser, but he’s got some good qualities, too.”
Trading Places isn’t really about racism, though. I mean, Winthorpe is casually racist in a decidedly ‘Karen’-esque way, and the Duke Brothers are having the kind of informal eugenicist debate that is a staple of would-be patricians everywhere, but the real theme of the movie is exploitation of everyone else by the very wealthy (who do as they please with no legal consequences), and the lesson—such as it is—is that you have to cheat them even better to defeat them.
I’m sure if the film were being made today somebody would take issue with racial stereotypes, et cetera, although they really aren’t that offensive, but the reason it endures is that it uses humor to tap into an essential truth, to wit that we are all serving someone and have to dance at their pleasure, unless you are clever enough to undermine them and beat them at their own made up game. Winthorpe and Valentine are clever enough to beat the Dukes by outscamming them, and not in any way that has to do with race.
Stranger
One of my favorites, too. Another movie like that is Silver Streak (1976). Another favorite.
It’s been a while since I saw Silver Streak but was Gene Wilder in blackface?
Yep. With Richard Pryor walking next to him looking very embarrassed.
[George is pretending to be a black man in order to evade the police]
George Caldwell: I don’t think we’re going to make it past the cops.
Grover Muldoon: We’ll make it past the cops. I just hope we don’t see no Muslims.
That is pretty much exactly the point of the original novel where Dr. Jekyll contrives the serum to compartmentalize his ‘evil’ side. Unfortunately, as he loses the ability to transform back from Hyde to Jekyll, he despairs and kills himself.
Stranger
The story is “no one is 100% good, what if we can take all the bad out of a person and condense it into another figure.”
It’s just a split personality story. No I don’t see why that can’t be done today. Hundreds of popular current stories deal with lead characters who do bad things.
Yesterday I saw The Color Purple which has a character who is a rapist and an abuser, and yet he does have some good qualities too.
The problem isn’t that Kirk is not 100% good or bad. I just think the message “in order to be a good starship captain, you have to be a little bit rapist” is a tough sell these days.
I think you’re missing the point a little bit. We all have a range of emotions, which in and of themselves aren’t good or bad, but are necessary to our functioning as humans. It’s when one particular emotion dominates, gets out of balance, or is unchecked by moral codes or societal restraints, that there’s a problem. Unrestrained anger and aggression could lead to assault, murder, or yes, rape. Unchecked sadness could lead to depression and suicide. Even unrestrained happiness or joy could lead to manic behavior and bad decision making.
Seems like there was some Pryor - Wilder film where Richard Pryor at one point was impersonating a famous Swedish gynecologist.
Disagree. [Warning: image of quasi-‘blackface’ that is actually an implicit criticism of ‘races’ in fantasy]
By extension, “it would probably be better for all concerned at this point” if filmmakers chose not to make films about any controversial topic, unless of course endorsed by a person or persons representing the focus of controversy at hand and with recognition that even those inputs will likely seem outmoded and offensive a decade later. So…basically just keep making superhero and fantasy films, but avoid any of the tropes that will later be characterized by allegorical racism, I guess.
Seriously, films are a reflection of the views of their times, or at least the views of the filmmakers at that time, and often contain things that seem anachronistic to later viewers because they are literally anachronisms. Films of the ‘Eighties and ‘Nineties contain a lot of casual but not overt racism because the ‘Eighties and ‘Nineties were full of casual but not overt racism, and had a lot of white people thinking themselves to be saviors by having a token black friend or ‘Magical Negro’ character, which is a way of being ‘inclusive’ without actually including other perspectives or having an actually diverse cast that represented the demographics of where the story was set (ahem, Friends, or Seinfeld, or really any New York-based situation comedy).
‘Blackface’ used to mean the portrayal of ‘minstrel show’ characters whose animalistic antics reflected the highly bigoted attitudes of viewers, and are and always should have been offensive because they were fundamentally ‘punching down’ to people who had no means to respond. It has now come to mean any use of makeup and prosthetics for a white (or even lighter skinned) actor to play a darker complexioned character regardless of context, which is regrettable because there are contexts where it is actually appropriate or funny, i.e. when the character in ‘blackface’ is too clueless to understand why it might be offensive to others, i.e. in Sliver Streak as already discussed. And the converse is true as well. There are, on the other hand, portrayals and jokes that were always unfunny and offensive, such as ‘Long Duk Dong’ in Sixteen Candles (a film that hasn’t had nearly enough opprobrium heaped upon it in numerous ways).
Avoiding race and other controversies in filmmaking entirely is a mistake, as is trying to anticipate what future viewers are going to find offensive. A better guiding principle (and in general, not just racial prejudice) is to not craft simplistic ‘lessons’ and ‘solutions’ into the narrative conclusion of the film as if one formerly bigoted white football coach concluding that black players are just as good as white ones is some kind of revelation that is going to solve three centuries of inequality, persecution, and servitude. It’s not even so much an issue of being offensive as it is just really lazy writing, and ‘ages’ poorly because the essential theme is false and trivial.
Stranger
I think I understand the nuances of the issue, and I did make the point upthread that using blackface as an ironic statement in order to implicitly criticize racism is something that was seen as acceptable, and even progressive, until fairly recently:
A point could be made that we’ve overcorrected a bit, but I think in general terms it’s best to err on the side of caution in this case. I don’t know what it’s like to be a black person in America, and if the black community finds any and all depictions of blackface offensive, no matter the intention, I’m fine with honoring that.
BTW, that screenshot that you’re presumably using as an example of a ‘good’ use of blackface is from an episode of Community that’s also been cornfielded, however rightly or wrongly.