Bullshit.
Tell us how you will expeditiously provide such exposition without a character providing it. Give us a specific example. Tell us how you’ll explain the the Force to the audience in Star Wars without Kenobi & Yoda, or the Matrix without Morpheus. You can pick another example if – but an actual story with such a character, please.
For you fans of The Samurai Cat (and there may not be many), Mark E. Rogers referred to this trope as the WOBL (Wise Old Black Lady). One of the most egregious examples is Mother Abagail (literally a 108-year-old magical black woman) from The Stand.
I liked the role of Mr. T. in the Not Another Teen Movie. He was the Wise Janitor with critical life advice to give in specific situations.
Fool.
I think you’re confusing what he’s saying with another situation. He’s not talking about characters exlaining things to audiences. He’s talking about how lazy writers use ethnicity to establish the character’s information as “authentic” without any other backstory.
Of course the mexican gardener knows all about the chupcabra and its one weakness. Of course the old black woman knows about voodoo, even though she lives in New York and has no real reason to.
Kenobi was introduced as an important character. Before he showed up, we learned he was a general and important enough to Leia to travel directly to him and send the droids off in a desperate attempt to get a message to him. Implictly, she considered this more important than her own life. In his first appearance, he was shown to have mysterious and undefined abilities. He also knew all about Luke, so it was no great surprise that he would know more about what was going on. Also, he fills in some backstory for Luke, with the bonus of implying a lot more to the audience. Obi-Wan is shown to be an instrinsic part of the story from the word Go.
I’m not sure this really qualifies as the Magical Negro, but it is somewhat close. At the very least, both the MN and the random-horro-movie-guy-who knows-stuff tend to come out of nowhere, essentially fix the plot or set things up, and then usually go away at the end without any explanation of why they know this or having shown any other character trait. Their ethnicity is used to assure middle-class white people that the minority on display is “authentic.” Other than that, they have no personality or purpose.
I agree with Skald the Rhymer - you’re talking about something different here. Really you’re just talking about characters who provides exposition. On its own it does not meet any of the elements of the character type we’re talking about.
I’ve also seen King mocked for writing a lot of “magic retard” characters. I’m not getting into whether or not that’s accurate, it’s just something that I’ve seen discussed in his work.
I see it a little differently – the MN seems to be a more specific type – an advisor to the hero who has superior knowledge and acts as mentor, and who generally tragically loses his or her life prematurely. If Merlin or Obi wan Kenobi had been black, they would’ve been seen as perfect MNs.
I think the MN really started when they were trying to work roles for blacks into productions that didn’t obviously have them. Somewhere someone suggested Ben Vereen’s character in Pippin, which seems to me the real beginning of the MN. Where the hell do you find a role for the black guy in a musical about Medieval France? But making the Leading Player black, you not only get a confidante and commentator, he can also be modern and street-wise. The MN, I think, got started as a way to inject an anachronistic modern sensibility into the story and give a black actor a place in what would otherwise be an all-white world. It has its attractions, but it got used way too often and has come to be seen as a cliche and, worse (and ironically), a demeaning role, since it’s one of the few blacks seem to get. the thing is, it’s arguably a step up from zero roles.
I’m not trying to excuse the MN. It is a demeaning role if that’s all there is. A better way is to have lots of both black and white roles (and other ethnic types, as well) all as concrete, realized characters. This isn’t easy to do, which is why you don’t see more of it. But the Matrix trilogy did have lots of black, white, hispanic, indian, and other roles.
Bah! I say confirmation bias abounds. What about all the Magical/Sage/Wise Old White People in movies? Most of the time, this character is indeed just a plot forwarding device; the color of their skin matters less than their background or what they know.
I have a theory that writers who invoke the “magical negro” tend to be people who grew up in areas where black people were scarce on the ground.
Stephen King is of course a prime offender in this department (The Shining, The Stand, The Green Mile), and he grew up in Maine, which has a black population of about 3.
I’m sure that to a young Stephen King, black people must have seemed awfully exotic.
People, people. How could we forget the archtype of the character: Carl Weathers as Chubbs in Happy Gilmore. Come to think of it, Carl Weathers in anything except Predator and the first two Rocky films.
In Ghostbusters I and **II **the mystical 411 is provided by the main characters themselves who get it through research and then explain it to each other and/or their clients.
Still bullshit?
ETA: Marley, yes, the MN is more often than not used as the exposition device. But quite often it seems like the point of their ethnicity is to give extra authority on the supernatural.
How about Hand that Rocks the Cradle? Ernie Hudson plays a mentally challenged guy who ends up saving the family from the evil white woman, even after they’ve thrown him out of the family fold (they think he’s a pedophile but he’s not).
For posters who are poo-pooing the whole idea of MN, I understand the extinct to say, “I’m tired of folks seeing racism in everything”…but I hope you read the article. It really does make a good case for MN syndrome.
That said, I gotta say, I don’t think Morpheus fits at all. He isn’t being all magical to cowtow to white folk. He is being strong and smart and cool to save the freakin’ world. There are tons of black people in Zion for him to save. Different than say, Baggar Vance or The Hand that Rocks the Cradle’s MN, who I wish Freudian wouldn’t even had reminded me of! Shudder! Makes me cringe.
I’ve been saying for a long time that Morgan Freeman has been typecast as the “wise old black man,” and that he’s better than that, and have even kind of felt it to be semi-offensive. I’m glad to see that others have recognized this, too.
Every time I see the title I keep getting this inexplicable desire to see a Peter Sellers movie and listen to some Badfinger.
The key part of the Magic Negro isn’t just that they’re magic, or negro. What makes them a Magic Negro is that they use their magic powers to help troubled middle-class white people, instead of downtrodden black people.
That’s what bothered me the most about Ernie Hudson in Hand that Rocks the Cradle. (Sorry to bring it up, Nzinga!) The white upper middle class family throws him out even after he’s done a great job working for them, without even giving him a chance to explain. The white family doesn’t even let him touch the new baby though. And then he spends his time following and watching over them just so he can swoop in and save them. And in the end his reward is that he gets to carry the new white baby down the stairs to the living room! Huzzah.
I think that Morpheus is not a MN because he’s a prime plot mover, not merely an exposition device. Although he does provide much back story, he makes his own decisions, and has actual power over others including the hero.
Him hosting “Through the Wormhole” on the Science Channel isn’t helping that perception.
Hi Marley 23.
Here’s a Wikipedia cite.International Media Reaction to Obama’s Election. It doesn’t deal with opinion polls, shows overseas reactions that are incredibly enthusiastic. More enthusiastic than American media IMO; so again: not kidding.
**
When Obama emerged as the victor, people in many countries were outright ecstatic. An editorial in French daily Libération was headlined “Hope, at Last! For One Day, Let Us Hope!” and encouraged readers to abandon their skepticism and allow themselves to feel joy. “After this already historic November 4th, let us admit that we’re caught up, almost all of us, in a sense of joy. For one hour or a day, let us speak with an enthusiasm that is now sweeping the planet. For a few hours, the Americans hope; for a few hours, the whole world feels better.”[6]
In Brazil, Folha columnist Sérgio Malbergier wrote “it is so epic and multidimensional that it fills us with amazement and exhilaration.”[7] Tracee Hutchison, writing for The Age in Australia, said “It may only be for a moment, but somehow this week’s US election result rings like a clarion call for hope and peaceful momentum.”[8] Kenya’s Daily Nation reported that “excited crowds waved the American flag and carried life-size photos of Mr. Obama.”[9] In Swiss newspaper 24 heures (Switzerland), chief editor Thierry Meyer applauded America’s overcoming of racism and said Obama “is the embodiment of its lasting dream, its primordial founding virtue: optimism and confidence in its destiny.”[10] In another Swiss paper, Nachrichten, commentator Patrik Etschmayer said, “The victory of Barack Obama is historic. Historic, because Obama was an impossible candidate who ran an impossible campaign against all the odds and expectations.”[11] Christian Merville wrote for L’Orient Le Jour in Lebanon that Americans had astonished the world: “The miracle is that this is a country which has reconciled with itself after a very long estrangement has a renewed hope for a better future. This, just when everything seemed grey and the most sacred principles - those of democracy, freedom and free enterprise - had lost all meaning.”**
Jesus, foreign perspectives of the US are skewed and stupid.