The Magical Negro

Cafe Society
41

Yep. Note that I was not asking for examples in which expository characters were not used. I was asking you to rewrite bites in which an expository character WAS used so that no such character was necessary, without otherwise changing the story.

Ghostbusters isn’t as good an example as you think it is, by the way. For one thing the crew is a group of scientists, so naturally they’re better suited to to find things out than a group of random tourists. But for another, Igon (Egon?) serves as the expository character; he’s the one who does the research and explains it to the others.

42

Not to mention incredibly patronizing.

43

Are we confining this to a discussion of the media now? That’s not what I was talking about and I didn’t think that was what you were saying either.

No question that people in the foreign media said some absurd, patronizing things after the election. What I didn’t believe is the second part: the contention that people here didn’t think having a minority president was significant. Check out any of these front pages from November 5, 2008. I think every one I look at made reference to his race.

44

First, the recognition of this character goes back to at least 2001, and probably further back:

Second, Darth Panda, there are two black characters in the Harry Potter novels, Dean Thomas and Lee Jordan.

45

just don’t incur his wrath!

46

This will my last on this (it really doesn’t warrant more than 3 volleys.) You’re right that we weren’t talking about media. I left out a “but;” I meant to say my cite wasn’t opinion polls (good stuff) but that I did find some indirect evidence.

And although pretty much all U.S. media played the race angle, it was just as an historical angle (you play every angle you can find.) But I didn’t see U.S. editorial enthusiasm about a minority president similar to what some of the overseas publications exhibited.

Final Summary: the article in original post implied white democrats voted for Obama because on some level they believed in Magic Negroes. If it didn’t imply that, then there was no reason for talking about Obama in the article. I continue to not accept the implication.

And there’s evidence that some people overseas thought it was symbolically important that America elected a racially mixed man. The evidence isn’t great, but it’s good enough that my original contention shouldn’t be seen as absurd. (Original contention being that probably people overseas attached more importance to a black being elected President than white democrats in the U.S. did.)

That’s it.

47

I’m not denying that expository characters are needed. That wasn’t my point. The laziness of many screenwriters in using the MN is that they use an ethnic character to implicitly add weight to the exposition. It also adds racism to varying degrees, depending on the particulars. “Of course the janitor knows all about voodoo curses because he’s black.” That really annoys me.

**Ghostbusters **is a perfect example of how to add backstory in a natural manner for the very reason you deny it. Their scientists so of course they go looking for the facts. And they’re dealing with non-scientists like Dana (and, sadly, Venkman). So it’s natural for them to have to explain said facts.

48

Anyone who calls Barack Obama a Magical Negro has missed the point. The point of a Magical Negro character is that he’s not the protagonist. The protagonist is a white guy - he’s the character the story is about. The Magical Negro is there to give the protagonist support and advice and motivation and whatever else he needs to complete his story. But the Magical Negro does not have a story of his own - he’s just a prop in the protagonist’s story.

If Obama is a Magical Negro, who is he supposedly supporting? Who’s the lead character?

My guess is that whoever started the “Barack Obama is a Magical Negro” line heard the phrase somewhere and didn’t bother doing two minutes’ worth of research on TV Tropes or Wikipedia.

49

You know, it took less time than that to actually find out who started it.

50

White people collectively, mostly liberals. According to Limbaugh and others, white people have total faith that Obama has showed up out of the goodness of his heart to heal their racial guilt and the country in general.

51

But they got it wrong. Barack Obama isn’t the supporting player - he’s the lead.

52

I really don’t get this. Everybody is discussing this as thoiugh it’s real, but nobody has presented a shred of evdience that it is anyhting more than confirmation bias and racism on the part of the proponents.

Look, prety much every story has some sort of mentor character. That’s inevitable because pretty much every story needs someone to tell the heroine that she’s on the right track and to keep going. Without a mentor of some sort the audience loses sight of how well the hero’s doing. The mentor character is so ubiquitous that it’s one of the primary hero acrhetypes, an archetype defined as being wise, bearing gifts and advice and having godlike qualities.

So let’s look at the facts:

  1. The mentor archetype appears in pretty much every heroic narrative.

  2. The mentor is by definition magical, wise and godlike.

  3. Black people make up 13% of the US population.

Based on those facts we would expect a black mentor with godlike powers and sage advice to show up in one out of every eight movies, even if all movie roles were cast perfectly randomly.

So, looking at the top grossing movies of the past 25 years we would expect to see 3 magical negroes based on pure rnadom chance.

By my count we have the two Pirates of the Caribean movies and Ghost, that’s it. In other words the magical negro actually appears at exactly the rate that you would predict based on random chance, and the “Pirates” movies are a cheat because it’s two parts of the same movies and the same character.

Now I admit that I’m not perfectly familiar with all those movies, thoiugh I have seen them all, and possibly somebody will want to add in other movies. Someone will probably wnat to shoehorn in Samuel Jackson’s character in “Phantom Menace”, but that would really be stretching the defintion in a movie where almost all the main characters have magical powers, and the real magical mentors is clearly Yoda and Qui Gon.

We can similarly look at the highest grossing movies each year:. But once again, I’m not seeing any evidence that Magical Negroes show up at a rate thatis any higher than ranmdom chance. In fact I can’t find a single year where there are two magical negro characters in the top 10 movies, and for many years there are none at all.

So can anyone produce any evidence at all that the Magical Negro phenomenon actually exists? I don’t mean examples of Negro characters with magical powers, we all know they exist. I mean evidence that negro characters with magical powers are present at rates higher than would be expected by random chance?

Because at this stage I’m calling shenanigans. People have noticed an artifact of perfect random chance and , due to confirmation bias and racism, are seeing patterns in clouds.

I’m going to make the argument that the Magical Negro phenomenon does not exist. My position is that Magical Negroes exist at exactly the same rates as Magical Jews, Magical Asians and Magical WASPS, ie at a rate exactly proportional to thier abunance in the population of the US.

Anyone have any evidence to challenge this position?

53

I might have found one. 1990 has “Ghost”, and we could shoehorn in the Black cop from “Die Hard” and if we try really hard we can force the chauffeur from “Pretty Woman”. It’s a bit of a stretch for “Die Hard” since the cop is anything but magical, being shown as a very average donut eating, cofeee swilling police officer. Still, he does provide advice to the lead character. And the chauffeur in “Pretty Woman” is really stretching it, since the hotel concierge is the real mystic figure, offering advice and gifts. Still, at a stretch we can include the chauffeur, since he rescues the heroes.

So that might be the one year in film history where the number of magical negroes just barely exceeds random chance. Not really compelling veidnce that the phenomenon exists.

54

Maybe just a bit of this in two of Queen Latifah’s roles: the hospice nurse in My Life (Michael Keaton & Nicole Kidman movie) and the, uh, whatever she was in Stranger Than Fiction. They stand out in my mind because as much as I like Queen Latifah, I couldn’t figure out why her characters were inserted into these two films.

On the other hand, I suppose you could go through any instance where a black person plays a supporting role and call it the “magical Negro” phenomenon, so take it with a grain of salt.

55

See both of the recent Batman films for another example of this.

56

I agree. There are plenty of non-black magical characters like Obi-Wan Kenobi.

I think what happened is a lot of filmmakers wanted to play it safe by making their lead a white male. But they also wanted to show diversity so they wanted to have a strong black or female character as well. And the most available character after the lead is cast is the lead’s mentor or right-hand man. So you end up with a cliche of the white guy being the hero and a black guy or a woman being the hero’s sidekick or mentor.

There have been exceptions. Wil Smith has become a lead on his own and he often gets white guys like Tommy Lee Jones or Kevin Kline as his sidekicks or mentors. Eddie Murphy also did this when he had his period of being the lead in action movies. Cleavon Little was an early example of a black lead with Gene Wilder playing the Magical Jew in Blazing Saddles.

57

So far in this thread, I think a solid case has been made that this type is at least overblown. But nobody has ever said ‘all magical characters are black.’ The contention is that there’s a subgroup of mystic mentor figures in film that is specifically black and that is characterized by pitching in to help white protagonists for no particular reason.

58

Well, can’t you also say this with some veracity? “There’s a subgroup of mystic mentor figures in film that is specifically white and that is characterized by pitching in to help white protagonists for no particular reason.”

If so, this is just an example of confirmation bias. I refuse the race card bait! :smiley:

Despite all the examples given on both sides of the argument, what hasn’t been shown is that there exists a disproportionality that suggests some sort of misapplication of Affirmative Action; i.e., “We need an African American in our movie - let’s cast one in the mentor role.”

59

I don’t see that as offensive. You can be a wise old man who happens to be black without being a Magical Negro.

60

This sounds like a job for a film studies grad thesis.