It’s just due to how and when some of us went to school. When I read posts not following the same convention I really don’t care. And I’ll violate AP elsewhere myself, using “xerox” instead of “copier,” or styrofoam" instead of “polystyrene.”
Yeah sure, the concierge in “Pretty Woman”, or Uncle Ben in “Spider Man” or Gandalf in “LOTR” or the Colonel in “Valkyrie” or Molly Brown in “Titanic”. None of those mentor characters would have been plausible if they had been other than White. There race was highly relevant because they represented the very essence of the group that the hero characters were moving through. The worldly and ever-do-discreet concierge who knows and understands all the doings of the glittarati and moves amongst them while remaining apart, Wise old Gandalf as a Numenorean lore master, The Colonel as a Nazi officer, Molly as an upper class doyenne with and a working class joie de vivre. Any of those characters would have been at best reduced and at worst facrical had they been other than white.
And that list is just off the top of my head. I’m sure that if I look at the movie lists of the last 20 years I can come up with at least as many others.
Now can you name an equal number of Black mentor characters, and I mean characters where race is an integral part of their character, and where a white or hispanic character in the same role would be jarring or implausible? Because I’m not seeing them in this thread. Bagger Vance, sure, but thet seems to be it. The other examples could be played equally well regardles of race, yes?
For most mentor characters race is not an issue at all. For characters where it is an issue it depends entirely on setting. If the mentor is teaching the hero about white society (and by extension high society) then they need to be racially white. Where they are teaching the hero about minority society (and by extension poor society) they need to be black/minority. If they aren’t doing either then their race is irrelevant. In the late 20th/21st centuries most movies tend to be about upper middle class characters moving down, whereas the heyday of lower class characters moving down was mid 20th century. So I would probably expect to see slightly more “specifically black” mentors in recent times, yet strangely this apparently isn’t so.
Once again: Nobody is denying that the type exists. What is under dispute is that it exists at an abundance higher than expected by random chance.
No, nobody is treating it that way at all. In fact we have epxlicietly said the opposite.
What has been implied, both in this thread and the linked article, is that writers, being lazy and/or racists, include the magical negro as some sort of shorthand for something or other. That is the assertion that is being challenged here. If writers were using this character as a shorthand then we would expect to see it being used at rate above random chance, yes?
Or to put it another way, if the character were not being used as shorthand then what would you expect to see that you do not see now?
Or to put it in a Popperian fashion: how might we falsify this claim to your satisfaction?
In science we say that if something can not be shown to exist at a rate above what we expect by random chance then it has indeed been proven not to exist.
We can’t prove that there isn’t a dragon in your garage either. But if we can’t find any evidence of a dragon and you are unable to show us the evdience that leads you to believe there is a dragon, then aren’t we justified in saying that we have disproved the existence of the dragon? At least to the extent that we can prove anyhting not to exist?
Blake, I think you’re looking at it from the wrong way around, at the perspective of the role rather than the perspective of the actor. It seems to me a just matter of some mild typecasting for individual, black actors who don’t happen to fall into the other typecast slots of wacky comedian, ladies man or action hero: and like the others, it’s silly to claim that such typecasting doesn’t exist.
In The Bucket List, the relatively poor but wise working class friend/mentor to worldly and rich Jack Nicholson didn’t have to be a black guy. But if Morgan Freeman’s in the movie, guess which role he’s going to play? And a dozen other Morgan Freeman movies.
In Field of Dreams, the wise but cynical reclusive author sought out by the protagonist didn’t have to be black, but if James Earl Jones is in the movie, guess which role he’s going to play?
In Ghost, the psychic lady helping the protagonists didn’t have to be black, but if Whoopi Goldberg is in the movie, guess which role she’s going to play?
It’s as if you’re pointing at Jerry Lewis and saying, “see, Jerry’s white! He’s a wacky comedian! So there’s no such thing as a stereotypically wacky comedic black man!”
I don’t think these are good examples at all. Molly Brown and Claus von Stuffenberg were historical white people. Obviously casting them as black is implausible. We’re used to Uncle Ben as a white character because that’s how he and Aunt May and Peter Parker have been written since the beginning of Spider-Man. They could certainly be cast another way but it’d be different. Casting Gandalf as black might be inconsistent with the idea of LOTR as an ur-myth set in Britain but if that’s disregarded it probably wouldn’t be a problem I haven’t seen Pretty Woman.
I’m dubious that you can apply a concept like random chance to movies. Movies are made and cast deliberately. You made some good points about the issue of setting, but I’m skeptical of this one.
Another way to look at is: can you imagine “God” in Bruce Almighty being played by, I dunno, James Cromwell or Ian McKellan? Audiences would have found an older white “God” to be stuffy, conventional and even a little oppressive. So Morgan Freeman is the “safe” choice for a wise but different-enough-to-be-nonthreatening counsellor or mentor.
If you wanna run with this trope, perhaps part of the Mystical Negro’s attraction is his “otherness:” he imparts his wisdom and then goes home rather than moving in with you.
Nice line about “not moving in with you.”
I didn’t pay close attention while watching “Bruce Almighty”, but do remember thinking that the set-up was very close to the “Oh God!” movies featuring George Burns as God.
A bit of physical uniqueness does make a mystically wise character more acceptable. But when the uniqueness is just, “African Heritage” it feels a bit greasy.
George Burns worked because he was short, bespectacaled, an undisguised celebrity, and aggressively unexceptional.
As noted above, Stephen King uses the “magic negro” at least three times (The Stand, The Green Mile, and The Shining.) I’d say that’s above random chance for that author at least. (Unless you can find an awful lot of white magical mentors in his work.)
[quote=“Spoke, post:88, topic:553830”]
Without a data set to work with, it’s easy to write King and Freeman off as statistical outliers, as they don’t support my view of the issue. 
There’s a lot I can’t remember about those books/movies and I haven’t read Green Mile or The Shining.
In The Stand, the elder black lady was magical, but I don’t remember her as being inappropriately obsessed with helping the white characters. She was above them and they rallied around her. I think.
In the Green Mile was the huge prisoner the Magic Negro or was there someone else? He was mystical, but was he oddly infatuated with helping a white protagonist? Not that I remember. And I don’t recall him being “wise” or providing wisdom.
The black guy in The Shining (movie) did travel through a blizzard to help a white family and he had supernatural powers, but…
The white kid had the same powers, and the black guy didn’t do much except provide a minute of exposition and then bring the snow mobiles to let the wife and kid escape. He did not offer much guidance or wisdom.
All three characters have magical powers, but I’m not sure they qualify as the Magical Negroes the article in the OP talks about.
Did King have other benevolent, non-leading, characters with supernatural powers? Characters that weren’t black? I don’t know.
The Onion’s AV Club did an Inventory article about this a while back: 13 Movies Featuring Magical Black Men.
Awesome work, as usual. Their picks:
The Green Mile, 1999
Unleashed, 2005
The Legend of Bagger Vance, 2000
Hitch, 2005
Bruce Almighty, 2003
Forrest Gump, 1994
Dogma, 1999
The Matrix, 1999
In America, 2002
Big Momma’s House, 2006
Song of the South, 1946
Silver Streak, 1976
Kentucky Fried Movie, 1977
For a character to be a Magical Negro it doesn’t need to be that the writers or casting directors put him in there because he’s black. Rather, it needs to be that the finished product works the way it does because he’s black. The message communicated requires that character to be black.
Tom Cullen in THE STAND, John Coffey in THE GREEN MILE (a twofer- black & mentally-challenged- hence nigh Divine), and Dudley (is that his name?) in DREAMCATCHER (again a twofer- a child & mentally-challenged). If Stephen King ever introduces as a character a black mentally-challenged child- that character will be God Almighty.
This also happens in Desperation, the small white kid has magical powers. *Carrie *is a teenage white girl with powers, Dead zone is an adult white guy with powers, *Firestarter *is a white girl with powers plus a white adult with powers. *Green Mile *had probably the BEST example of the black guy with powers that helps a white protagonist (Tom Hank’s character). Hearts in Atlantis I believe had an old white guy with powers. *Dreamcatcher *was the MR child with powers.
Those are just glancing through his list and trying to recall people with supernatural abilities. I think with an author that works with that sort of thing, you’re going to have higher than average rates of “magical anythings” in general, but 3 significant magical negroes throughout his works… I’m not sure if I would call that higher than average results considering how many of his works contain supernatural forces.
The two best examples though probably are Abigail white in “the Stand” and John Coffey in “The Green Mile”.
[quote=“FriarTed, post:93, topic:553830”]
I nearly spewed coffee as for just a moment I thought you were suggesting Michael Clarke Duncan in this getup. Be careful with your capitalization!
