Troperville
Help us survive. All donations are anonymous on the wiki and unacknowledged, as we don't wish to create a hierarchy among Tropers.
Editing
Tools
|
The film opens with yet another voiceover narration by Morgan Freeman, extolling the saintly virtues of a white person who deserves our reverence.
--Roger Ebert, reviewing The Bucket List.
Slick: Hey! Let's ask the magic negro! He is mystical and wise! Magic negro, tell us about women! Magic Negro: Bitches are straight up nuts, y'all. Slick: Aaahhhhh, wisdom.
The polar opposite of Acceptable Targets.
In order to show the world that minority characters are not bad people, one will step forward to help a "normal" person, with their pure heart and Closer To Earth wisdom. They are from a minority that is discriminated against, physically or mentally disabled, or social outcasts (drifters, the homeless, ex-cons). They step into the life of the central character (often white, American and racist) and, in some way, enrich the central character's life.
While this can work as a plea for tolerance, or simply An Aesop about not dismissing people just because they're different, it's all too easy to go too far and make them into an all-knowing Mary Sue or pseudo-narrator whose magical minority-powers save the day. It also tends to raise the question that if the Magical Negro is so powerful and intelligent, why he's never saving the day, himself, instead of helping the mainstream hero to get all the glory. Also, quite often he's just ditched off or even killed after he's fulfilled his purpose for the plot.
If the Magical Negro is from a society of Noble Savages, expect an Anvilicious Aesop about the failings of the society which protagonist comes from - which usually leads to the protagonist ' going native' and ending up better at everything than his Magical Negro mentor.
The reason the Magical Negro is problematic is because it is a moral and artistic shortcut, replacing a genuine moral message with a well-intentioned but patronizing homage to the special gifts of the meek.
Morgan Freeman is the ultimate Magical Negro actor. Referenced on The Daily Show approximately two minutes ago.
See also Whoopi Epiphany Speech and Black Best Friend.
Examples:
- Stephen King seems to have, shall we say, issues on this subject; many of his writings and their film adaptations include examples of this trope:
- The Green Mile: John Coffey, the gentle black man who calmly dies so as not to cause a fuss while using his powers to help those who guarded his cell.
- The Shining: Dick Hallorann, elderly black man with psychic powers.
- The Stand: Mother Abagail, elderly and black; Nick Andros, deaf-mute; Tom Cullen, mentally disabled.
- Dreamcatcher: Dudditz, saintly brain-damaged kid.
- The Shawshank Redemption: The film version of Red Redding, Andy's mentor, the wisest character and the only one to admit his guilt. In the original, his characterization and role are exactly the same...but he's white.
- The Talisman (and to a lesser extent the sequel Black House): Young, white hero Jack Sawyer is guided along his way by aging blues-man Lester "Speedy" Parker and his Territories twinner, Parkus.
- Iron Man: First Yinsen saves Tony Stark's life by performing heart surgery on him and hooking him up to a car battery. Then he dispenses home-spun wisdom about the importance of family and the need for Tony to re-think what his legacy should be. In the end, he sacrifices his life to save Tony, and with his dying breath he urges him not to waste his life. So touching!
- Three Wishes (the 1995 film, not the Reality TV show): Jack McCloud, a wandering tramp, is taken in by a kind family when he breaks his leg. The daughter thinks there is something different about him, and when he is fully accepted into the family, he offers her Three Wishes in return for her family's kindness.
- Dogma: Rufus is somewhat of a parody.
- According to Rufus, Jesus is the Ur-Magical Negro.
- Radio
 , the 2003 film
- The Legend Of Bagger Vance: Bagger Vance; notably, the film is very loosely based on the Bhagahvad-Gita, with Vance in the role of Krishna, so it's implied that Bagger Vance is actually God.
- The Defiant Ones: Sydney
- Ghost: Oda Mae Brown (Goldberg). Somewhat of a subversion as Goldberg spends most of the first half of the movie vehemently protesting her role as a Magical Negro.
- The Family Man: Cash
- The Hudsucker Proxy: Moses
- Life On Mars: Nelson
- Robin Hood (the current BBC version): Djaq, a female Arab who vies for time as the series' Mary Sue with Marian.
- The Matrix: The Oracle and Morpheus. Becomes a bit less blatant when you take into account that the first choice to play Neo was Will Smith.
- Parodied in a series of The Man Show sketches. A hapless white guy is presented with an opportunity to cheat on his wife, and as he agonizes over the decision, a self-identified Magical Negro appears to him, sings a song about "Listening to your penis's heart," and helps him find a way to rationalize the infidelity.
- Literary example: Uncle Tom, from Uncle Tom's Cabin, who refused to escape from being sold to protect two other slaves (Eliza and her son Harry) who *did* escape -- and served as a moral inspiration to his first new masters, the St. Clare family, before his final martyrdom at the hands of Simon Legree. And even then, he managed to convert Kimo and Sambo, the ones who actually beat him to death per Legree's orders. The trope is more evident in the stage adaptations of the original book, which suffered severe Adaptation Decay; the original Tom was intended as more of a Christ figure.
- This is one trope that The Simpsons did not subvert for time time, though they did have fun with it. Lisa Simpson had her own personal Magical Negro in the form of Bleedin' Gums Murphy.
- They finally did outright subvert this in the episode "Brawl in the Family", with the character Gabriel, an apparent magical negro (whom Homer thinks is an angel) and social worker assigned to help the family with their dysfunction. Homer expressly compares him to the aforementioned Bagger Vance example. Gabriel, confronted by Homer's long lost Vegas wife, gives up on the family, telling Homer, "Your seed should be wiped from the earth!"
- O Brother Where Art Thou? kicked off with a Magical Negro version of Teiresias from Homer's Odyssey.
- Inverted in Finding Forrester, when Sean Connery plays a mysterious white man with incredible writing ability that helps a clueless inner city youth (black) become a famous writer.
- In Bruce Almighty and Evan Almighty, Morgan Freeman plays God as a Magical Negro. (Morgan Freeman is almost always a Magical Negro.) When he's not, he's often a Technological Negro, which is at least a little better--white men still come to him to solve their problems, but at least they're ones where he can Techno Babble rather than having to sound philosophical.
- Scatman Crothers has played not one, but two magical negroes. In addition to Dick O'Halloran from The Shining, he also played the mysterious man from the "Kick the Can" segment of The Twilight Zone movie.
- The Biblical tale of the Good Samaritan, Samaritans being a perennial subject of racism in the holy land around that time, a detail which is really important to the message of the story but often forgotten. You know what that means.
- In the Doctor Who episode "Tomb of the Cybermen", one of the American researchers' assistants is a tall, mute black man, who at the end of the episode gives his life to save everyone from the Cybermen.
- The unnamed stewardess in Midnight, who sacrifices herself for the Doctor, would be another example.
- Movie example: In Ghostbusters Winston's simple, honest faith in the Bible allows him to spot the signs of impending Armageddon which the brainy white science guys (especially Egon) dismiss as a myth.
- Movie Subversion: In the 2007 Transformers movie, Bobby Bolivia tries to come across this way, but is a used-car salesman, and it fast becomes obvious that the whole thing is pretty much a put-on, and he has no idea that his "The car picks the driver" sales pitch actually has some truth to it in this case, and that if he did, he'd hold out for more money. Once the car starts acting up in destructive ways, he's pretty eager to get rid of it. Apparently, not only does the car pick the driver, but some cars won't take no for an answer.
- The Wrong Coast had one movie parody with the title Magical Black Men. Starring Morgan Freeman, Will Smith, Don Cheadle and Lawrence Fishbourn teaming up to solve the problems of white men in a moral crisis.
- A historical/film example which seems to play with or subvert the trope is the movie Something the Lord Made. It tells the story of a white surgeon aided in his cardiac research by a black assistant who is clearly the greater genius of the two. However, against type, the black assistant is not shown as being happy having another take credit for his work, but realizes this is the only way for him to do what he is interested in rather than being a janitor. There is also an implication that despite his goodness and supposed liberalism, the white doctor was essentially a plagiarist taking advantage of the racist system. Based on the true story of Vivien Thomas and Alfred Blalock, whose relationship the Wikipedia summarises as "complicated and contradictory".
- Shepherd Book from Firefly is arguably a subversion; though he appears to fit the trope at first glance, the other characters mostly ignore his advice and he is implied to not be what he appears.
- The premise of New Amsterdam is that a Mighty Whitey saves the life of a Magical Negro Native American and in return they use their magic to make him immortal. Naturally, it never occurs to them to make the members of their own tribe immortal, perhaps because the immortal magic only works on superior white genes. However, they only made him immortal until he found his true happiness, at which point he'd become mortal again. Since they're not around anymore, the implication is that they were already quite happy the way they were, making it less Magical Negro and more Noble Savage (recovering Magical Native American).
- Uncle Remus from Song Of The South pretty much epitomizes this trope.
- Tin Man has an interesting subversion: the Magical Negro is The Mole, at least until his Heel Face Turn.
- Sunny Bridges from Class of 3000 fits this trope like a glove.
- Played oddly straight by the black playwright August Wilson, many of whose Century Cycle plays include characters of this nature as parts of all-or-nearly-all-black casts (Stool Pigeon in King Hedley II, Elder Barlow in Radio Golf, Aunt Ester in Gem of the Ocean and offstage in other plays).
- Spoofed by Cracked.com, who pointed out some of the Unfortunate Implications of this trope in their list of Hollywood's 6 Favorite Offensive Stereotypes.
- In Meet Joe Black, only the Caribbean-accented Magical Negro in the hospital can see Joe for what he is. No explanation is given beyond the implication of Negro voodoo.
- Gabriel (Jay Laga'aia) in the episode "Spark From Heaven" from the Australian TV show Mc Leod's Daughters. In this case, The Magical Negro is disguised as the Angel Gabriel, from heaven. He gives advice to white females, the main characters. He is a healer, induces (romantic/erotic) dreams and visions, appears out of nowhere (in a burst of light, no less) and disappears into thin air. His parting trick seems to be to make it rain (after five white women do a nude raindance (!).
- Waiting... had Bishop, a ridiculously blatant execution of this trope. Seriously, he existed only to give complex advice to everyone's social and psychological problems, and did so with a calm, deep-voiced, wise demeanor.
- Elosha in Battlestar Galactica was a (Black) priestess whose whole purpose in existing as a character on the show, besides making dramatic prayer speech, was helping and guiding Roslin (White) to find her way as the prophesied Dying Leader who will find their way to Earth. Then Elosha got killed on Kobol. In Season 4 she reappears, more magical than ever, as a vision to Roslin telling her she needs to reconnect with people, starting by declaring her love to Adama.
- Rose on Lost consistently dispenses sensible, down-to-earth wisdom. She leads Charlie in prayer after his Disney Death. She mystically "knows" her husband is alive elsewhere on the island. In general, if she believes a character is good, she's correct.
- Morgan Freeman takes this role yet again in Wanted. Actually a subversion, since he's manipulating the Fraternity for profit, and all his talk about "destiny" and "duty" turns out to be a smokescrean.
- Nyarlatotep from H.P Lovecraft's writings often appears to humans in the form of a dark skinned man who is described as "looking like a pharoh". Being a cosmic horror wearing the form of man he probably counts as magical too. Notably in "Dream Quest to Unknown Kadath" near the end he plays the role typical to the Magical Negro: He appears to the protagonists and gives him advice, telling him that he has to talk to the gods of Dreamland and convince them to return to mt.Kadath. He then gives the protagonist a giant bird that will take him to the gods. However this turns out to be a subversion, as the protagonist finds out he has no controll over the bird and it's flying him straight to the daemon sultan Azatoth (Nyarlatotep's master and a really big cosmic horror). In the end Nyarlatotep just transport the gods back to Kadath with no effort at all.
- Lamont in American History X
- Subverted by Toots in Clone High. Toots is a blind jazz musician who tries to give sagely advice, and really, really fails.
- Subverted in Clerks The Animated Series. Dante and Randal add the black character Lando, after fake viewer mail urges them to add African Americans. They promptly ignore him for the rest of the series.
|
|
