Discussion Main / MagicalNegro

First, let's be clear on what we mean by old and new. From my understanding, the term got popularized by Spike Lee in the 1990s, and even more following David Ehrenstein applying the term to Obama in the aughts.

Second, while I'm sure there are much older examples of this trope (though these often blend with other tropes, such as Noble Savage and Happy Slave), its prevalence is somewhat of a modern phenomenon (say 1980s forward) because it replaced some of the more overt racist stereotypes by which black characters were often depicted previously. It was in part an attempt to move away from depictions of blacks as criminals, which used to be their most frequent depiction on screen, and present them in a more positive light. In other words, its modern prevalence is somewhat of a misguided attempt to defeat racism, and I think that's part of what's behind the modern critique of the trope, even if it does have earlier antecedents.

I see, I guess I was thrown off by the archaic word choice. I still doubt that all the characters are due to trying to create positive black characters. Some are the result of colour blind casting. In other cases, such as the Family Man, the casting choice allows the film to comment on prejudice.

Anyway, it seems that any character that is black and helps a white guy in any form is seen as a magical negro. Even though all of Spike Lee's examples dealt with characters that actually had a mystical element to them.

If the most important feature is lacking their own agency or internal motivation, then a lot of the examples don't fit. I think the definition needs to be more clear as well as narrowed.

I agree that many people—not necessarily on TV Tropes—often misuse the term and apply it to examples that don't really fit. I see your message from a decade ago questioning the inclusion of Red from Shawshank Redemption. That seems to have been removed from TV Tropes (I wasn't aware it ever was included), but I remember seeing a Cracked article using it as an example, and I strongly disagreed—in fact I posted a comment to Cracked at the time explaining why I thought it was a misunderstanding of both the character in that particular work, and the term. (It's also worth noting that in the original Stephen King novella, Red isn't even described as a black man. They just happened to cast Morgan Freeman in the role after passing over several white actors.) There's a conversation to be had about the history of having white actors as the leads and black actors in supporting roles—but being in a supporting role or second-fiddle to the white character doesn't automatically make the black character a Magical Negro.

In sum, I haven't really looked over the TV Tropes article to see whether the definition is being used overly broadly. But I do still maintain that it's a concept that has a strict definition, and it's something that started to become much more common in film in about the past 40-50 years or so.

You make a good point about supporting characters. I think the article as written is confusing because the examples don't fit the the description. The article says that they usually wear a clean cut white suit and dispense folk wisdom. Morgan Freeman wears a white suit (sometimes) as God, but doesn't dispense folk wisdom. Is there an actual example that isn't parody where a character says "I don't know about x, but you gotta y"?

In Spike Lee's lecture he focused on movies that actually had characters with mystical powers, most of them not actually being human, although their actual nature is not explained. They are most importantly spiritual guides. I think Bagger Vance, being a major character is very different than an old janitor whose only scene is to give folksy advice to the protagonist, even if they have some similarities.

The article also mentions the selflessness and sacrifice on behalf of the MN. I haven't found the example of where the character actually dies helping the protagonist. This does have a YMMV aspect to it, because does a paid servant serving his employee count as selfless? Does a janitor only taking only a minute of his time to say a few words of encouragement to a student count?

Agreed. He is pretty passive, and he does "help" that white girl, but is help for his fellow slaves is more significant.

I also wonder how Red from Shawshank Redemption fits in. Does he give the main character any folksy advice? In a sense, Andy is the mystical one who teaches Red and then disappears...

I absolutely agree. This trope is being invoked for half of the afro-american characters who are noticeably clever, helpful or otherwise impressive. To take up your example: Morgan Freeman in the Batman Begins movies is highly intelligent, helpful and an employee of Bruce Wayne, which or course makes Wayne his "master" (insert head-desking here). But pretty much everyone in that movie is very exceptional. Scarecrow is super-intelligent and mixes up a "magical" poison which causes character-specific hallucinations. Clearly a hint towards voodoo! Magical negro! Oh wait, wrong ethnicity. But there's this magical mentor full of ancient wisdom showing confused Bruce Wayne a path and basically starting his career as Batman! Magical neg... oh wait, no. The butler! He even calls Bruce Wayne "master"! No, foiled again.

The trope page looks as if every really impressive, cool afro-american character immediately gets classified as this. What does that leave? Afro-americans can be either delivery men or other minor characters (which is of course racist) or scientists, fighters, good friends, which is racist too because it's this trope?

You're not getting it. The "Mystical Negro" trope doesn't apply when a highly skilled or talented Black character does anything at all that helps a white character improve his performance or be a better person. The "Mystical Negro" (1) really does have supernatural powers OR superhuman levels of humility, patience, and generosity, but he focuses them on helping the white main character only, and (2) often does so to his own detriment (up to and including his own death). The main question that he raises in your mind is "If he could do all of this, why didn't he help himself, or help other black people deal with Jim Crow/slavery/racism?!" So Morgan Freeman's character in the "Batman Begins" series doesn't fit this mold at all, nor would a black Gandalf. Who does? Bagger Vance. John Coffey ("The Green Mile"). Noah Cullen ("The Defiant Ones"). Dick Hallorann in The Shining (the book, not the movie). The list goes on. But the people you've named aren't on it, nor is this trope meant to somehow demean talented or skilled Black characters. Somehow you've gotten it twisted.

Reverse racism!? There is no such thing as reverse racism. Are you joking?

"Really, just Morgan Freeman. If you're looking for a pure-hearted mentor chock-full of folksy wisdom, who may or may not have magical powers, you can't do much better".

This entry should be removed entirely. Which part of "no real life examples, please" did the poster NOT understand? Not to mention the the fact that some of Mr. Freeman's recent remarks might cause one to question his suitability for inclusion even if real life examples were permitted.

That's not a real life example. What it's saying is "If you want a Magical Negro in you movie, hire Morgan Freeman, that's his speciality".

The typical MN pops up in Act 2, confers wisdom to white yuppies who are at wits' end, and then buggers off before Act 3 starts.

If the MN gets screen time during Acts 1 and 3, he or she may not be a genuine MN - unless these are token scenes!

What about him? I don't know the character.

Mr Popo is a character from the various Dragon Ball series. He is a Blackface genii and assistant deity to Kami. Mr. Popo is an extremely skilled martial artist who teaches a number of the characters throughout the series.

Even though Mr. Popo is black, I would say he fits more in the Magical Asian trope than the Magical Black Person trope. Most of his focus is on martial arts and martial arts training. It is not until later in the Dragon Ball Z series that Mr. Popo has any Magical Black Person moments, so he might straddle the line a bit. When it comes to tropes such as these, the role a character plays in a story is just as important as their race or ethnicity (otherwise there would not be so many white Magical Black People listed in the examples on this page).

Yeah. Pulled:

• Zecora from My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic hovers somewhere between playing this straight and subverting it. Technically, she's a zebra, but they're a Fantasy Counterpart Culture for Africa. While everypony is incredibly suspicious of her due to not knowing what she is (evidently, the educational system of Equestria is not very good) in a world with pony-like creatures such as windigoes and creatures capable of assuming pony-form like changelings which are both dangerous emotional parasites and the belief that she's an "evil enchantress", it's discovered that she's actually a friendly herbalist, and from then on she's happy to assist the mane characters. After learning that she is a zebra (Zecora means Zebra) and getting to know her, fear and hostility rapidly evaporate. If there's a problem that needs a magical solution, she's generally got an answer, and also serves largely to warn and advise the protagonists, particularly Twilight Sparkle. Slightly subverted in that there are some problems, like parasprites, even she knows nothing about, and lampshaded when Applejack wonders if she has a "zebra sense" that lets her know when there's problems to be solved.

I think this image from the episode "Magical Dual" as well as Zecora's role within said episode pretty much puts sold on to the idea of Zecora as the show's Magical Negro. The art style of her cutiemark and the neck stretching rings are all clearly African influenced. Additionally, Zecora is voiced by a black voice actor - http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0187764/ - who uses an accent typically associated with people from Africa.

And pretty much almost everything about her character - http://mlp.wikia.com/wiki/Zecora#Development_and_design - is African inspired.

No.

Zecora is magical, and she may be African-inspired, but she is not a Magical Negro. The Magical Negro trope is a character whose sole source of magicalness and goodness is derived from an alleged ethnic connection to spirituality.

Zecora, on the other hand, is a shaman (Lauren Faust's original name for her), an African wizard trained in magic and potions. Her magical qualities come from diligent hard work, study, and meditation, not her ethnicity. And since she is a wizard, her willingness to help the heroes is nothing more than a stock mentor trait.

Training, magical or not, it irrelevant to the trope. Just because a Magical Black Person has had training does not suddenly make them not a Magical Black Person. Training in magical practices simply gives an author or writer a reason to have a character show up at specific time to assist with specific tasks. There are a number of trained and educated characters listed in the examples who use their specific skills and training to assist the more central characters. (And in fact a person does not even have to be a person of color to fulfill this trope, just look at the number of white characters listed in the examples). The description of the trope itself references specifically trained magical and spiritual practices as being part of the trope:

Bonus points if this character is a priest of Vodoun.

The point of the trope is not that a person is magical simply because they are a person of color (that’s the of Magic Native American trope). The point of the trope is:

1) a person with a minority identity, 2) who is not a main character in the story line or series, 3) uses their folksy magic, skills, knowledge, and/or wisdom to 4) support the protagonists of the story in the protagonists endeavors rather than .

Zecora fulfills all the requirements for this trope:

She is of a non-dominant racial identity, in the same way other fantasy settings refer elves, dwarves, orcs, and halflings as races. In the case of MLP:Fi M uses ponies as the normative "racial" identity, with Bison, Cows, Donkeys, and Zebras as examples of other fantasy races . In the case of Zecora, her appearance, residence, and style of speech are designed to reference black African culture and spirituality. The fact that characters have to overcome their initial fear and prejudice against Zecora is just an example of the authors using the Fantastic Racism. In fact, the Bridle Gossip episode is referenced in the Western Animation page for Fantasy Racism (which also supports the argument that in MLP:Fi M the creators are using different species as references to different races).

She is a background character in the series with no true agency of her own. She does not go on adventures.

She uses her wisdom, knowledge, and skills almost exclusively in support of the more prominent characters. For the most part, she never actually fixes the big problems, but instead supplies the main characters with the knowledge they need to do so. There are over a half dozen episodes in which Zecora does this, with Magic Duel, where Zecora teaches Twilight Sparkle the magic needed to best Trixie, being the most blatant examples of Zecora playing Magical Black Person.

At this point it looks like people are just splitting hairs.

I am not seeing how it's not played straight.