Some Hollywood story archetypes are pathological. We should grow out of them.
In Hollywood, there is an archetype called a “magical negro” story. If that term offends, I apologize. I didn’t make it up. It’s a well-worn trope in which some wise and kind black person appears in a struggling white person’s life and helps the person through some kind of personal struggle or defect of character.
It’s such a well-known (and, I would assume, despised) archetype that a movie just came out that pokes fun at the practice. It’s called The American Society of Magical Negroes. I kid you not.
The movie was written and directed by Kobi Libii and tells the tale of a young man who joins this clandestine society and proceeds to learn the ways of the transformational, white-person-assisting, magical negro.
I haven’t seen this film yet — and I may not. From the trailer, it seems more than a little ham-handed. I stumbled across it because I wanted to write about the phenomenon, which is very real, very fascinating, and more than a little disturbing.
You’ve all seen at least a few of the movies I’m talking about. The Green Mile is one. The Legend of Bagger Vance is another. The trope also appears in The Shining, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Ghost, The Hudsucker Proxy, Searching for Bobby Fischer, The Shawshank Redemption, American History X, and many many others.
This phenomenon, this practice, this trope, isn’t limited to blacks. In fact, it stems from a much older concept called “the noble savage”, who, being “closer to the earth” or something, is supposed to possess a deep wisdom that is hidden to “the rest of us”.
The point is for the protagonist (usually white) to stumble across some member of a wise and noble and innocent clan/tribe/species who passes along some deep wisdom and helps the person improve his life in some substantive way.
Examples of this trope that don’t focus exclusively on black people are Dances with Wolves, Pocahontas, Avatar, Enemy Mine, The Last Samurai, and a ton more westerns and sci-fi movies.
I assume there is some kind of place for an archetype of this kind when the “magical” being is truly alien. Perhaps a magical faery or a member of another species from a far-away place. But what on earth does it mean to make a Native American or a black person a “magical” font of wisdom, morality, or serenity?
I suspect it’s a reverberation of white guilt resounding from colonialism and slavery. I can understand feeling some shame about the behavior of your ancestors, I suppose. But good grief, people, that doesn’t make black people into magical saviors who can fix your personal deficiencies.
Here’s an important truth and we must all learn it. Black people are just… people. None are magic. Perpetuating these dumb tropes is insulting and counterproductive to us all living together in peace and prosperity.
Moving forward, let’s tell deeper and more truthful tales, shall we?
Naturally,
Adam
PS: Like what you get from Haman Nature? There’s no better way to show it than buying us a coffee or two or a dozen. We’d really appreciate it!
I always saw this as a form of supremacy.
We humans are tragically flawed, fallen creatures, yearning to redeem our original sin. But one can only fall from a high place, a place to which our innocent pets and babies have not ascended. So we pat them on the head and take care of them, manage their lives for them, keep them safe... and when they blurt out something adorably profound, we marvel at how one so simple could be so wise. We may even yearn to be more like them, recover some of the freshness we remember from our youth--but we still don't give them the car keys, let them have all their inheritance, or stay out past curfew. These unsullied creatures are incapable of sin, by definition. A crime of hate by us would be an act of mere instinct if they were to do or say the same. Only we creatures at the pinnacle of moral complexity, with the agency to hate and harm, can be guilty of such things. It is a hard Burden, but we soldier on, bearing it with all the heroism we can muster (You're welcome!).
Imagine a grown human treating other grown humans this way. That would be a mark of supremacy indeed!