The Magical Negro (also magic Negro or mystical Negro, with varying capitalization) is a trope in American cinema, television, and literature. In the cinema of the United States, the Magical Negro is a supporting stock character who comes to the aid of the (usually white) protagonists in a film. Magical Negro characters, often possessing special insight or mystical powers, have long been a tradition in American fiction. The old-fashioned word "Negro" is used to imply that a "magical Black character" who devotes himself to selflessly helping whites is a throwback to racist stereotypes such as the "Sambo" or "noble savage". The trope is however not an American invention, it existed over a millenia during Tang dynasty, as seen on romance such as Kunlun nu. The term was popularized in 2001 by film director Spike Lee during a lecture tour of college campuses, in which he expressed his dismay that Hollywood continued to employ this premise. He specially noted the films The Green Mile and The Legend of Bagger Vance, which featured "super-duper magical Negro" characters.
Usage
Fiction and film
The Magical Negro is a trope in cinema, television, and literature: the character is typically, but not always, "in some way outwardly or inwardly disabled, either by discrimination, disability or social constraint". The "Negro" is often a janitor or prisoner. The character often has no past but simply appears one day to help the white protagonist. They usually have some sort of magical power, "rather vaguely defined but not the sort of thing one typically encounters." The character is patient and wise, often dispensing various words of wisdom, and is "closer to the earth". The character will also do almost anything, including sacrificing themselves, to save the white protagonist, as exemplified in The Defiant Ones, in which Sidney Poitier plays the prototypical Magical Negro.
Film critic Matt Zoller Seitz stated that the trope "takes a subject that some white folks find unpleasant or even troubling to ponder (imagining that resentful black people's status in a country that, 50 years after the start of the modern civil rights struggle, is still run by, and mostly for, whites) and turns it into a source of gentle reassurance". Film reviewer Audrey Colombe argues that the trope has been perpetuated by the overwhelmingly White blockbuster film industry. Film director and writer Spike Lee said in 2001 that the White-dominated film industry is "still doing the same old thing ... recycling the noble savage and the happy slave". Racism historians Francisco Bethencourt and John Beusterien trace the trope to late fifteenth century and early sixteenth century Spanish comedias de negros and their depiction of black "savior soldiers", who reinforce the stereotype of the supposed greater physical strength of Africans. These include El prodigio de Etiopía and El negro del mejor amo by Lope de Vega and El valiente negro en Flandes by Andrés de Claramonte. Christopher John Farley, referring to the magical Negro as "Magical African American Friends" (MAAFs), says they are rooted in screenwriters' ignorance of African Americans:
MAAFs exist because most Hollywood screenwriters don't know much about black people other than what they hear on records by white hip-hop star Eminem. So instead of getting life histories or love interests, black characters get magical powers. The Magical Negro stereotype serves as a plot device to help the white protagonist get out of trouble, typically through helping the white character recognize his own faults and overcome them and teaching him to be a better person. Although the character may have magical powers, the "magic is ostensibly directed toward helping and enlightening a white male character". An article in a 2009 edition of the journal Social Problems stated the Magical Negro was an expression of racial profiling within the United States:
These powers are used to save and transform disheveled, uncultured, lost, or broken whites (almost exclusively white men) into competent, successful, and content people within the context of the American myth of redemption and salvation. It is this feature of the Magical Negro that some people find most troubling. Although from a certain perspective the character may seem to be showing blacks in a positive light, the character is still ultimately subordinate to whites. He or she is also regarded as an exception, allowing white America to like individual black people but not black culture. In 2001, Spike Lee used the term in a series of talks on college campuses to criticize the stereotypical, unreal roles created for black men in films that were recent at that time, naming The Family Man (2000), What Dreams May Come (1998), The Legend of Bagger Vance (2000), and The Green Mile (1999) as examples. Talking about the time and place in which Bagger Vance is set, he said:
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