As Seen in:
The Green Mile, The Legend of Bagger Vance, The Shawshank Redemption, Bruce Almighty, Song of the South
The Magic Negro is a simple, humble person. Perhaps he is a janitor, or a farmer, and he doesn't know anything about those fancy colleges or them modern sciences, but what he knows, he knows from the heart, and that makes it truer than any of your whitey statistics, facts or pie charts.
He can have actual magical powers (Michael Clarke Duncan in The Green Mile) or simply possess an extraordinary level of earthly wisdom (Morgan Freeman in The Shawshank Redemption).
In all cases, the Magic Negro has zero ambitions of his own. His entire existence revolves around the lead white character, whom they help with their simple, rustic wisdom even if it costs them their lives. It's as if they have nothing better to do, which they don't, because the plot is about the white guy achieving his goals.
What's So Bad About That?
Notice that the Magical Negro's powers are not in any way due to his own work or training at all. He's no Batman. And why do they have to be prisoners or janitors again?
Also, notice that they're still acting as the servant here. They only exist in the story to help the lead white character. That's right, black youth of America: even if you discover you have powers that transcend time and space, you'll still wind up serving the white man. Hell, Morgan Freeman's God in Bruce Almighty basically alters the whole fucking universe, just so Jim Carrey can get his priorities straight.
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4 comments:
Wow. I was working on a script about this architect named Paul Williams http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Williams_%28architect%29 and my teacher kept moving the story towards how the white client gets all changed and learns not to be a racist. I hated that take on the story. Then my friend Lawrence http://www.lross.net/ said, "Yep, the Magic Negro." And I wouldn't write the story that way anymore.
Then the architect's granddaughter told me I couldn't write the story anyway, since someone else was doing it. Someone else is doing it is my biggest problem with screenwriting. I need to write a script about a stripper who tames zebras and then travels to outer space.
Oh yeah, "The Striped Horse and Stripper Got To Mars", someone is writing that.....
I was gonna say "Zelda vs. The Zargots."
I would totally see that movie.
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