Mighty Whitey & The Magical Negro

Race representation has been a major issue in film and television since before film and television. Minstrel shows foreshadowed the ongoing racial divide in American cinema. Still today there exists cinema and black cinema. With a severe lack of representation in popular television, blacks have turned to their own separate media. With Black Entertainment Television (BET) and Tyler Perry movies, we see a furthering divide in cinema. Although diversity is increasing in our media, movie culture persists to remain divided.

Blacks and whites rarely appear as equals in film, and it is vital we learn how to challenge race representation in film. As Bell Hooks explains in “The Oppositional Gaze:”When most black people in the United States first had the opportunity to look at film and television, they did so fully aware that mass media was a system of knowledge and power reproducing and maintaining white supremacy. To stare at the television, or mainstream movies, to engage its images, was to engage its negation of black representation. It was the oppositional black gaze that responded to these looking relations by developing independent black cinema.

In an industry dominated by white men (what a shocker), black men and women have been stereotyped, exoticized, and eaten alive (in the Bell Hooks “Eating the Other” sort of way). For the majority of film history, blacks have been secondary characters meant to add something different or comical to an otherwise ordinary, all-white cast. More specifically, film has created a black stock character known as “the magical negro.”

“The magical negro” is a black character who appears in a story to help one or more white characters get in touch with their feelings or nature, learn how to truly love, or to become more spiritual. This stock character is often literally magic, such as Michael Clarke Duncan’s character in The Green Mile. Even when the character does not possess actual magical qualities, the character does have a more mystical understanding of the world or relationships that the white characters do not possess until “the magical negro” teaches it to them.

Not only is white supremacy perpetuated in film through the degradation of black characters, but film also idolizes white characters. In direct contrast to “the magical negro” is “the mighty whitey.” The mighty whitey is the protagonist of the story (unlike the magical negro, who is a supporting character). He is an intelligent white man (sometimes woman) who helps a black character rise out of poverty, get an education, otherwise succeed in white society. Essentially, the mighty whitey civilizes black people. This idea communicated in films illustrates a colonial attitude that perpetuates the idea the white American is the most evolved, progressive, and civilized of all people and that they live “the right way” or “the best way.”

Both the magical negro and the mighty whitey are stock characters that appear in films made within a film industry dominated by white males. What follows is an examination of popular films and their use of these stock characters. Although they may have once appeared as moving stories in which people of different races or backgrounds come together in harmony, upon further examination they reveal racist stereotypes that perpetuate the idea that blacks and whites are fundamentally different and that the only way we can interact with one another is to teach each other about that which makes us different.

Radio

Football teams, they seem so tough and full of bull-headed jocks right? Who knew that one white high school football coach could have such an amazing impact on a special needs person? The 2003 movie Radio, produced by Mike Tollin, is based on a true story of a black special needs man named James Robert Kennedy. He eventually earns the nickname “Radio” by Hanna High School’s head football coach, Coach Jones. This movie shows how people were looked down upon in history and are continued to be looked down upon today because they are not the typical race or image that us humans perceive as normal. Society tends to think of an average person as being white and attractive. The movie, Paris is Burning, interviews several gay black men that want to be beautiful women. They idolized stunning white women of their era such as Marilyn Monroe because that is who everyone wanted to be because she was viewed as attractive and normal. The men were often picked on and called names such as “fag” usually by white, straight men because they dressed like women and competed with each other in balls to see who was the best looking one. Because Radio was black and had a disability, he was also not looked at as anyone who deserved any attention because he was not classified as attractive or regular by society. He was often picked on, just like the “women” from Paris is Burning and harassed for not being the standard person who was respected based off of physical appearance and stereotypical actions that society believes a male should portray.

Coach Jones (on the right), is pictured “saving” Radio (on the left).In the movie Radio, Coach Jones, the “white savior,” took Radio under his wing and saved him from harassment by making him a part of the team and inviting him to help with little side jobs and such during the team’s practices. Coach Jones wanted to be the savior and show everyone that just because he is not white and is mentally impaired, he is still human and doesn’t deserve to be harassed for his looks and actions that he has no control over. Radio’s mom was not thrilled with the idea of Coach Jones trying to befriend Radio because she was so used to society thinking that because he was special needs and black that he should not be treated as a “normal” human being. The message that the movie Radio gives to its audience is that there is usually a white person who

somehow either teaches or learns something from the one “outcast”, meaning the only person of a different race or culture.

People also have the wrong perspective of those who have special needs. They often believe that they are the happiest people ever and that it does not take much to make them happy. The actor who played Radio used specific actions to make himself look like he is very happy with hardly anything. For example, Coach Jones gave Radio a bunch of presents for Christmas and he put them in his shopping cart that he always pushed around his hometown and he was later accused by a police officer for stealing the gifts and was forced to give them away to other people. The joy that was brought to Radio when he saw other people enjoying the gifts that he gave them is indescribable. Once again this shows how society is under the impression that all people with disabilities are extremely happy and do not need much to keep them happy. Hollywood used an able-bodied man to portray a special needs person by being as happy and shy as he could possibly be, which in reality is not how all special needs people actually are (picture shown below). Hollywood often gives their audience the wrong impression about people’s race, they way they represent a group, and their culture and the 2003 movie, Radio, is a perfect example of these misconceptions.

Pictured above is Radio acting out of the norms that society has and he is pictured to look like the happiest man alive, with only a shopping cart and a tree branch.

Pictured above is Radio being arrested because the police officer thought that he stole the presents that he was given by Coach Jones on Christmas because of his race and disability.

Avatar

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James Cameron’s Avatar came out in 2009, and currently sits as the third highest grossing film of all time. It features a clan called the Na’vi on another planet called Pandora, who are large blue humanoid creatures in danger of losing their culture, their land, and their freedom. Their planet has been invaded by humans who are exploiting their planet for its natural resources, pushing the Na’vi out of their homes. Luckily for the Na’vi, Jake Sully arrives, ready to save the day. Jake is a white man who literally puts himself into the body of a Na’vi, assimilates into their culture, and ends up saving their most important religious structure.

While seated in a realm of fantasy, this film carries some clear allegories and implications that can be linked directly to our world. The film has garnered much criticism for being so alike the story of Pocahontas – at least, the version that Disney told. Jake Sully is a John Smith character – he is a part of the white invaders who are threatening to destroy the native people, but manages to integrate himself into the native people and save the day.

Sully stays true to the classic trope of the white savior in this respect. After little trouble, he is taken into the Na’vi culture with open arms, and takes part in some of their important rites of passage. He learns to ride their ‘dragon-like’ creatures, speaks their language, and ends up marrying the chief’s daughter. Sully eventually surpasses the skills of the natives, taming and riding a legendary beast that only a few people in the culture’s history have been able to do. Finally, he becomes the champion of the Na’vi people and leads them into battle to defeat the invading humans.

This heroic outcome has very problematic real world implications. The first of these is the picture it paints of the native population that can be so easily compared to the

Native American population. Avatar and similar movies portray people of color (even if that color is blue) as helpless, weak, and too consumed by their old ways to defend themselves. They need someone to help them. But not just anyone – they need the white savior, who is the only one who is able to teach them how to overcome their primitive ways and rise up against their oppression. Films of this kind portray the white savior as the only one who can help these people from their plight when they couldn’t do it themselves. They erase the stories of people of color who are helping themselves and their communities.

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Another problematic aspect of the film is less obvious, but no less dangerous. The film romanticizes, dehumanizes, and eroticizes the culture of the native people of Pandora. It represents the people of Pandora as hapless savages, and their culture as primitive and nostalgic – almost quaint. Jake Sully takes part in their culture from an outside perspective – consuming it from a safe distance (his real body is safe on the human ship most of the movie) while still reaping the benefits. Bell Hooks in her essay “Eating the Other” comments on this in a profound way:

The point is to be changed by this convergence of pleasure and Otherness. One dares – acts – on the assumption that the exploration into the world of difference, into the body of the Other, will provide a greater, more intense pleasure than any that exists in the ordinary world of one’s familiar racial group. And even though the conviction is that the familiar world will remain intact even as one ventures outside it, the hope is that they will reenter that world no longer the same.

Jake enters the world of Pandora having lost his sense of identity, hoping to find something in this new world that he couldn’t find in his own. By experiencing this Other he is able to gain the pleasure of their culture, to let it act upon him, and be changed by it.

Jake Sully appropriates Na’vi culture seamlessly, makes it his own, and does things with it that the natives could never have done for themselves. As a white savior, Jake Sully takes the cake.

The Blind Side

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In movies, Hollywood, or cinema, there are typically four kinds of casts: an all-white cast, an all-black cast, movies with a white “savior,” and movies with a “magical-negro” character. I’m going to focus on the award winning film, The Blind Side, starring Sandra Bullock and Quinton Aaron. The movie is about an unfortunate, lower-class black male who comes from a broken home. He doesn’t have much of a support system from his biological family. He discovers that he has a God-given talent for the sport of football, but isn’t very educated. The “white savior,” who is Sandra Bullock’s character, comes along and takes him under her wing. She gets him into great football programs and introduces him to tutors in preparation for college. Ultimately, she helps him get a full scholarship to Ole Miss to play football. He later has a tremendous career in the NFL. In class, we talked about the impact race has on media. This film is portraying to the audience that all black people are like Quinton Aaron and live that stereotypical lifestyle. It also portrays that all white people are like Sandra Bullock’s character and her family, live a structured, put-together lifestyle. I would say the film falls under the heuristic category. It refers to experienced-based techniques for learning. In this case, it refers to the different stereotypes of races to create meaning and understanding.

In relation to representation, typically in movies like this, black people are often represented as the underachievers or those who come from low-income families and from ghettos. For example, in The Blind Side, one of the black characters (Quinton Aaron’s mother) is represented as a drug addict. These representations of the black race are, too, based off of realistic labels. Bell Hooks stated that black women are viewed as objects of abuse, ridicule, etc., and Aaron Quinton’s mother holds strong to this label. To society, this is what black women represent. When you think of a black woman, most people would probably think single-parent, low-income, or even poor, and a product of her environment, which people usually think is some sort of place in urban America. In the movie Paris is Burning, the drag queens idolized white women because these are who everyone looked up to and aspired to be in life. Like Sandra Bullock, the women that these men idolized were very fortunate, wealthy, and dominant in America. In this movie, Aaron Quinton teaches the structured, strict, not so tightly-knit white family how to loosen up and how to enjoy and love each other. This is the culture that he offers them by being around and engaging with each of them. He changes the entire culture of their family. Granted, they had the money and wealth, but they didn’t really have the love that a family should have.

The Princess and the Frog

Hollywood films and cinema have several tropes that deal with race, representation, and culture, many of them that further perpetuate stereotypes about different racial and ethnic groups of people. For this one, we are looking at the “magical negro” and the “white savior” tropes that appear in movies with black characters.

In 2009, Disney made history by introducing Princess Tiana, the first black princess, in the film The Princess and the Frog. This film takes a twist on the “magical negro trope” and the “white savior” trope. We also see in this film Disney’s progressive take on contemporary race, representation, and culture issues.

The story is about a hard-working young woman named Tiana who lives in New Orleans. She dreams of opening up her own restaurant and selling her famous gumbo. She ends up kissing a frog who was cursed – a prince. Prince Naveen was disinherited and wanted to be rich again. His ethnicity is rather ambiguous and seems to just represent a multicultural person. Naveen’s goal was to kiss Charlotte – Tiana’s white best friend whose father is rich – and marry her to become wealthy again. Instead he kisses Tiana and turns her into a frog. They get lost and go on a search to find Mama Odie who would help them turn back into humans.

Disney not only takes on the magical negro trope with the Mama Odie character, but it simultaneously implements to culture of New Orleans with her character. Mama Odie who is described by Wikipedia as “an ancient and good hearted voodoo priestess.” The twist on this caricature is that Mama Odie doesn’t help a white person like the trope suggests. Instead, she helps two people of color. The woman becomes relevant to culture because her character isn’t just magic like the trope implies, but she also possesses the voodoo aspect that New Orleans is famous for. The woman is a “voodoo priestess,” much like New Orleans famous voodoo practitioner Marie Catherine Laveau – a woman famous for her voodoo practicing and magical capabilities.

The white savior moment was supposed to happen when Charlotte kissed the frog that was Prince Naveen, but she runs out of time and it doesn’t work. What is interesting is that we don’t see Charlotte for most of the movie – making it seem as though her only goal was to do the saving, fitting into the white savior ideal.

This film is also culturally relevant because of time-frame of when it comes out – four years after Hurricane Katrina. After Hurricane Katrina, many people were misplaced and live in poverty. In the movie it is clear that Tiana is part of the working class group

of individuals, working two jobs to support her dreams, and her mother works for Charlotte. The film focuses not just on the magic of kissing the prince and living happily ever after, but it also appeals to a group of individuals. The movie, made after President Obama is elected, appeals to young people of color – giving the “hope” and belief that if you work hard and find the right person to marry, your dreams can come true, too.