Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

Listening to Rush today, he and his critics seemed unaware of the original coinage of the term "Magic Negro" as a category in film and literary criticism.

I think this essay may shed more light on what exactly David Ehrenstein meant when he used the term in his op-ed piece for the LA Times.

You might also want to take a look at the Wikipedia page on the term "Magical Negro."

1 posted on 05/07/2007 1:49:40 PM PDT by Dajjal
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | View Replies ]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first 1-2021-23 next last
To: Dajjal

Dave Chappelle had a magic negro skit on his show a few times.


2 posted on 05/07/2007 1:51:02 PM PDT by cripplecreek (Greed is NOT a conservative ideal.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies ]

To: Dajjal
They consider Fishburne a demigod in the Matrix films? He got his *ss kicked and had to be saved by Neo. They are digging kind of deep here.
3 posted on 05/07/2007 1:54:16 PM PDT by Abathar (Proudly catching hell for posting without reading the article since 2004)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies ]

To: Dajjal
It must really suck to be Aaron McGruder and see every moment of every day in only two colors, Black & White.

A Black man that truly wishes he had been born White.

4 posted on 05/07/2007 1:56:10 PM PDT by TexasCajun
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies ]

To: Dajjal

This is everywhere, you can only portray black people as the best examples of humanity.

Every commercial with white and blacks will NEVER portray the black person as the one who doesn’t know about the great product the commercial is about. The doofus in a commercial can NEVER be a black person.

Most commercials show happy, succesful, black families as end users, as if showing white families would be an old racist Ozzie & Harriett sterotype.

This black as conscience, all knower, truth seeker is in every movie, tv show, commercial, etc.

God forbid there is a parody about less than perfect black people like there was In Living Color and Chappelle.

If In Living Color or Chappelles show were made by white people there would have been lunatic hysterics instead of the typical complaining we got.

Look at “24” the black president is the even tempered messiah where the white VP is ready to nuke the world. His sister is the keeper of the constitution against the devils who want the Muslim internment camps.

Find me a corportate website or a billboard, print ad, etc. WITHOUT a black person or family even though they are 12% of the population.

The over representation and PANDERING is embarassing.


5 posted on 05/07/2007 2:02:55 PM PDT by word_warrior_bob (You can now see my amazing doggie and new puppy on my homepage!! Come say hello to Jake & Sonny)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies ]

To: Dajjal

I don’t see Obama as a “magical negro.”

The white urban liberals may want him to fit that role, and he might morph into it, but he isn’t one now, and clearly wasn’t one before the money men appealed to his vanity and stoked his presidency fantasy. Before, he made jokes about white politicians dancing at black churches which were very funny.


6 posted on 05/07/2007 2:05:14 PM PDT by Shermy
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies ]

To: Dajjal

“magic Negro,” a term that dates back to the late 1950s, around the time Sidney Poitier sacrifices himself to save Tony Curtis in “The Defiant Ones.”

Sidney Poitier was a Godsend in Lilies of the Field. Sent to build the “shapel”.


7 posted on 05/07/2007 2:06:24 PM PDT by moehoward
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies ]

To: Dajjal
Spike Lee, who satirizes the stereotype in 2000's "Bamboozled," goes even further and denounces the stereotype as the "super-duper magical Negro."

South Park played it up in the '05 season when Cartman, in his effort to rid South Park of hippies, required Chef to sacrifice himself.

"Die Hippy Die"

Chef, the Magic Negro, says farewell as he prepares to save the white people.

10 posted on 05/07/2007 2:10:46 PM PDT by TC Rider (The United States Constitution ? 1791. All Rights Reserved.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies ]

To: Dajjal
Aaron McGruder, creator of "The Boondocks" comic strip, didn't think so. He upbraided Latifah for her "less-than-dignified and racially demeaning performance." His character Huey e-mailed Latifah, informing her that the "Almighty Council of Blackness has unanimously voted to revoke your 'Queen' status."

Aaron McGruder is a walking impacted wisdom tooth.
12 posted on 05/07/2007 2:11:05 PM PDT by Xenalyte (Cheese . . . milk's leap toward immortality.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies ]

To: Dajjal
Damon Lee, producer of the hard-hitting satire "Undercover Brother,"

...now that was one funny movie.

13 posted on 05/07/2007 2:11:30 PM PDT by ghost of nixon
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies ]

To: Dajjal

This is all media hype and spin for diversity in an effort to make the coming anointing of Mr. B. Hussein Obama as the next POTUS with the guilt trip that only he will mend all our differences and unite the country liberals and conservatives holding hands signing Kum-Bayh-Yah.....


15 posted on 05/07/2007 2:12:38 PM PDT by tomnbeverly (Leaving Iraq to defend itself against Al-qaeda is like asking a fetus to protect against abortion.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies ]

To: Dajjal
Damon Lee, producer of the hard-hitting satire "Undercover Brother," has come up with a similarly intriguing hypothesis drawn from personal experience.

"Undercover Brother" is freakin' hilarious. I love that movie.


16 posted on 05/07/2007 2:14:38 PM PDT by Xenalyte (Cheese . . . milk's leap toward immortality.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies ]

To: All
In case people missed it:

Obama the 'Magic Negro'

18 posted on 05/07/2007 2:17:01 PM PDT by Smogger (It's the WOT Stupid)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies ]

To: Dajjal
There are such things as magic honkeys, too.

http://www.blackpeopleloveus.com/
19 posted on 05/07/2007 2:17:28 PM PDT by Xenalyte (Cheese . . . milk's leap toward immortality.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies ]

To: Dajjal
I've noticed the "magic negro" sterotype in movies but to me, it just seems to be one type of example. I've seen the same thing done with native americans, elderly asians, etc.

African americans, and native americans might be the only 2 american ethnic groups that get this "mystical" type ot treatment status, as generally the all wise, all knowing full of wisdom character is usually some kind of foreginer.

22 posted on 05/07/2007 2:24:39 PM PDT by Sonny M ("oderint dum metuant")
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies ]

To: Dajjal; All

Washington mutual does this to an EXTREME RACITS level in their commercials.

They have a “magic negro” stereotype with a coral of old white men bankers with the “magic negro” stereotype giving words of wisdom to bank custormers.

If the role was reversed we would hear demands from the usual race baiters for the lynchings of the commercials producers.


25 posted on 05/07/2007 2:28:06 PM PDT by longtermmemmory (VOTE! http://www.senate.gov and http://www.house.gov)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies ]

To: Dajjal

I wonder if this author would like it better if the god-like figure were white and the hapless mortal were black?


29 posted on 05/07/2007 2:40:53 PM PDT by murdoog
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies ]

To: Dajjal
Pawns help white people figure out what's going wrong and fix it, like Whoopi Goldberg's psychic in 'Ghost.'"

Don't forget Whoopi's "magic" roles as


31 posted on 05/07/2007 2:54:02 PM PDT by nonsporting
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies ]

To: narses; Pyro7480; NYer; Salvation

ping


32 posted on 05/07/2007 3:24:06 PM PDT by Dajjal
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies ]

To: Dajjal

It fits on another level as well, modern practices of the “religious” are most comfortable when they have god in his neat little box, there to visit when they need and there to witness for their piety to their critics.


34 posted on 05/07/2007 3:53:55 PM PDT by Old Professer (The critic writes with rapier pen, dips it twice, and writes again.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies ]

To: Dajjal

Sorry, but I didn’t see Queen Latifah in BDTH as a Magic Negro. Rather her character was more like “Kitten With A Whip” meets “You’ve Got Mail.”


41 posted on 05/07/2007 7:42:02 PM PDT by scrabblehack
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies ]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first 1-2021-23 next last

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article


FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson