The American Society Of Magical Negroes review: A movie that’s afraid of itself
Despite an interesting premise and a talented cast, including Justice Smith and David Alan Grier, this lightweight social satire can't get out of its own way
Film Reviews The American Society of Magical Negroes
Although The Matrix came out two years before Spike Lee famously coined the term “magical, mystical Negro” in 2001, it successfully inverted the potential fulfillment of that trope. Morpheus was undoubtedly a self-sacrificing guide to Neo. but it was Morpheus’ confidence, the weight of respect his character’s presence inspired throughout the film’s world. Kobi Libii’s debut feature, The American Society Of Magical Negroes, attempts a different approach to subverting the trope, by conceptually centering his film around a whole secret society dedicated to using magic exclusively to help white people.
The title, at first glance, evokes the image of an anachronistic period piece, featuring Black wizards and witches on a mission to save the world. But we live in a post-Get Out world and, now, a post-American Fiction world, where genre films by talented Black artists are given Academy Awards when those films are also smart commentaries on modern hypocrisies of race in America. Libii’s film is instead part anachronistic fantasy, part sketch-worthy satire, part romantic comedy, and part purgation of Libii’s own frustrations with race. Unfortunately, a fatal lack of consequence for the film’s world or characters prevents it from ever deepening its initial premise, or unifying the sum of its disparate parts.
The American Society Of Magical Negroes is the story of Aren, played by Justice Smith, who gives the character a similar timidity that he also gave the severely underconfident Simon the Sorcerer in last year’s surprisingly fun and heartfelt Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves. Aren is a broke visual artist whose backbone has a comparable strength to the brightly colorful yarn sculptures with which he hopes to make his artistic mark. The film opens with him side-stepping, tip-toeing, and apologizing his way through a gallery crowded with wealthy potential sponsors.
The unconscious automation of Aren’s behavior, a young Black man naturally elevating the comfort of the surrounding white people over his own, attracts the attention of Magical Negro Roger (David Alan Grier, on a kind of charming autopilot). Roger takes Aren under his wing, inducts him into the titular society, and sends him undercover to monitor his first client, Jason (a believably insecure Drew Tarver), an upstart white male web designer who works at a tech company called Meetbox. Aren soon discovers that Lizzie (an underutilized An-Li Bogan), the charming girl he had a meet-cute moment with in a coffee shop, not only works at Meetbox, but is Jason’s “work wife.” When Aren inadvertently convinces Jason to pursue her romantically he has to decide whether it’s more important to manage white discomfort or give voice to his own.
In the world of Magical Negroes, white discomfort is the metric by which everything else is measured. Roger insists that the society’s entire raison d’être is the monitoring of white discomfort, visualized by little floating barometers that gauge “white tears.” If that meter falls too deep into the red the Magical Negroes are sent on missions to utilize teleportation and conjuring spells, shifting the world around discomfited white clients until they’re comfortable again, thus saving the world one pacified white police officer at a time.
Joining the society starts to give Aren the language to describe the all-consuming self-doubt and hyper-awareness he’s always felt. In one of the film’s more successful scenes, Aren is challenged by Roger to unapologetically approach a crowd waiting to enter a club. When he finally takes the leap his immediate surroundings fade to black and we go close on Aren as he hyper-focuses on the immediate reactions of fear and uncertainty on the white patrons’ faces. He did nothing to warrant those reactions beyond being Black and slightly self-assured. It’s the closest we get to a feeling of resonance and consequence in a satire that is too cautious for its own good.
Aren is a shockingly incurious protagonist. Besides Roger, Aren never has any meaningful conversations with the various members of the society, and never tries to. The members all flit about in the background of classrooms and hallways tinged with mystically warm light, littered with wand boxes, thick, leather-bound books, and magical smoke of a Hogwarts-lite aesthetic. What we do learn about the rules and function of the society itself is broken up into lightly humorous lectures in which the aforementioned magic smoke projects former members establishing the “fundamentals” of being a Magical Negro. These projected vignettes poke fun at the trope via characters who quote their wise grandmothers and use thinly veiled innuendoes alluding to the dysfunctional manhoods of their white male protagonists. The lecturer, played with dry humor and majesty by Aisha Hinds, never talks to, acknowledges, or even notices Aren at all. Same goes for the classroom of Aren’s fellow novitiates. It’s disappointing that, outside of Roger and dramatic society president Dede (Nicole Byer), the film’s roster of talented Black actors rarely have the chance to meaningfully impact the story itself.
The majority of the film actually takes place in the sterile Silicon Beach-set Meetbox campus, where Aren fluffs up Jason’s ego and gradually bonds with Lizzie over their mutual attraction, as well as their shared frustration at having to prove themselves to white gatekeepers. The main tension of these scenes is that Aren is instructed by the League to give up his romantic pursuit of Lizzie as soon as Jason is interested in her, even as Aren and Lizzie become more attracted to each other. There’s genuine chemistry between Smith and Bogan that makes their scenes fun to watch, but the potential drama of the love triangle is completely undercut by the fact that it’s never believable for a second that Lizzie would consider Jason as a romantic prospect. One-sided conversations where Aren unsuccessfully tries to make Jason aware that his whiteness affords him the luxuries of confidence and assumed success muddles the focus of the Meetbox scenes even further, critiquing corporate culture on a level that is articulated but never felt.
Part of the problem is that the film never deepens beyond its initial assumption that white discomfort is what fostered the presence of Magical Negroes, both historically and within the mythology of the film itself. It’s not just white discomfort but racism that engenders the deep feelings of existential fear and diminishing self-esteem in Black people. When I suspect I’m making white people uncomfortable I fear for my life and my livelihood. I fear for my ability to survive because those moments make me distinctly aware of a social and economic system that benefits from the exploitation and control of its Black citizens. For all Roger’s talk about how their work is saving Black people, we’re never shown an example of how unsafe their world could be without them. No character is ever truly endangered, or made to confront the consequences of racism. And in a media landscape where as far back as The Boondocks and as recently as Atlanta and Sorry To Bother You, Black creators have found ways to hilariously satirize American racism without shying away from the potentially harsh and fatal consequences, the relative shallowness of this film just isn’t enough.
As Morpheus says in The Matrix, “There’s a difference between knowing the path, and walking the path.” The American Society Of Magical Negroes is a film with a lot on its mind, but the execution as a work of cinematic drama feels disjointed and unchallenged. It’s ironic, and unfortunate, that a film presumably about the significance of discomfort feels so afraid to mine the depths of its own idea, or make anyone watching feel truly uncomfortable.
70 Comments
this reads like they didn’t make the movie you wanted them to make.
Apparently they did not make the movie that anybody wanted them to make if we believe the box office numbers.
Has Spike Lee had anything to say about this film? I cannot imagine him to not have an opinion on it.
*Spike Lee angrily tweets about The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen*
To be fair, we’ve all hate-tweeted about the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.
Tom Sawyer?!?! #notmyleague
Alan Moore wakes up to a mob of people on his front door.
“At last, a use for the cauldron of oil I’ve been boiling in my garret.”
“… you all here for the orgy?”
It’s Alan Moore, so it would be a magical orgy
“I knew this day would finally come….wait why are you all here?”
I like that movie 🙁
You’re not alone. Beside the inclusion of Tom Sawyer, that movie gave us the cool Avenger version of literature hero/villain. Unlike the original comic/graphic novel that more of an asisine mind of a writer/wizard/mall santa.
It’s okay, nobody’s perfect 🙂
Was Morpheus really a “magical negro” though? He seemed to have too much agency for that. I thought the trope referred to people like the caddy Bagger Vance.
The review specifically states that he subverts the concept of the magical Negro, but I wouldn’t even put him in the same sentence with the trope. And it’s especially silly to imagine it was at all in the filmmakers’ heads considering Will Smith was supposed to play Neo.
They should have just adapted this Key and Peele sketch.
This is just fabulous, thank you. The bluebird, lol.
And the comments for the Youtube are priceless:
“To be fair she never denied being magical.” 😀
I mean there was also this Which would have been pretty damn good as well.
The textbook example is John Coffy in The Green Mile.
And Morgan Freeman is the Great Wizard of the Magicals.
Or pretty much every other Morgan Freeman role from Driving Miss Daisy on
I’m just now reading that Nicholas Cage was the first name pitched for Neo. What a disaster that would have been. I don’t think Smith could have been chill enough for that part.
I seriously thought for a second that you meant the character’s name was going to be Nicholas Cage.
Haha! Oh well, I did say that he was pitched for Neo; my syntax isn’t the best there. But I don’t suppose it would have been beyond the realm of possibility because…. Nic Cage.
Didn’t mean to bash your syntax, but it was too funny of a misread not to share.
That’s ok. It is funny. I just can’t believe they tagged Cage for that. I lagh every time I imagine him having a freakout when he wakes up from the Pod life. And apparently Val Killmer and Chow Yun-fat were asked to play Morpheus.
I believe the trope, for the most part, is supposed to refer to any black person who kind of mentors or subtly pushes a white person to learning a life lesson to better their own lives. So in the loosest sense, one could assign that role to Morpheus, since he is the one who guides Neo into his ultimate role as The One. However I’d say anyone claiming that is reaching so hard they should be cast as Mr. Fantastic. He doesn’t really fit the mold since Morpheus very much has his own shit going on, with a fully fleshed out character and a plot that gives him a fair amount of weight aside from “Neo’s buddy”. He’s definitely the kind of Bagger Vance type that really exemplifies the trope.
Is it weird that this movie seems to misunderstand the concept of Magical Negroes that it is supposedly sending up? Black people having to expend a lot of effort to make white people feel secure in their presence is surely a real thing, but it doesn’t really have anything to do with the term.The Magical Negro is a stock character who is presented as either having actual otherworldly powers or extreme patience and wisdom, and who helps out the white lead. It’s not about making white people comfortable. In fact, the Magical Negroes often at least mildly annoy the white protagonist — think of Will Smith’s character in The Legend of Bagger Vance, maybe the most egregious example of the form.
Its a thing in a lot of Stephan King novels, not at all what this film seems to think.
I can only recall two. The Shinning and The Green Mile. From the King I’ve scene or read he tends to favor another bad trope. The magical mentally handicapped person
And really, Dick Halloran only fits the trope in The Shining movie because he dies. In the novel he has a fully realized life and typical Kingian internal monologue. He survives because his shine is weak compared to Danny’s and Jack’s.
And The Stand.
Oh yeah, forgot about that
M-O-O-N, that spells magical mentally handicapped person
Yeah, this whole thing, via trailer, feels like the director trying to make sense of his own blackness, where maybe he’s too accommodating to white people. As opposed to the magical negro trope, which isn’t even about magic or necessarily white comfort, but a black person just on the outside of the protagonist, whose life seems limited to enriching the lives of the protagonists. Basically, roles that used to piss black people watching TV and movies off. You mean to tell me Charles S. Dutton is just waiting around for years to give pep talks to Rudy, and not lifting a finger to help himself. Still bitter about college 20 years ago, and willing to tell himself that he wasn’t riding the bench because of race. Nah.
I always think of Hudsucker Proxy, which is otherwise a film I like but the magical negro shit is extreme. But I agree, he’s not like, a comforting bro, he is literally magic.
Yes, it’s weird, that’s sort of been driving me crazy about this too (since I think the concept could actually make for a great satire). I was re-visting the football classic Rudy, last year, and it struck me that the groundskeeper who gives this kid life lessons, keeps him from giving up on his education, and in general helps him find his way, is absolutely a Magical Negro!
A comedy sending up this kind of thing would be great! (I can’t help thinking of FX’s Atlanta being perfect at it.) But this movie is conflating the idea with something else entirely, and on top of everything else, frames it around a rom-com, which is the genre least applicable to where this trope is even mostly seen.
I thought this was fine, funny at parts, a little too strident at others. I didn’t walk in expecting a Sorry to Bother You type satire, and I think expecting it to be that probably hurts viewers’ perception of it. It honestly never seemed like it was going to fully commit to that angle in the trailer, as the whole premise is a little too silly to bear out the serious side of the problem it’s supposedly sending up. Almost like expecting Cocaine Bear to do a serious examination of the drug war. Instead, it’s a romcom with satirical trappings, and it works out ok. Aren doesn’t interact with the rest of the society because he’s only interested in Lizzie, not in the job. Definitely agree on the fact that Jason is way to shitty to be considered an actual contender, but I think it’s probably impossible to strike the right balance of the “white moderate” without losing the attention of your white audience, since most of them would probably see nothing wrong with him if he’s not cartoonishly stupid.
Sorry to Bother You made me wish that every movie included an army of centaurs battling racist cops.
“When I suspect I’m making white people uncomfortable I fear for my life and my livelihood.”eyeroll.gif
an underutilized An-Li BoganOff-topic, but the omnipresence of the useless word “utilized” makes me uncomfortable as heck. What the eff makes Bogan “underutilized” rather than “underused”?? Isn’t an actor playing a main character supposed to be “used”?
What makes you uncomfortable about utilized over used? The reason “underutilized” works so well in acting terms is that a character can be in the whole film, in every scene in some capacity and therefore “used” the whole time but as they are in the back-ground and rarely speak, “underutilized” offers the caveat that they haven’t been used correctly, if at all, rather than just used as a prop.
It’s a Frenchicism. “Utiliser” means “to use” in French. Now usually that’s the opposite as with the famous “supporter” – which in French means “to carry” or “to endure” – is used today in French in the English meaning “to support” because the English word “supporter” (for sport aficionados of a particular team) has been used now for decades.
“Morpheus was undoubtedly a self-sacrificing guide to Neo. but it was Morpheus’ confidence, the weight of respect his character’s presence inspired throughout the film’s world.”Even apart from the punctuation error, this sentence lacks a.
I was just going to post the same sentence. You don’t even have to be a proofreader, I’m pretty sure most off-the-shelf word processors would flag it multiple times.
This whole thing reads like it should have been a short film rather than a whole theatrically released movie.
This is too bad. It’s a neat title/concept. It might make a good skit on SNL.
“When I suspect I’m making white people uncomfortable I fear for my life and my livelihood.”Then you are a schizophrenic racist. That data are clear: most crime is intraracial, but black-on-white crime absolutely dwarfs white-on-black. I mean, the numbers are staggering:Further, according to the Washington Post’s Police Shooting Database, an average of 10 unarmed black people are killed by cops each year. 10. When polled, Americans thought it was in the thousands.The media lie about this, and academia lies about this, for various reasons both corrupt and earnest, but the facts do not bear out that white people are killing black people in the street.You fears are distorted by media bullshit. You are much more likely to be killed by someone you know or who looks like you. Sorry.
Oh is it racist to judge people based on race and lump them all in a group?
““Why is equality so assiduously avoided? Why does white America delude itself, and how does it rationalize the evil it retains?“Whites, it must frankly be said, are not putting in a similar mass effort to reeducate themselves out of their racial ignorance. It is an aspect of their sense of superiority that the white people of America believe they have so little to learn.”
So now you’re back to calling MLK racist. Excellent work.
“The media lie about this”
Oh? Where is the media doing that? Show them saying it explicitly and not just what you think is implying.
The one lying in pretty much every instance is you.
Um, how about this piece of media in which the author is so delusional as to think that her life is in danger from white people? Where do you think that comes from? I’ve already presented a fucking metric ton of academic grievance bullshit that paints whites as evil, and you rejected all of that, so why bother?How about a sh0w called The Problem with White People?Or the infamous Dear White People on Netflix?She’s delusional. I just presented the facts. Is her life in danger from whites, or from blacks? Can you answer that simple question? No. You will provide a wall of gishgalloping to avoid it.How. Are. The. Data. Wrong????
Stating a personal opinion isn’t presenting incorrect statistics so try again. But we both know you are lying.
“I’ve already presented a fucking metric ton of academic grievance”
Which also wouldn’t be the media lying.
“How about a sh0w called The Problem with White People?”
What incorrect statistics did it present?
“Or the infamous Dear White People on Netflix?”
A fiction show? Still not it.
“How. Are. The. Data. Wrong”
STRAWMAN. I never said your data was wrong, I said you were lying about what the media says.
So I just gave you two examples. I can also give you examples of everyone from Mayors to newscasters to fucking Oprah supporting the BLM riots as an understandable reaction to white-on-black crime. Which is far, far, far lower than black-on-white.If the facts align with me, what the fuck is your problem again?
No, you just gave me zero examples of media lying. Because you are lying.
“If the facts align with me”
As usual, they do not. My problem with you is as typical – you are lying about the media lying.
HOW DO THE FACTS NOT ALIGN? ARE YOU SAYING THE STATS ARE WRONG? HOW? WHAT ARE YOU TALKLING ABOUT, LIAR FUCKING PSYCHO STALKER CUNT?
I’m saying you lied when you said “The media lie about this”. I’ve clearly stated that multiple times but you are desperate to make a straw man.
So, you agree that the writer of this piece lives in fear for no reason, and that the data are true, and I’ve provided examples from Jon Stewart, but I’m still a liar…How about President Biden during his fucking State of the Union? “Imagine having to worry whether your son or daughter came home from walking down the street, playing in the park or just driving a car,” as “brown and black parents” have to do, Biden asked in his 2023 State of the Union address. https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2023/02/07/remarks-of-president-joe-biden-state-of-the-union-address-as-prepared-for-delivery/So the fucking president goes on air and LIES—because he has the data, he must have it, he’s making a political move—that whites are slaughtering blacks. Or do you think he was talking about black-on-black crime??? Oh, Fucking doubtful.Eat shit, per usual.
I’m not making any statements about someone’s personal situation, I’m saying you are a liar.
You have provided ZERO examples of the media lying. So yes, you are a liar. It’s one of MANY examples.
“So the fucking president goes on air and LIES”
The quote you posted is not a lie. At no point did he state that black on white crime is more than white on black crime. He made a statement about how people feel. This is actually yet another example of how you are a liar who misrepresents pretty much everything.
Because you wallow in your victimhood.
and always: Liberalism is defined by sources other than you or me. Someone’s words or positions either conform to that definition or they do not. You want to add exceptions to the definition and make it different for some undefined period of time. Without a source, that’s just your retarded opinion. You have to prove your context is relevant with a source. You can’t because it is not relevant and everything in the universe grasps that but you.It makes no sense to say a PREVIOUSLY segregated society changed the definition liberal when it was invented during a far more segregated and racist time period. In order to be logically consistent you have to admit that either King isn’t liberal or the CRT proponents you vilify as illiberal are just as liberal as he is for having the same views.You are still a pussy in denial. Redlining is explicitly racist and happening now. That is systematic racism. That’s in addition to the previous science you had a meltdown over after you bothered to pay attention to the proof YOU put forth and realized it all said you were wrong.science > youYou are a tyrant, a bigot, and a pathetic fucking joke.
Still waiting for that quote of me lying. Your lack of such shows you are the liar. NOTED.
and always: Liberalism is defined by sources other than you or me. Someone’s words or positions either conform to that definition or they do not. You want to add exceptions to the definition and make it different for some undefined period of time. Without a source, that’s just your retarded opinion. You have to prove your context is relevant with a source. You can’t because it is not relevant and everything in the universe grasps that but you.It makes no sense to say a PREVIOUSLY segregated society changed the definition liberal when it was invented during a far more segregated and racist time period. In order to be logically consistent you have to admit that either King isn’t liberal or the CRT proponents you vilify as illiberal are just as liberal as he is for having the same views.You are still a pussy in denial. Redlining is explicitly racist and happening now. That is systematic racism. That’s in addition to the previous science you had a meltdown over after you bothered to pay attention to the proof YOU put forth and realized it all said you were wrong.science > youYou are a tyrant, a bigot, and a pathetic fucking joke.
“ LIAR FUCKING PSYCHO STALKER CUNT?”
Quote me telling a lie. You can’t because that is yet another lie that you tell.
Jon Stewart present stats about white and black poverty that omitted the fact that whites are an older population and thus have more wealth. He did the same fucking thing for home ownership and stated that “White people put their comfort over black lives.” This is all race-baiting bullshit, and you know it.
I see no quotes. Show where he gave incorrect stats.
“ that omitted the fact that whites are an older population and thus have more wealth”
Doesn’t mean the stats were lies.
You have zero examples because you are the liar. You lie ALL THE FUCKING TIME.
Liberalism is defined by sources other than you or me. Someone’s words or positions either conform to that definition or they do not. You want to add exceptions to the definition and make it different for some undefined period of time. Without a source, that’s just your retarded opinion. You have to prove your context is relevant with a source. You can’t because it is not relevant and everything in the universe grasps that but you.It makes no sense to say a PREVIOUSLY segregated society changed the definition liberal when it was invented during a far more segregated and racist time period. In order to be logically consistent you have to admit that either King isn’t liberal or the CRT proponents you vilify as illiberal are just as liberal as he is for having the same views.You are still a pussy in denial. Redlining is explicitly racist and happening now. That is systematic racism. That’s in addition to the previous science you had a meltdown over after you bothered to pay attention to the proof YOU put forth and realized it all said you were wrong.science > youYou are a tyrant, a bigot, and a pathetic fucking joke.
“How about a sh0w called The Problem with White People?”
Sound like something MLK would approve of!
And of course, liberalism is defined by sources other than you or me. Someone’s words or positions either conform to that definition or they do not. You want to add exceptions to the definition and make it different for some undefined period of time. Without a source, that’s just your retarded opinion. You have to prove your context is relevant with a source. You can’t because it is not relevant and everything in the universe grasps that but you.It makes no sense to say a PREVIOUSLY segregated society changed the definition liberal when it was invented during a far more segregated and racist time period. In order to be logically consistent you have to admit that either King isn’t liberal or the CRT proponents you vilify as illiberal are just as liberal as he is for having the same views.You are still a pussy in denial. Redlining is explicitly racist and happening now. That is systematic racism. That’s in addition to the previous science you had a meltdown over after you bothered to pay attention to the proof YOU put forth and realized it all said you were wrong.science > youYou are a tyrant, a bigot, and a pathetic fucking joke.