 This picture appeared in People magazine, alongsideother pictures of Hugh Jackman and Penelope Cruz |
Openly gay, African American blogger and film critic David Ehrenstein has a typically fabulous op-ed published in today's Los Angeles Times entitled "'Magic Negro' Returns" giving his incisive and cinematic take on the Barack Obama phenomenon:
AS EVERY CARBON-BASED life form on this planet surely knows, Barack Obama, the junior Democratic senator from Illinois, is running for president. Since making his announcement, there has been no end of commentary about him in all quarters — musing over his charisma and the prospect he offers of being the first African American to be elected to the White House.
But it's clear that Obama also is running for an equally important unelected office, in the province of the popular imagination — the "Magic Negro."
The Magic Negro is a figure of postmodern folk culture, coined by snarky 20th century sociologists, to explain a cultural figure who emerged in the wake of Brown vs. Board of Education. "He has no past, he simply appears one day to help the white protagonist," reads the description on Wikipedia http://en.-wikipedia.org/wiki/Magical_Negro.
He's there to assuage white "guilt" (i.e., the minimal discomfort they feel) over the role of slavery and racial segregation in American history, while replacing stereotypes of a dangerous, highly sexualized black man with a benign figure for whom interracial sexual congress holds no interest.
As might be expected, this figure is chiefly cinematic — embodied by such noted performers as Sidney Poitier, Morgan Freeman, Scatman Crothers, Michael Clarke Duncan, Will Smith and, most recently, Don Cheadle. And that's not to mention a certain basketball player whose very nickname is "Magic."
This is absolutely great stuff. Please go read the entire article here for yourself. One of the many things Ehrenstein is doing in this piece is deconstructing the very nature of op-ed page discourse itself. Note the explicit inclusion of a link to a web-based resource (Wikipedia). I also love the references to film characters and the sequioedalian word choices: ersatz paterfamilias, snarky, miscegenation, trope and accouterment!
I think it is a brilliant commentary on the Barack Obama phenomenon. What do you think?
whats up everyone
ReplyDeletejust signed up and wanted to say hello while I read through the posts
hopefully this is just what im looking for, looks like i have a lot to read.
pretty cool stuff here thank you!!!!!!!
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