Robert DeNiro Is Not a Magical Negro
In Nancy Meyers’ The Intern (2015), Robert DeNiro plays a retiree and widower who acquires an internship at a successful start-up fashion company. Anne Hathaway plays his 35-year-old boss.
Pitted amid a slew of insecure, overtired, emotional, and shabbily dressed millennials, DeNiro is the voice of reason, experience, and sensibility (Meyers puts forth some clear generational messages here). As the film progresses, he becomes the mentor and father-figure, the younger folks the proteges and children — ironic, of course, since he is the intern and they are technically in charge.
But let’s be clear: these traits do not align Robert DeNiro’s character with the Magical Negro.
In its review of The Intern, which relays far more plot points than I’m comfortable reading in a film review, Slate likens DeNiro’s character to Hollywood’s god-awful Magical Negro stereotype:
First, no. Second, hell no. Third, as one of my colleagues tweeted after also reading the review, “Slate, you have no idea what this trope means.”
Bandying about the term Magical Negro in conversation willy-nilly should raise some red flags, as should doing so in a globally published review about an all-white film. (Yes, like most of Meyers’ pictures, The Intern is awfully “white.”)
So in the next few paragraphs, please let me explain, as best I can, two things: the characteristics of the Magical Negro stereotype, and why comparing Robert DeNiro’s The Intern character to it is grossly misguided.
Does this fella look black to you?
The Magical Negro: 5 Characteristics
To discuss the most common characteristics of the Magical Negro, I will lean primarily on Matthew W. Hughley’s in-depth studies of Hollywood films:
- “Cinethetic Racism: White Redemption and Black Stereotypes in ‘Magical Negro’ Films”
- “The White Savior Film and Reviewers’ Reception”
- “Racializing Redemption, Reproducing Racism: The Odyssey of Magical Negroes and White Saviors”
Presumably first coined by filmmaker Spike Lee at a lecture in 2001, the term Magical Negro — at its basest — refers to a spiritual black character who helps a white protagonist. In fact, one of the first questions Spike Lee presents to his audience about films like The Legend of Bagger Vance and The Green Mile is this: “How is it that black people [in mainstream cinema] have these powers but they use them for the benefit of white people?”
So, yes, this is perhaps the most facile understanding of the term — and it is how Slate thinly reads DeNiro’s character, or the (weird) inversion thereof.
But as Matthew W. Hughley finds in his studies of nearly 30 films “that resonate with mainstream audiences’ understanding of race relations and racialized fantasies,” the term Magical Negro is much more loaded.
1. Economic extremity
In Hollywood films, Magical Negroes generally occupy positions of lower socioeconomic extremity. They play janitors, golf caddies, prisoners, psychics, and the homeless. In The Legend of Bagger Vance, Will Smith’s character works for just “five dollars guaranteed.” Even Morgan Freeman’s character of God in Bruce Almighty — perhaps the epitome of the stereotype?! — initially scrubs floors.
What does this suggest? Hughley puts it succinctly: black people are “simple and unsophisticated people that desire an uncomplicated life of servitude” and that their only true joy in life comes from “helping white people, not themselves.”
2. Cultural deficiency
A second characteristic of the Magical Negro stems from the way the white imagination has fused blackness to compulsive behaviors like “criminality, hostility, a child-like demeanor, a lack of mental capacity, a poor work ethic, and a desire to exploit the social system for unearned ‘handouts.’”
For example, Michael Clarke Duncan’s character in The Green Mile is a child-like, naive prisoner on death row. Even the Oracle in The Matrix cares for children and bakes cookies in an apartment that, Hughley writes, resembles “Chicago’s Cabrini Green” projects.
3. Folk wisdom
Hollywood’s Magical Negro also dispenses a “natural” folk wisdom (as opposed to intelligence) to help his white counterpart succeed. Hughley lists several examples of this characteristic in films ranging from Pirates of the Caribbean and Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (e.g., women’s knowledge of voodoo) to City of Angels (e.g., Andre Braugher as the only angel in the film to offer spiritual advice).
Hughley quotes another scholar here, who reminds us that because blacks “have endured greater hardships than the typical white person, [they] are represented as more effective at coping with misfortune and with dispensing soul-healing advice.”
4. (Dis)appearing acts
After their spiritual duties have ended, Magical Negroes are often required “to walk off into the sunset,” away from their white onscreen counterparts. The reasoning: Hollywood doesn’t want to disrupt the racial status quo by having the black and white characters become too close.
Theoretically, the interracial relationship — between Will Smith and Matt Damon, between Michael Clarke Duncan and Tom Hanks, between Whoopi Goldberg and Patrick Swayze — cannot withstand all of the unresolved questions and problems that would emerge from their friendship. One of them has to leave.
5. Magical powers
We’ve briefly discussed the Magical Negro’s spiritual powers, again, the most obvious characteristic of this Hollywood stereotype. And even though a moviegoer might think a characters’ having powers is a positive attribute, what those abilities suggest is far from positive.
The Magical Negro’s powers are not only what give him the “knowledge of the white ways of the world,” but also allow him “to teach, guide, and instruct the white man on how to reclaim his social positioning, mental keenness, and material success.” In other words, the spiritual or physical power is always, always used for the good of the white man/woman.
Furthermore, this suggests that the Magical Negro’s blackness is designed to fill in whiteness’s gaps, “making whites more well-rounded and complete human beings.” In this sense, Hughley memorably writes, “blackness becomes the magical spice to a dull whiteness.”
As we’ve learned, the term Magical Negro is much more involved than Slate’s review of The Intern implies. Again, the stereotype is wrapped up in notions about social class, education, intelligence, criminality, and white privilege and authority.
None of this applies to The Intern. None of it applies to Robert DeNiro’s character. None of it applies to any all-white Hollywood film.
So the next time you see this stereotype mishandled, perhaps you’ll speak out and, like me, take a cue from Spike Lee, who, when thinking about the Magical Negro, once admitted,
“I gotta sit down; I get mad just thinking about it.”
