Racializing Redemption, Reproducing Racism

The Odyssey of Magical Negroes and White Saviors

Dados Bibliográficos

ID12912136
AutoresM W Hughey (0000-0002-6456-5663, Mississippi State University, autor correspondente)
Ano2012
Volume6
Fascículo9
Páginas751-767
Data de publicação2012-09-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoSociology Compass (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 1751-9020 • E-ISSN: 1751-9020
EditoraWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/j.1751-9020.2012.00486.x
OpenAlexW1891462935
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas17
Referências citadas42

Recent research on the intersection of race and media describes a trend of progressive, even antiracist, narratives that showcase close inter‐racial friendships and camaraderie on the silver screen. Films in which one character saves or helps another from some unholy or disastrous plight are common in films like The Green Mile (1999), Bruce Almighty (2003), Amistad (1997) and The Blind Side (2009). While these films present a stark change from the patently racist and on‐screen segregationist history of Hollywood cinema, these films often trade on racist meanings and expectations. Many of these films are what critics call “Magical Negro” or “White Savior” films – cinema in which implicit and explicit racial stereotypes are employed to structure the inter‐racial interactions where one character labors to redeem another. In comparing these two genres, this article provides an overview for how both cinematic forms reproduce racist messages by naturalizing the supposed cerebral rationality, work ethic, and paternalistic morality of select White characters while normalizing Black characters as primordially connected with nature, spiritually connected to the carnal, and possessive of exotic and magical powers. Together, these films subversively reaffirm the social order and relations of racial domination by reproducing centuries’ old understandings of racial difference

Aesthetics · Art · Art history · Hollywood · Literature · Movie theater · Narrative · Racism · Sociology · White (mutation · Cinema and Media Studies · Gender Studies · Music History and Culture · Race, History, and American Society