Morpheus ?= Magical Negro
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
I was reading the wikipedia page for 'magical negro' (after reading an early review of Benjamin Button) and there's a list of famous characters that fit the bill, and Morpheus from the Matrix movies is on it. This surprised me, and I don't think I agree.
Clearly, he's a person of color, and he's sort of magical, so he fits at a trivial level. He does sacrifice himself for the white hero. But he's also this tremendous bad-ass, which I think undercuts the whole thing.
If you believe that the purpose of the magical negro is to allow white people to like a black character by making him helpful, wise, and harmless, Morpheus fits two of these but not the third and my reading of Soul on Ice makes the 'harmless' probably the most important. On the one hand, he's in charge -- he's not your Bagger Vance or Driving Miss Daisy. He runs the show, at least for the first movie. And on the other, he's got lots of guns.
The Oracle clearly fits the bill -- she fucking makes cookies -- but even she's got that Japanese guy protecting her, so the racial issue is a little muddy there. But I think it's very hard to make the case that Morpheus is a magical negro. He's got power, and he shoots things, and he's not really all that nice.
I think that whatever the Matrix movies (in particular the last two) didn't do well, I think that by and large they did a good job with race. Even the Oracle isn't actually able to help Neo, which is an interesting twist. She just gives him some information and then leaves. And in the end, Neo dies, in service to the markedly multi-cultural Zion. Plus every single bad guy -- every copy of them -- is white. So I guess what I'm saying is, I don't think Morpheus is the magical negro, and I think if you're going to call him one, you're effectively saying that black actors can't take any part where they help white people. He really doesn't fit many of the other parts of that archetype.
posted by henry |
11/25/2008 08:49:00 AM|
|
