Your handy field guide to the almost half-dozen different black male characters in mainstream movies.
The Magic Black Guy
Distinguishing Traits: Wise. Pure of heart. Possibly supernatural powers, but definitely very spiritual. May not have conventional intelligence, but is very very wise anyway. Did we mention that he’s wise? No flaws (or, in fact, personality) whatsoever.
Role In Plot: Appear when white protagonist needs help, give sage advice, never demand anything, not have any problems or concerns of his own, die or disappear when no longer needed.
Is Insulting Because: Black people are basically just stock characters used to help the ‘normal’ characters along.
Typically Played By: Morgan Freeman.
The Scary Black Guy
Distinguishing Traits: May be good, evil, or an antihero, but is definitely badass. Can beat up everyone in the plot, especially if they’re white. Interests include guns, the word “motherfucker,” and long walks on– oh, who are we kidding, violence.
Role In Plot: Kick ass, chew bubblegum, be out of bubblegum.
Is Insulting Because: It perpetrates insulting stereotypes of black men that end up leading to their disproportionate rate of arrest, imprisonment, and victimization by the prison-industrial complex, and also to the murders of black men by police and vigilantes.
Typically Played By: Samuel L. Jackson.
The Funny Black Guy
Distinguishing Traits: Makes jokes. That’s… about it really.
Role In Plot: Make jokes.
Is Insulting Because: woo look at this black guy he’s so cool and hip and funny and urban if I’m friends with him then no one can ever call me racist again
Typically Played By: Eddie Murphy.
The Inspiring Black Guy
Distinguishing Traits: Is oppressed. Nobly overcomes his oppression through love and forgiveness and swelling music. Director had to pause filming to jerk off to videos of the I Have A Dream speech.
Role in Plot: Be oppressed; overcome oppression. Occasionally, take a break from this to inspire some inner-city students to go to Harvard.
Is Insulting Because: The next time you write a story about a member of an oppressed group that’s all about their noble attempt to overcome oppression, as opposed to literally every other thing that human beings have ever done because whatever it is members of oppressed groups do it too, I will rip off your head and piss down your neck.
Typically Played By: Denzel Washington.
The Human Being
Distinguishing Traits: None really. Sometimes he’s a wisecracking alien-fighting action hero! Sometimes he nobly struggles to overcome poverty while being a single father! Sometimes his life gets flipped, turned upside down! The one thing that remains constant is that he’s a well-developed and interesting character who does not rely solely on stereotypes but instead has the same diversity given to white characters.
Role In Plot: Usually protagonist, but sometimes antagonist, side character, love interest, etc.
Is Insulting Because: Hollywood seems to think that black male Human Beings only come in one form, i.e., Will Smith.
Typically Always Played By: Will Smith.
Photo—Black family in circle from Shutterstock
You forgot Keith David! Dude played Goliath!
He doesn’t exist for me until he makes a movie with David Keith.
THANK YOU for this post. I teach a lot of black students, and it seems like the ones from Haiti and Africa are the only ones who haven’t been badly damaged by Hollywood stereotypes.
Yeah, this annoys the hell out of me. Anyone seen Kickass?
I watched Kickass, and it sucked
Today I opened NSWATM and I honestly, genuinely thought I was on Cracked.com.
Yeah, well, black actors don’t have to worry about the Bechdel test, The Bechdel Test, a simple test which names the following three criteria for movie: (1) it has to have at least two women in it, who (2) who talk to each other, about (3) something besides a man.
I mean, even if a movie has two black characters in it, they don’t have to talk exclusively about their personal relationships.
That said, aside from Denzel Washington, bad guys have to be not just white but British. See, Avengers, X-men, Silence of the Lambs, etc….
@Diana: I think Star Wars started this trend.
Actually the examples you list are interested. Although both Lecter and Magneto are played by Brits, the characters are Norwegian (kinda), Latvian and German, respectively. It’s just that an English accent is generally taken as indicating a foreign person for an American audience.
@Hugh Tipping, In a lot of parts of the world, it isn’t unusual for someone who studied English as a second language to have learned from someone English (or someone whose own teachers were English), and so to have picked up aspects of the English accent.
True. But A) most second language speakers don’t pick up the accent of people who teach them because you need to be very good to do that, and B) it’s just as likely for a person in that situation to learn from an American person, yet for some reason an American accent on a foreigner is seen as “wrong”.
Somebody’s a Will Smith fan! You missed out that Samuel L Jackson mostly plays authority figures, rather than criminals, these days. (He did usually play crooks for most of his early career though). The motherfucking scary black guy is more likely to be a motherfucking FBI agent or a motherfucking US marshall than a motherfucking criminal these days, motherfucker. I’ve also seen Denzel Washington in a lot of films that don’t fit the “overcoming oppression” trope. The Book of Eli, American Gangster, Inside Man – damn, as far back as Courage Under Fire. Actually he was playing the “generic but… Read more »
Oh Denzel, you lost me with the re-make of The Taking of Pelham 123. That movie was perfect as is.
In all the movies I can recall, the same thing could be said about every white male character. Asians, on the other hand, always seem to be martial arts badasses.
Correction: Every white male PROTAGONIST. You can have a white antagonist. Making the bad guy black is off-limits for some reason.
Isn’t Denzel Washington in training day the evil corrupt cop? Also (and dammit, I’d almost forgotten this movie) Michael Clarke Duncan plays the kingpin in Dare Devil. Im not sure Pulp Fiction counted s as there isn’t really a Good Guy for balance.
I think as long as its a cult/B movie you’ll find black villains.
Samuel L Jackson has played a few villians, and even God, er, Morgan Freeman played a villian in Hard Rain.
He was also a villain in Dreamcatcher, although who could blame you for choosing to forget everything about that film?
Well the only one of those movies I’ve seen is Pulp Fiction, and it’s kinda unclear to me who was supposed to be good and bad in that movie.
Loved this, Ozy! Very astute and very funny.
Small cavil: I think this would have been unanswerable if “The Wire” had never been made.
I’d also recommend a few episodes of Idris Elba’s English TV series “Luther.”
Of course, both of these trade pretty heavily in cop-show tropes, so I guess it’s a wash. But on all the big points, you’re spotless.
Still, it’s progress by the rancid standards of the system when you consider the two roles they used to permit us: shuffling. simpleton.
And then there’s the black guy who is set up as a major character (albeit usually with a one-dimensional personality) but dies 20 minutes into the film to show the audience how bad things are (AKA “black guy dies first”). Granted, I’m not sure if that counts as it’s a character role rather than type, but it could be argued that aside from Will Smith, your examples could be considered a role as much as they are a character type. (While it’s not exclusive to horror films, it’s interesting to note that the first horror film to make prominent use… Read more »
“Token Black Guy” Distinguishing Traits: They don’t matter. He won’t live long enough to develop them anyway. If he is the only Black Guy on the cast, its a sci-fi thriller or slasher/monster film, he’s a dead man. Role In Plot: He may be a love interest, he may be a wall-flower; he is often cast as a loud, annoying stereotype of one sort or another. Better to notice him once he’s gone. His only role is to die saving a white woman, dying saving a white man, hell, he’s just dying. Doesn’t matter if he does anything significant or… Read more »
Noticeably averted in “G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra”. When I saw that the White hero had a wise-ass Black buddy in an action movie, I figured he was a gonner. I was pleasantly surprised when he not only survived through the end of the movie, but was integral in saving the day.
Where Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson or Vin Diesel are concerned in movies, they sometimes subvert the standard tropes and do something different. I think their subversion is intentional and I have come to appreciate it.
When I saw ‘X-men First Class,’ one of my first complaints was “The one black guy died? Really? Hollywood, do you have no self-awareness whatsoever?”
Not a bit. Self-awareness plays second fiddle to making obscene sums of money promoting fears, stereotypes and psychological memes which can be perpetuated again and again with different actors and the same weak-sauce plots. And now with 3D and “REMAKE-O-VISION” we will repackage that fear and loathing again AND people will pay for it knowing it’s nothing but drek.
On X-men First Class, I was also annoyed by that. Apparently, canonically, Darwin is supposed to have something like that happen to him and survive as a being of pure energy or something, so perhaps he is supposed to have not actually died in the movie either, but it would have been nice to have some actual hint of that in the movie.
From the Wikipedia entry on Darwin: “Darwin has the power of “reactive evolution”; i.e., his body automatically adapts to any situation or environment he is placed in, allowing him to survive possibly anything; the exact nature and limits of his powers have not been revealed. Examples of his powers include: gaining night-vision after a few seconds in the dark; functional gills after being submerged in water; fire-proof skin after being exposed to flame; increasing his own intelligence; converting his body into pure energy; no longer requiring oxygen after being sucked into space; morphing into a sponge when shot at with… Read more »
I think there may be another. The “Different” Black Guy Distinguishing Traits: Whatever is understood to not be associated with black men. The easiest way to recognize this black guy is either: 1. He will be in a film/show with lots of other black men but will stick out like a sore thumb because he doesn’t “act like” the rest of them. 2. He will be in a film/show with almost no other black men and he will appear in an unexpected manner. Role In Plot: Usually side character but sometimes may be full on supporting character. Is Insulting Because:… Read more »
Oh wow Hollywood relies heavily on stock characters, I am astounded.