Comments on: Magical Negro Strikes Again?

By: Auguste

Auguste — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 04:09:12 +0000

Marie, you had 9 months to read the damn post, and you still couldn’t do it before commenting? Jesus.

By: Marie

Marie — Sun, 02 Dec 2007 22:42:34 +0000

What is so disturbing about having a black person be a hero? Or would be more comfortable having him play a gangster?

By: Noli Irritare Leones » Blog Archive » Black Snake Moan, and seeing the poison running in your own veins

Wed, 21 Mar 2007 15:23:44 +0000

[...] Lauren worried more about whether the film would be recycling the Magical Negro stereotype. But the final negative factor that gets me is the role of the black savior yet again pumped through a million movie theaters — not having seen the movie I don’t know but have to ask, is this another Magical Negro? Really, how many times in the past two decades has Hollywood made movie in which a black character saves a white character using magic, music, or some supernatural, mystical wisdom? (I can think of more than five examples off the top of my head right now.) [...]

By: Lauren

Lauren — Sun, 04 Mar 2007 23:31:47 +0000

I was a little bothered with my assessment after reading the Salon review (which completely blew off Brewer’s “my characters don’t care about oppression so I don’t either, nevermind that I invented the characters”) but felt better again after reading Stevens’ review. I’ll probably watch the movie, but it had better be more interesting than Hustle or I’ll write Brewer for my money back.

By: Mnemosyne

Mnemosyne — Sun, 04 Mar 2007 23:26:01 +0000

It’s funny how expectations affect the way I see a particular body. I just saw the photo of Ricci in BSM on the from page at Salon, and YUCK. Bony, wrong. Distressing. Yet, with a moment’s pause, I realize that she’s no skinnier than Sigourney Weaver, that six-foot giraffe, in Alien.

Yeah, but Sigourney Weaver is a full foot taller than Christina Ricci. That’s the problem — Ricci is trying to mimic the body of a tall person, but she’s 5 feet tall. She doesn’t have the length in the spine and ribcage and torso to do it (her organs have gotta have somewhere to go). So Ricci ends up looking like a concentration camp inmate. Sorry to Godwin, but that’s what she looks like, and it depresses me.

I expected Dana Stevens at Slate to have a good take on the film, and she does:

http://www.slate.com/id/2160961/

By: Thomas

Thomas — Fri, 02 Mar 2007 19:05:23 +0000

It’s funny how expectations affect the way I see a particular body. I just saw the photo of Ricci in BSM on the from page at Salon, and YUCK. Bony, wrong. Distressing. Yet, with a moment’s pause, I realize that she’s no skinnier than Sigourney Weaver, that six-foot giraffe, in Alien. When Ripley slips into her space suit in tiny bikini briefs, my eyes pop out of my head. Ricci walks around at the same body composition and I cringe. I’ve always seen Weaver like that, and she looks right in her skin. Ricci looks wrong that way, like she’s half the woman she used to be. And I think that’s just a construction I place on it because I know the backstory.

By: Hugo

Hugo — Fri, 02 Mar 2007 18:18:49 +0000

Yay, Thomas, you’re the first person I’ve heard say that. Absolutely right on.

By: Thomas

Thomas — Fri, 02 Mar 2007 15:52:19 +0000

Hugo, I loved Monster. During the big makeout scene outside the roller rink (to Journey — brilliant!) I leaned over to my wife and said, “when guys think about a scene with Christina Ricci and Charlize Theron making out, this probably is not what they envision.” To have done that without at all servicing the patriarchy by making it appealing to the male gaze was just fucking wonderful; one of the most unsung difficult things any filmmaker has done in a while. Also, Theron got the usual props for uglying up and making a monster seem three-dimensional and comprehensible if not sympathetic. However, I thought Selby was the tougher part. The brush strokes were much finer; the strains of self-discovery, immaturity, self-assertion, infatuation, callowness and cowardice criss-crossed each other; and it was not only a complex part, but in its own was a far less sympathetic one. Theron played Wournos for both operatic revusion and tradgedy, but Selby was easy to hate.

By: ks

ks — Fri, 02 Mar 2007 02:45:56 +0000

I probably won’t see it in the theater (small children and lack of babysitters). If anything, it’ll be checked out of the library sometime next year. I haven’t really heard much about it one way or the other, but I also really like Christina Ricci. So maybe it will go on the library list, after all.

By: Lynn Gazis-Sax

Lynn Gazis-Sax — Thu, 01 Mar 2007 20:50:40 +0000

I love Ricci, in The Opposite of Sex as well as in everything else I’ve seen her in. If I fail to see this one, it definitely won’t be for any lack of enthusiasm for Ricci.