Go searching on social media, and also you’ll discover so much of wince-inducing responses to the title of Kobi Libii’s debut function, The American Society of Magical Negroes, starting from people offended that it exists to people expressing ghoulish delight that they’ve an excuse to use the phrase “Negro” in public. Libii’s movie is a darkly comedic satire constructing off a common trope first popularized as a term by director Spike Lee in 2001 — the Black film characters, significantly in ’90s motion pictures, who solely exist to help white characters and additional their character arcs. In Libii’s story, that Black help community is a codified secret society of Black women and men with precise magical powers, which they use to consolation and help white people so that they’ll be much less brittle, tense, and inherently harmful to people of coloration.
The idea is confrontational, particularly for the reason that society firmly believes Black people ought to (consistent with the trope) bury their own wants and needs so as to extra successfully cater to white people. And the title is equally confrontational — by design. Critics and students writing in regards to the trope typically bowdlerize it to “magical Black character” or different softened variations of the time period — even within the trailer, protagonist Aren (Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Amongst Thieves’ Justice Smith) awkwardly means that the society ought to discover a extra acceptable, trendy identify.
Libii advised Polygon forward of the movie’s launch that he felt it was essential to identify probably the most recognizable and direct model of the trope — and that the discomfort he’s seen round it from white people particularly may really be instructive to them.
“For me, it’s partially about making the film recognizable as a response to the trope, as opposed to just a society of magical Black people that do an insane thing,” he mentioned. “It’s downstream of this racist trope, not downstream of just me wanting to see Black people in this situation.”
Libii says that for the reason that film’s world premiere on the 2024 Sundance Movie Competition, he’s seen a “very common white reaction to the title” that he finds intriguing.
“White audience members are saying, ‘Well, am I allowed to say it? How am I supposed to say it?’ and expressing their discomfort at navigating the title,” he says. “As a satirist, I’m very interested in that, because it’s a film about, among other things, that discrepancy between white and Black comfort. […] That real discomfort with their own discomfort — their immediate centering of their own white discomfort in this personal film about a Black experience — I find that knee-jerk response really interesting.”
Libii has seen people on-line worrying about how to ask for a ticket to the movie on the field workplace, and he finds that significantly amusing: “I promise you, if you don’t want to say the word, you can figure out a way to get a ticket to the movie without saying it. I find this sort of hand-wringing about it a little disingenuous, frankly. When was the last time you actually said the name of a movie to get a ticket? You’ll be fine. You’ll sort it out. You’re clever.”
Picture: Focus Options/Everett Assortment
He additionally feels that people feeling squeamish in regards to the title is perhaps getting a small style of what the Black characters within the film are feeling, as they fear about what white people may take into consideration them, and what hazard that response may put them in. “It’s like that phrase: ‘If all you’ve known is privilege, then inconvenience feels like oppression,’” he says. “It’s simply double consciousness, proper? Consistently transferring by the world, I’ve to take into consideration two audiences. I’ve to take into consideration how my actions would ring out in a vacuum within the Black group, and with my friends and family and friends. After which, Oh, wait, how will they be perceived by this white one who has energy on this scenario? I’m continually doing that double work.
“And I think for some white audiences, sincerely, in navigating a title like this, it’s the first time they’ve ever had to think about two audiences at the same time: Well, I might be comfortable saying it, but what’s the Black person over here going to think? And that double consciousness, that work of thinking for two audiences, is work we’re constantly doing. So that’s all to say that again, as a satirist, I find that the white discomfort around the title is part of the work the movie is doing. I’m endlessly interested in that reaction.”
The American Society of Magical Negroes debuts in theaters on March 22.
