The Evolution of Sambo and How Spike Lee Ruined Morgan For Me

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xN-T_WRs7eo&feature=results_video&playnext=1&list=PL97E51705D35F8009

Watch the video above. Just the first two minutes even.

You’ve just met “Sambo,” or a “Sambo,”rather. Sambo is essentially a stock character, that is, a character that carries many of the same traits from film to film, show to show, or from appearance to appearance in print. Sambo, specifically, is always black. He is often characterized by any combination of a clear lack of intellect, a propensity to scare easily, and really just any combination of any of the various black stereotypes created during and after the American slave era. While the traditional stock character of Sambo has essentially died out due to blatantly racist nature, the idea of a recurring African American stock character has not. It has simply evolved.

In a 2001 lecture at Yale University, African American filmmaker, Spike Lee, coined the term “Magical Negro.” To summarize, the Magical Negro is essentially a black character with some sort of power (whether it be overtly supernatural, or simply some specific wisdom) whose sole purpose is to help the white protagonist move forward towards his/her ultimate goal. I actually stumbled upon this while looking through information for my last blog post and thought this was worthy of it’s own. I’ve always understood the concept of limited roles for African American actors and the motives behind them, but I had never considered the idea of a STOCK character so immensely prevalent throughout film in the last twenty years or so.

The obvious character Lee mentioned in his lecture was Michael Clark Duncan’s portrayal of a wrongly accused prison inmate who literally possessed magical healing powers in The Green Mile. That made sense. The character lubricated major character development (all white characters) in the movie. But then I started considering other films based around the relationship of one white man and one black man.

One of my friends and I have this ongoing joke that Morgan Freeman basically plays God in every film he’s ever starred in (we obviously haven’t seen ALL of them, but our foundation is pretty solid). After all, he does literally play god in Bruce Almighty and Evan Almighty, his unwavering wisdom (omniscience?) in films like Seven and The Shawshank Redemption, and his ability to basically narrate half the films I’ve ever seen with a narrator involved all do point to a “God-like” status. Every film I just mentioned features a white lead actor (It could certainly be argued that Freeman plays the lead in Shawshank, but either way, his character serves largely to help the white character alongside him). Now maybe my view has become skewed after reading about Spike Lee’s lecture, but every one of these characters main functions seems to be helping the white lead character along through advice or powers.

Being familiar with Spike Lee, I am aware that he can be a bit of an extremist at times, but his idea, nonetheless, has left an imprint in my mind. If this concept of the “Magical Negro” as a stock character does truly exist and is as prevalent in modern cinema as it appears to be, is it really all that far from being an evolution of “Sambo?”