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To you. It sounds differently in the ears of a Black American.

The problem is that King tries to repurpose a racist trope to combat racist tropes, and fails to do so.

The Magical Negro trope and its long history can be discussed and debated without causing offense. For instance, one question that can be debated is whether or not such a racist stereotype can be used in a non-racist way. Along the same lines, can the racist stereotypes of the Black Mammy or the Shuffling Negro be used in non-racist ways? I think there probably are examples, and one from the films of Joseph L. Mankiewicz springs to mind.

And King also makes him a Magical Negro. One approach does not exclude the other, or more accurately: depicting the racism that Coffey is subjected to, and having him respond by being a Magical Negro is a long-lived stereotype–the Black person, who, no matter how badly treated, is still saintly–thus denying Black characters their humanity and human complexity by turning them into paragons of goodness/kindness. Had King acknowledged the trope’s racist past, then maybe there would be a way to use it in a non-racist fashion. But his uncritical/ahistorical presentation of it results in an endorsement of, rather than a challenge to, its racism.

King may not have intended this understanding, but by employing the Magical-Negro-as-Christ-Figure trope without contextualizing it, he opened himself up to a valid criticism of his use it it.

He was just keeping it real.

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Not in Europe, certainly not Ireland. However, Emma,
Dabri wrote a book a couple of years ago called ‘Dont Touch My Hair’, which deals with the exotisicisation of black hair in Irish society and that personal space is unimportant because of that fetish. We discuss the idea of the noble distinguished African, the Mandela figure, one who has to be pure and sainted. It’s an excellent read.

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Can’t agree at all with this article. And I think that’s mainly because the author wants to have it both ways, argue his case about ‘magical negroes’ on the example of King’s œuvre, but ignoring the examples not supporting his case.

For example, It’s Mike Hanlon is not just the chronicler of Derry, he’s also the sole member of the Losers who stuck in town, kept tabs on its history and watch over its dark foundation. Talking to his bedridden, dying father he reveals the fire at the ‘Black Spot’, a sideline event in the novel that nonetheless unmasks the barbarous racist atmosphere of a 1930s small town - in 1986, long before it could be considered woke or politically aware to do so in a work of popular genre fiction.

Hanlon is a very nuanced character, part narrator, part player, whom we meet in his farmboy childhood and the casual terrors, many of them equally casual racist, that entails. And as a grownup, matured beyond his years by unconsciously keeping watch over the sleeping beast that is Derry. He’s self-aware - and aware he’s the only one from the group who hasn’t made it big under Reagonomics. Because he kept in town.

His import for the story is such that he must be considered essential - but he’s no ‘magic negro’. He’s as ordinary as it gets.

A fairer critic of Mike’s perhaps disappointing story arch can be found here at the Constant Readers blog.

Then there’s the example of Abagail Freemantle, described through the eyes of protagonist Stu Redman. She is no doubt a character with magical qualities, a strong medium and prophetic voice that sends the final group of four towards Las Vegas to bring down Randall Flagg. She’s a 108 yo deeply religious - some might say fanatically so - woman and leaves Boulder because she feels she has sinned in being proud. But none of her traits are actually due to her being black. She is a magic character in a supernatural story. But she just happens to be black.

Yes, she dies after bringing the all-important message back to the white protagonists - but she dies serving her own purpose, not that of her white fellow characters who’d rather have had her staying with them.

If we want to criticise The Stand for depicting racial stereotypes the epilogue with Flagg being reborn on a tropical beach and the dark-skinned islanders bowing down to worship him is the place to stick the dagger.

A much more balanced, better explained and argued examination - in my view - of the phenomenon of magical negroes we find in Nnedi Okorafor’s essay STEPHEN KING’S SUPER-DUPER MAGICAL NEGROES. I’m not convinced regarding her reading of Mother Abagail - but she’s spot on about Susannah/Odetta/Detta from The Dark Tower series, the key witness against too simplistic accusations in that department.

Her conclusion, admittedly from 2004, comes down to this:

Speedy, Mother Abigail, Dick Halloran, and John Coffey are fascinating people. They are some of King’s greatest creations, I dare say. In worlds where magical things happen, there will be magical folks who are kind and full of wisdom and sacrifice. And there will be such folks who happen to be black. Nevertheless, these folks are flawed in ways they should not be—they are flawed in context.

Some say art imitates life, others think life imitates art. I say, “Who cares?” Art and life affect and feed off of each other; that makes entertainment always more than its definition. The issue of the Magical Negro cannot be dismissed as just part of entertaining an audience. The archetype of the Magical Negro has power in its powerlessness and it is not a positive type, leading to stereotypes, negative assumptions, and limited characterizations of black people in King’s work.

In the Dark Tower books, one learns that all of King’s books are connected to this central story of Roland the Gunslinger and his ka-tet, Eddie, Jake, and Susannah. The evil that Mother Abigail and Speedy fought against at some point is the evil that Roland and his group seek to defeat. It all ties together. And with the publishing of his last book in the Dark Tower series, King’s “Constant Readers” can finally learn whether the Dark Tower falls or stands.

Was all that sacrifice worth it? One will have to read and see.

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Giving FOREVER AND A DAY a read. So far its decent. Haven’t read a Bond novel in ages, so its nice to get, if nothing else, a different perspective on the character.

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That’s Role of Honour. The computer aspects are primitive by modern standards but I was happy to go along with it, especially from a 1980s perspective. Gardner does have Bond undergoing extensive training in his novels, and ROH has the computer education at the beginning. It could have been really dull, but I like how Gardner put the technology in its place with Bond and Percy’s flirting.

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Woods’ point is that King has employed the racist trope of the Magical Negro. You may think his piece would have been stronger, if he included examples where King did not use this stereotype, but his focus was on King’s use of it. Also, the fact that King on occasion wrote non-Magical Negro Black characters does not alter or diminish the fact that on occasion he did. His non-Magical Negro Black characters do not mitigate/balance out the Magical Negro ones. I adore William Faulkner’s work, and he has a few finely drawn Black characters. He also has some racist ones (in an early novel he compares a Black man to a mule), and one cohort neither cancels nor moderates the other.

So she followed the character arc of the Magical Negro

The character can serve her own purpose, and simultaneously possess the five Magical Negro attributes Okorafor enumerates–it’s the literary equivalent of having one’s cake and eating it too. Also, as Okorafor asks: why doesn’t Abigail help other Black people instead of white characters? According to her, if King had done so, “the stories would have been more complex, the characters more human, less lapdog.” Okorafor is right that King’s Magical Negroes are some of his best creations–but they are still Magical Negroes, no matter how well King draws them, or how well he sketches the oppressions they experience.

We may also be entering the realm of reception studies. A white reader may first and most strongly apprehend the nuances and psychology of a character, and its Magical Negro aspects second. They may even feel that the nuances and psychology mitigate/negate/outweigh the stereotype. I know that my Black family and friends see both the nuances and the stereotype, and in their perceptions give them equal weight. As a white reader/watcher, while I might see the stereotypes, they register as abstracts–they have never impacted my life in an actual negative way. But such stereotypes have had real world negative impacts on the lives of my family and friends.

If the character could have been white, then why did King make her Black and conjure up the racist trope of the Magical Negro? If her Blackness is beside the point, then what purpose is there in making Abigail Black? Okorafor nails it when she writes that King’s characters are “flawed in ways they should not be–they are flawed in context.” Context matters in writing just as much as character/psychology does.

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Is it often just being offended to vent justified anger, even if the person or trope is not the justified recipient for that anger?

And if for example the character of Abigail were a racist offense to Afro-Americans would someone as outspoken as Whoopi Goldberg be as happy to play her?

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I see what you mean and I respect that.

But I don´t think that King at any time uses that trope to channel hatred or ridicule of bigoted readers. Just the opposite. Also, he did not invent that trope. He might have been influenced by it, sure, but he then gave it his own spin into a, in my mind, nuanced character the reader could identify with and root for.

In my opinion, everything should be allowed to discuss. Just because something is a trope it should not become a taboo.

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I am not following your question. Pardon my denseness.

Here is what Whoopi said: “Of course, when you are human you are flawed and so she is probably not as Magic Negro as she was maybe 30-40 years ago.” She acknowledges that the original iteration of Abigail was a Magical Negro, and the character she is playing is a de-Magicked version of the her.

Also, I want to say that opposing one Black person’s take on something with another Black person’s take is suspect at best. I will be bold enough to say that I have come to know you, and know you offered the fact in the spirit of debate, but in American culture at least, it is understood as a less than honorable way of challenging a Black opinion. Of course, this tactic is not limited to issues regarding race. For years, I have dealt with people who, opposing my work for queer/sexual liberation, cite one and the other gay person who swears to how thoroughly promiscuous and drug-ridden gays are, and, therefore, why should such people have equality.

Though an author’s intentions cannot be known, I agree with your assessment. What is interesting is that King did not forestall such a reading or chose to make a reader aware of the trope’s problematic nature/history by critiquing it as he used it, or putting it in quotation marks (so to speak), or in any way going meta- on/with it. He tweaked the trope by adding some depth to the character, but Abigail still has the attributes of a Magical Negro. One cannot draw the conclusion that King is racist because he used the trope, or that a reader is racist if they do not find it problematic. But the trope is racist when used in an uncontextualized way.

This is is where reception studies comes in. You are not an abstract, featureless reader. As I pointed out, it may be possible for a white, non-American reader to identify with Abigail with greater ease than it is for a Black American reader to do so.

Agreed. But should racist tropes be used without critique/comment/renovation/contextualization? For me that is the pertinent question.

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To me the thing is, Wood just points the trope out - not always fairly in my view - he doesn’t ask why. What are the reasons for King using it?

If Wood had looked closer at the examples where King foregoes the easy trope, as Okorafor did, he might have wondered if it’s simply the purpose to serve the story. Because that’s the priority for King - he’s not out to earn points on the side with elements outside the story.

I don’t mean this in the sense of ‘just because’ - though ‘because’ is part of the answer here. King wrote for example The Stand in the late 1970s. At a time when the magic negro template was not at all a character concern discussed in feuilletons, and certainly not in genre literature that’s not expected to offer nuanced characters or realistic depiction of its environments.

In the end all characters in a story serve the needs of the story and nothing else (or so they should) - we just don’t get to ask ‘Hey, what’s in it for Gandalf?’ or ‘Why isn’t Frodo keeping that blasted ring and help his people build a benign hobbit empire?’ Because that’s not the story Tolkien has written. Because Tolkien - at that time and under these circumstances - couldn’t write a different book than the one he did.

And with King, a young and coming star heavily addicted to alcohol and various drugs, it’s the same. If he was at all aware of the trope (and I’m not sure he was) he certainly had other fish to fry while writing his early books in a frenzy of drug induced creativity. He wrote the books he did because at that time and under these circumstances he could not write them different.

Since those days King has come a long way evidently - what Wood claims as having gone ‘woke’. But effectively King simply noted accumulated critique of his work. And while that’s not something that will find its way directly into future work, it does so through the filter of the stories and characters peopling them. That’s why Detta Walker is not just the anti-thesis to the magical negro but practically three times the anti-thesis.

Another example Wood uses to support his case, Jerome Robinson, is actually a character far from ‘magic’ and actively parodying the trope as well as several other ‘negro/black/slave’ ones. And he’s even doing just what Okorafor suggests Abagail could, taking up studies and doing his own thing.

That other accusation by Wood, King not showing a black family in a black neighbourhood authentically, to me doesn’t even relate to the topic since it’s about something else entirely, not having the necessary insight and connection to black culture and society to depict them adequately. I cannot judge this, evidently, but this is once more a critique on another level and does not really help shedding light on the original thesis.

In German there’s the figure of the ‘noble savage’ as evidenced by James Fenimore Cooper’s and Karl May’s works. It’s a stock character related but not identical with the ‘magical negro’. The two may overlap but the earlier figure is largely outdated - unless you take into account genre staples like Marvel’s Namor and tv’s Man from Atlantis.

And that in turn often is a result of having little to no contact to indigenous people and just shaping them to the desired effects for the story. In the case of the noble savage often to a kind of educational and colonial vindication.

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No, pardon my bad English there. And thank you for giving me the benefit of the doubt should I have offended anyone by not describing my points clearly enough - or simply not understanding the issue as well as I thought I did.

Strangely, Whoopi Goldberg got into the crosshairs today by saying something which could be misconstrued also, partly because her argument actually could be misunderstood, partly because some people, IMO, wanted to misunderstand her to create the public outrage which seems to drive the conversation these days.

When I gave her participation as Abigail in the recent tv adaptation of THE STAND as one argument for the character not offending every Afro-American, I did not want to imply that this ends the discussion. No „hey, I‘ve got an Afro-American friend, so I’m not racist“-argument here.

What I meant to say is this: to put King into the spotlight for using tropes is perfectly legitimate. But to use that in order to suggest that he indeed is racist, is plain wrong. He is not deserving of that. My reception of that article featuring his Oscar tweet is that he was used to set an example. Why not choosing someone who actually fits the racist profile?

The other point I wanted to make: I agree with King that awards should be colorblind and given depending on artistic merit. However, I am very aware that people of color simply don’t have the chance to show their artistic merit because, at least in the past, they were not even hired in those categories or denied their attention. Therefore it was high time to focus on a change. Absolutely.

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I interrupt this discussion with some breaking news…

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There are always going to be people who look for reasons to get outraged, more so today since outrage commands such attention.

As for Whoopi: the Holocaust was not about race? That was weird to say the least.

I did not think so in the least.

That is the leap that must always be resisted.

My best friend and I have been talking about the need for there to be just as many mediocre-to-bad Black films and plays produced as there are mediocre-to-bad films and plays made by white artists.

There is also the reception problem. Anthony Hopkins winning the Oscar for Best Actor was well-deserved. But I wonder how receptive were non-Black voters who have had little experience of Black aesthetic expression toward the performances in MA RAINEY’S BLACK BOTTOM. The film contained more Black affect in its performances and other formal elements than one usually sees in a major film, where ethnic and other particularities are smoothed over to facilitate the widest reach.

There is no Platonic ideal of “Best” to which a performance or other aesthetic endeavor can be compared. Something that is relatable and recognizable to a reader/viewer will likely be seen as better than something that is not. Unfamiliarity with Black expression/aesthetics could cause someone not to recognize how good a particular performance is, and vote for the one for which they have a more readily available template for evaluation. Is this racist? No. But it is a bias.

I agree that Okorafor’s analysis is the better one.

I do not think he is. But my question is whether using a racist trope serves the interests/needs of the story.

It was certainly discussed in my feuilletons. In fact, it has been discussed since at least THE DEFIANT ONES (1958), and the emergence of Sidney Poitier, with discussion gathering steam/traction/attention in recent years.

I do not think that his awareness or lack of it is relevant. The trope is in his work, and it is there more than once. The issue under discussion is not King’s drug use or what color ink he wrote in or whether he used a typewriter. What we are talking about is a trope that has been in the cultural mix for decades, and which King drew on–consciously or unconsciously–and included in his novel. The issue is not about King, but about his work, and how the trope plays out in it, and how it is received by different readers.

It does. Both the use of the trope and King’s inauthenticity in depicting Black lives and communities demonstrate a lack of care in regard to depicting Black characters. Are King’s other characters and milieus equally inauthentic? If yes, then the answer is that King is a reckless writer with regard to authenticity. But if he gets the details right about non-Black characters, but is not as accurate with Black ones, then maybe he needs to do more research. Inauthentic characters/communities and use of racist tropes may indicate that King took shortcuts with his Black characters, relying more on second-hand knowledge and stereotypes than actual experience. Does this make him a racist? No. But I would argue that if an author relies on second-hand information and stereotypes as the material for some of their characters, they do not serve their stories well.

Artists are in a difficult spot. They need the freedom to create as they see fit. But part of aesthetic judgment is discerning how believable are the characters and worlds they present. In the fantasy genre, an artist has great leeway, but they have less leeway when the work is realistic. Additionally, cross-racial/sexual/gender/orientation/ethnicity depictions are often subject to higher levels of scrutiny because of artists having gotten them so wrong in the past. Does a character/place strike a reader as real, or has the author (in your apt phrasing) “shap[ed] them to the desired effects for the story.” Such manipulations may serve the story plot-wise, but not in terms of authenticity.

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I think this is problematic since, taken to its natural conclusion, it doesn’t just mean to write what you know but only write what you know, nothing else whatsoever. As you point out:

The creative process cannot - can never? - stand up to what we perceive as authenticity. Absolute authenticity precludes fiction and vice versa. Every work of imagination must be allowed to use authenticity to such degree as its own demands allow. That will be a different one for fantasy than for crime fiction; another degree for social drama than for satire. The task is not to betray its characters to reality and reality to the machinations of fiction. A character can be entirely imaginary and yet command a level of being real in its own way.

In my perception King never betrays his characters by making them caricatures. They serve the story - but that’s exactly what all characters in a story must do, the internal monologised heroes and heroines, the bitplayers, the rednecks, the Blacks. Even the vampires and werewolves serve the purpose of the tale. And yet they can claim a degree of authenticity, even the monsters that exist only in our deepest nightmares.

But you really have to judge for yourself. As you point out, this discussion is not about King but evidently about different perceptions of his œuvre. Do take a couple of the examples we’ve discussed, read them with a mind on whether they give you the feeling he’s mistreating his cast. Start out with The Green Mile as the obvious take off and then move to Mr Mercedes and Finders Keepers to see whether you think King is taking shortcuts and misusing clichés to his own means.

Every reader decides that anew with each page.

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Thanks very much. I was starting to believe I was mixing it up with another non-Bond novel.

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It may not be as problematic as you think. Also, unless it is a work of speculative fiction, a writer is always writing what they know.

I disagree. I have read books and seen plays and films where I felt that the characters behaved in ways not dictated by psychology or material circumstances, but because their creator needed them to act a particular way to move the plot along, without regard for whether the character’s psychology/material circumstances were likely to have brought about such behaviors. For me that is what authenticity is: the sense that it was likely/probable/consistent for characters of a particular psychology in a particular historical moment and environment to act in such a way. Even if the action is an exceptional one for the particular time and place, it should still come across as likely to have occurred (miracles and saintly behavior excepted, of course–with the concomitant question of why the character performs miracles/behaves in a saintly manner).

I would add the caveat that the ideal is that whatever level of authenticity is invoked, it be invoked with consistency across the entire work, with discrepancies interrogated.

You are adding the qualifier "absolute " now. I agree that absolute authenticity is impossible. But Character X should act in ways authentic to their psychology and consistent with the place/time of the narrative. Character anachronism is also fine if the guiding principle of the work is anachronism/fantasy. But what a white character says and does in a work set in South Dakota in 1952 should be among the possibilities of what white people said and did in South Dakota in 1952.

When I read “Moby-DIck” or “Lord Jim,” Melville’s and Conrad’s lived experiences inform the authenticity of their work (even though the events are fictitious). In contrast, when I read William Styron’s “The Confessions of Nat Turner” with its incompetent slave insurrectionist mooning over pale/frail blonde women, I am hearing a white voice doing a bad ventriloquism of a Black voice.

For me, an artist starts out with the potential for their characters to do anything that human beings do. As details such as time, place, economic status, race, ethnicity, education level, sexuality, gender, psychological make-up, etc. are added, they whittle away at the options these now specific characters have in now specific material circumstances.

Being dense again. I do understand what you mean here.

Again, not quite sure how you mean “betray” but I agree that King does not create caricatures.

Agreed. But I am not the best judge of King’s Magical Negroes. Black readers are. I may have increased insight due to my life’s circumstances, but, in general, Black readers will have much more.

I do not think it is a case of King mistreating his cast. I believe King sincere in his use of the stereotype of the Magical Negro–he must have thought it both the best possible path forward, and that he had modified it enough to leave the realm of stereotype.

Also, I do not think King alone in using stereotypes: that proud Mississippian William Faulkner, whom I consider the greatest writer in the English language in the 20th century, was notably bad at creating well-rounded Black characters.

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I am a well-rounded (almost spherical) “Black” reader and more than a little bit magical, and the insight I have into Stephen King’s work is that it bores me rigid. Such are my life’s circumstances. I appreciate this is not a particularly profound interjection into the discussion but I suppose I can be as bored or entertained by it all as anyone else. My tedium is an equal opportunities employer and I doubt my reaction is anything driven by my international beige pigment.

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I think what she also said and meant to convey was that the Nazis, like every totalitarian regime, did not really care whether one was Jewish, French, Russian or even German. If someone was critical of their plans and considered a problem they killed them. The main driving force of the Nazis was being evil against everyone in their path.

However, there is the undeniable fact that the Nazis sought out the Jewish people as a main scapegoat they could kill and make their „voters“ believe to be the sole reason for any problem.

This is what the outrage was about. Whoopi Goldberg wanted to draw attention to the basic evil idea of the Nazis. But it sounded wrong when she said it because her focus on this topic was more general.

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And then this happened:

I don’t think that was necessary.

On the other spectrum, real racists and Holocaust deniers are serving in congress and do not get censured.

Apparently, the media have a higher standard then politicians.

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In that case our gain of knowledge in this discussion will be limited to how we personally perceive King’s use - but that’s actually always the case, regardless how well a reader is fitted to perceive a certain aspect of it.

Black readers may call out certain aspects and other Black readers may not, it always comes down to the personal perception and neither credits nor discredits the one or the other. It’s always a subjective approach.

How to measure then our perception? Are we fair to the object of our critique? The only honest answer in my view must be whether we are entertained or not. If a story works for us or not.

When Jim says he’s bored stiff by King that’s the only real measure that counts for Jim. When I’m a fan for almost as long as I’m a Bond fan that’s the only real measure for me. Wood and Okorafor are both fans and still angered by the magical negro and that’s their perfectly fair answer for themselves. We can like a work and still be disturbed by aspects of it - or abhor one that still appeals to us with its elements.

When film Nazis are cast a lot of the time casting goes for tall, blond and blue-eyed. It was the Nazis’ own ‘aryan’ ideal - most Germans did not live up to. Not even most Nazis did (and many of the worst went to some lengths to keep non ‘aryan’ ancestors under the rug).

Yet it doesn’t throw me out of a film when Hardy Krüger, Peter van Eyck or Anton Diffring is showing up as ‘Bilderbuch-Nazi’. It may be a cliché - but it can still work within its story. And that’s what I mean with ‘betrayal’ of a character, you can depict them with the ‘help’ of clichés, tropes, even dog whistle idiocy - and still keep them believable within the limitations of the story.

Or you can ‘betray’ them, overdraw their features and traits, make them laughable and absurd caricatures. All of the Nazis in Indiana Jones are from that department. But Indiana Jones has no aspirations to believability, let alone authenticity. For Indiana Jones that’s okay because nothing in the entire tale is meant to be taken seriously.

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