 Starring: Sidney Poitier, Tony Curtis, Theodore Bikel, Charles McGraw, Lon Chaney Jr.Director: Stanley Kramer Year Of Release: 1958 Plot: Joker Jackson and Noah Cullen are two convicts on a chain gang who hate each other. After a truck prison accident, they flee and are pursued by the police. However despite the fact they dont like each other, the fact theyre chained together means theyre utterly dependent on one another, and by the time the chains come off, their enmity has turned to respect. |
The Defiant Ones is an interesting movie for a couple of reasons. In many ways it marked a big step forward for Black people on the big screen, but nowadays its often hailed as having helped create a barrier to true screen equality, as the prototype for the much-derided magical negro movie stereotype.
At the time it was first released in 1958, the movie was seen as very progressive. In the 1950s movies rarely dealt with issues surrounding race. Indeed, characters that werent white were few and far between, and those who did exist normally stayed in the background, often there to service the more important white people. However Hollywood was making a few inroads. Sidney Poitier had a hit in 1955 with Blackboard Jungle, the same year that Dorothy Dandridge became the first African-American woman to be nominated for the Best Actress Oscar for Carmen Jones.
The Defiant Ones was another big success and scored Poitier an Oscar nomination, becoming the first black person to be acknowledged in the Best Actor category. (As Poitier was born in the Bahamas, almost amazingly and somewhat shockingly, the first African-American Best Actor Oscar nominee was James Earl Jones for The Great White Hope in 1970, with the first winner having to wait until Denzel Washington in 2001). The Defiant Ones deliberately tried to deal with the relationship between the races, although toning it down somewhat. Indeed, Robert Mitchum turned down the Tony Curtis role in the film due to the fact hed been on a chain gang and knew that racism in the Deep South was so entrenched that a black man would never be chained to a white man, despite both being prisoners, and so he found the whole premise unbelievable.
It was definitely seen as a progressive movie on its release, showing co-operation between the races and two people one black and one white coming to understand and respect one another. However in recent years its reputation has somewhat reversed, with many regarding it as the prototype for films magical negro stereotype. This term was popularised by Spike Lee in 2001, when he was talking to students about the super-duper magical Negro”, although the idea goes back further.
It refers to a kind of modern version of the noble savage, a character who, according to Wikipedia, The magical negro is a supporting, sometimes mystical stock character in fiction who, by use of special insight or powers, helps the white protagonist get out of trouble. The word Negro, now considered by many as archaic and sometimes offensive, is used intentionally to suggest that the archetype is a racist throwback, an update of the Sambo and savage other stereotypes.
The character often, but not always, has some sort of literal magical powers, but they are all brought together by the fact that their entire reason to exist in the story is to bring enlightenment to a white character. Many see it as a particularly pernicious stereotype as on the surface it seems to be showing black people in a positive light, however ultimately they are subordinate to the white character, as they only exist to help them. Theyre also seen as a way of allowing people to like individual black characters while ignoring black culture.
Poitier is now seen by some as having created several of these magical Negro characters, in the likes of The Defiant Ones, To Sir With Love, Lilies Of The Field and Guess Whos Coming To Dinner, with many regarding the last of those as particularly striking for tackling the issue of miscegenation while completely ignoring the issue of sex. It did this because it wanted to reject and knock down the another stereotype that all black men want to do is sleep with white women but it goes so far the other way that it creates an equally unrealistic presentation of reality.
Perhaps the most notably contentious magical Negroes are the ones that pop up in Stephen Kings books and films. The likes of Dick Halloran in The Shining, Mother Abigail in The Stand and John Coffey in The Green Mile are all literally magical black characters, who seem to exist for no other purpose to help out and change the white protagonists by putting them in touch with mystical ideas modern culture has forgotten about. All of them also die just after theyve imparted their knowledge. In fact this is quite common, where the magical Negro dies once the white people dont need them anymore.
Even Jennifer Hudson in the Sex and the City movie has been lumped into this stereotype by some people, because shes there to help out, support and advise Carrie when shes at an emotional low, but as soon as the main white character is feeling better, Hudson is pretty much ignored for the rest of the film.
The magical Negro is just one example of the difficulties of dealing with other cultures in film. What is seen as progressive and positive by some can be seen as a barrier and borderline racist by others. Its a similar case with stories in which white characters go native, such as Dances With Wolves and Avatar. Again it initially seems to be a positive depiction of other races, however everything exists in relationship to the white character. The other culture is always presented in terms of how its the opposite of modern western culture, rather than existing independently in its own right.
Take Avatar, which is essentially about an entire culture of noble savage, magical negroes, where initially their importance is solely about helping the white character see the error of his ways, help him regain his soul and show him their magical ways. Then once theyve imparted their knowledge, its time to turn things on its head so that the white man leads them against their oppressor. Once more they are subservient to a white character, as their future rests on being led to victory by them theyre too primitive and stupid to do it on their own even if the people theyre fighting are other white people (its also noticeable in these stories how many of the native cultures have a prophecy of an outsider who will come to rescue them, giving the impression that other cultures largely just sit around waiting for white people to show up and save them).
Both the white-man-going-native and the magical negro stereotype play on the ideas of primitivism, which mainly concerns the notion that white, modern culture has somehow lost touch with something important (the human soul, magic, harmony etc.), and that other ethnicities and cultures have managed to hang on to this. It also suggests that these primitive cultures are closer to the true state of man, and therefore happier and better than us.
While the tenets of primitivism are dubious to say the least particularly the idea that theres was some halcyon past, when mankind was far more primitive but indubitably good, happy, wise and in touch with the world around it (ignoring the disease, pestilence and war that went on long before Europeans started causing trouble around the world) but again its very much a white mans view of the situation, where modern western people ignore the complexities of other cultures and instead reduce them to how they compare to the west, as if they only exist so we can look at them wistfully. Undoubtedly we could learn a lot from other cultures, but full-on primitivism, as expounded by the likes of Avatar, tends to be short-sighted and can often border on outright racism.
Its a difficult issue, particularly as these are stereotypes that are rarely challenged purely because they seem to be presenting other cultures in a positive light. However if non-white characters arent being treated as genuine equals and only exists in terms of how they relate to the white folks and often only seem to exist in order to help out the white folk it is a problem.
It just goes to show how a movie like The Defiant Ones can be seen as both progress and stumbling block at the same time.
TIM ISAAC
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