MovieChat Forums > Lilies of the Field (1963) Discussion > Well meaning magical negro movie

Well meaning magical negro movie


Only difference is that the magical negro in this case is cast as the protagonist.

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I disagree. If you want to get stuck on the surface of things and see it only as a movie about a black man who helps out a bunch of white nuns, that's your prerogative but it dismisses much of what's at the heart of the movie - including Homer Smith's character development.

I saw it as a movie about a man who's been adrift but who now gets the opportunity to leave something permanent behind him, to undertake a project that demands the best of him and his skills. He's torn between wanting to get away from this little struggling community in the middle of nowhere and sticking around and answering the challenge. Homer is a regular imperfect guy, not a saint. He isn't chock full of wisdom and hope and fluffy goodness. He argues, struggles, clashes with Mother Maria not just about the work but about how she perceives him (he doesn't want to be seen as an instrument of divine will but as his own man). To dismiss his character with a simplistic label like "magical negro" doesn't do him justice; in watching this movie I saw him as an individual and not as a "type" sent to fulfill some function for white people. Homer has his own journey through the film.

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Good reply.

It's not simply a movie about a black man helping out some white nuns, it's about an unemployed black handyman who triumphs by virtue of his unstinting devotion to his white benefactors, as evidenced by the fact that he takes on a part-time job so he can afford to continue his unpaid services to them. The absurdity of that makes it a magical negro movie. I wouldn't say that's all we can derive from this endearing film, but it is that.

There wouldn't be any drama if the protagonist didn't rub up against the other characters in one way or another or if he lacked inner conflict. He's the protagonist, remember? (It's what makes this magical negro movie different from most of the rest). And while he is far from being complex, Homer as protagonist is bound to have a character arc. But with all that, he is still sweetness and selfless devotion incarnate, whiling away his free hours helping the nuns brush up on their English or teaching them a Baptist call-and-response song.

That's just where white America wanted black male characters like Homer in 1963: as far away from the bedrooms of their daughters as possible, providing sexless services to white women (some pride and minor griping allowed), far from the cities and the danger of collective worker and civil rights action.

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If you watch the scene where he takes the part-time job so he can be the nuns' "contractor" you'll see that he does it mostly for his own pride, since the guy was skeptical that someone like him would ever be hired as a building supervisor or contractor. And dirt-poor nuns barely living off a farm in the desert make for pretty paltry benefactors. As the movie progresses he's doing this as much for himself as for anyone (to him it's his project - and also about his relationship with faith and the divine, a moment marked by him putting his name on the top of the chapel), and at the end there isn't a sweet sentimental feeling of the black guy basking in acceptance and approval now that he's done his self-sacrificing deeds for white people. And the white people don't give off a feeling of having been ennobled or enriched by having a saintly black character in their midst. One of the things Homer wants in fact from Mother Maria is personal recognition and thanks, as opposed to just being happy to let his good deeds go unremarked or unrecognized with himself being seen as an instrument of divine will.

As for America's views on black people, yes it was screwed up especially then. When Poitier made Guess Who's Coming to Dinner five years after this movie there were still a bunch of states forbidding marriage between black people and white people (they had to keep Poitier's sexuality so tame and barely existent there to even make the movie). And prior to Poitier, Hollywood didn't seem to give any meaningful roles to black people with the exception of some musicals (though maybe there are other movies I don't know of); acting roles tended to be for the parts of servants who weren't too bright, and there was also the stereotype of black people being super sexually aggressive. So yes, you wouldn't have seen Poitier get a more sexual role in the 1960s where he would be allowed to just be a guy and possibly have a real romance with a white woman. That's a sad fact, and it was a constraint on what movies he could make and what roles he could have. Just to have a decent black guy in a protagonist's role like this one was amazingly a revolutionary concept then. Especially when he calls a racist white guy 'boy' (as he does in Lilies of the Field) or slaps them like In the Heat of the Night. Back then it was a huge deal that he did those things, and in truth those scenes still have a lot of power these days.

But in any case for Lilies of the Field, I couldn't see him as a "type" of person. There are things going on in that movie and in his character that can't be reduced to a pat label. It also didn't strike me as out of the ordinary that a black actor was playing this part (the movie in many ways could have worked with an uncommitted drifter type played by a white actor who pitches in to help a community - except in those movies, they might have given the white actor a love interest of some kind, whereas here they didn't, for the reasons brought up - but the lack of a love interest didn't take away from the plot at least here).

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But in any case for Lilies of the Field, I couldn't see him as a "type" of person. There are things going on in that movie and in his character that can't be reduced to a pat label. It also didn't strike me as out of the ordinary that a black actor was playing this part (the movie in many ways could have worked with an uncommitted drifter type played by a white actor who pitches in to help a community - except in those movies, they might have given the white actor a love interest of some kind, whereas here they didn't, for the reasons brought up - but the lack of a love interest didn't take away from the plot at least here).
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This is a reasonable disagreement & I enjoy reading your posts. If I was on a debating team and had to argue it the other way, I'd take your approach.

However, underneath it all, we still have the ingredients of magical negro fare: a noble, genial black man without a past who shows up in the knick of time to perform heroic, selfless labor for white strangers. Because the nuns are not American, they are, for all intents and purposes, unblemished by racism. Consequently the white audience can enjoy Homer's sacrifices without guilt. If Homer had been white, the film would have focused more on how the act of sacrifice transformed his own life and character. Instead, the emphasis is on the completion of the task needed for the nun's real work to begin.

I'm not trying to persuade anyone to dislike the movie. It's as disarming a film as you're gonna find this side of hokeytown. But at least we should try to watch it with a layer of awareness that was largely missing back when it was first shown in theaters. Ironically, even though we're arguing about this, I would say you're one of those who is already 99% of the way there.

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jamal89: really have enjoyed your debate about this "magical negro movie."

"a noble, genial black man without a past who shows up in the knick of time to perform heroic, selfless labor for white strangers. Because the nuns are not American, they are, for all intents and purposes, unblemished by racism. Consequently the white audience can enjoy Homer's sacrifices without guilt."

Was reading about another Poitier movie a while back, in which he plays a very different kind of character, "In the Heat of the Night," and in particular the scene where he slaps the face of Eric Endicott, played by actor Larry Gates.

As a 13 y/o white viewer when that movie came out, I was shocked to see that happen in a movie, even a Poitier movie (my east Texas born-and-bred parents wouldn't let me bring a Fats Domino record into the house but Sidney Poitier movies were safe). It's a hard slap, and comes immediately after Gates' character gives Virgil Tibbs a much softer, almost dismissive slap after Tibbs implies Endicott might be involved in a murder.

Years later, I read an interview with Poitier in which he related that the second slap was not in the original screenplay (or source novel), and he agreed to do the film only if it was added, and retained in all release versions of the picture.

It's interesting to chart the course of minority representations in white-dominated pop culture. At one and the same time, it's gratifying to see advancing steps such as Poitier's stardom and Oscar win, and unnerving to see how limited some of those steps had to be.

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"Because the nuns are not American, they are unblemished by racism"?? What kind of America-hating indoctrination warped you as a youngster, Jamil? Don't bother to answer, I already know, you got all your attitudes from the standard typical liberal socialist minds of the NEA and demagogues like tavis smiley. Just remember, Jamul, those nuns had spent a lot of time living under Hitler and racism was already deeply embedded in old German culture anyhow.

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I really have to wonder why it matters so much that Homer was black. I saw this as a kid, probably 5th or 6th grade, because I remember which of my grandparents' houses I was in. I remember there were nuns, a car and the Amen song. When I saw this recently on TCM, I was really happy to have found it because I remembered enjoying the movie and it is one of two or three movies I remember watching with my whole family: adults on couches and chairs, grandchildren spread all over the floor.

Here's the thing, my grandparents lived in a small rural town in the Midwest; this was the early 70s. There really were no African Americans in the area - maybe one family in the county. In fact, just forty years earlier, my Great Grandfather was threatened with lynching by the KKK, presumably because he was Catholic;it was really more a political thing because he was organizing the Catholic and more recent immigrants (the previous century) to be able to sell the crops because the KKK members had blackballed them. Mexican migrant workers would come through during the summer following the crops. At the time, I lived in a small, mostly Catholic town in NJ that is a suburb of Newark. African Americans were not well represented in that community - most tended to be Protestant. What I'm saying, is that until we moved to the DC area when I was in sixth grade (1974) my life was pretty white bread, Leave It To Beaver.

Despite that, my parents managed to raise three children who do not use race to differentiate people, yet still manage to respect cultural differences. I saw a man (who could have just as easily been a handy woman) who helped nuns who needed help. They had skills for running the farm, but not for building the church. The visitor, be it male, female, white, black, purple, Christian, Jewish, Hindu, human or Martian had skills that could help them. In turn, they helped him to grow as a person. Magical Negro? I think it's more of a human being with compassion and empathy for fellow humans; and a nun who recognized a fellow human that needed a purpose in life.

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I disagree where you say:

(to him it's his project - and also about his relationship with faith and the divine, a moment marked by him putting his name on the top of the chapel),


He alluded earlier that he wished he received more education so he could be an "architect" or an "engineer", so he could properly build them their chapel so when he came back, I feel, he was determined to do something permanent with his life by building the chapel, which he wanted to do on his own but finding even he needed help like the nuns. And when he put his name on the top of the Cross statue he did it as a means of saying he built that. He left a part of himself somewhere, and not just as the lone drifter, as he was, moving place to place. The Mother wanted him to stay which is why she kept on listing off those things to do at the end, and why she stopped singing when he got up to leave. He was a drifter but he left his mark, and that's why he signed his name.

-Nam

I am on the road less traveled...

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Benefactors? The nuns have nothing. They have no money, barely speak English, have little to no food. They're not giving him anything, they're asking him (in their own way) to give something to them. Which is help, because no one else is giving them any. He's not a "magic negro" you idiot, he's a godsend.

-Nam

I am on the road less traveled...

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". . . it's about an unemployed black handyman who triumphs by virtue of his unstinting devotion to his white benefactors . . . .

Bwahahahahahahahahahahahah!

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I guess it's tough being you.

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Wrong.

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No magical negro, as I posted earlier:


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magical_negro

Wiki says,

The Magical Negro is a supporting stock character in American cinema who is portrayed as coming to the aid of a film's white protagonists


dvigilante1's insinuation is without merit, even by the Wiki quote that he cites -
for the simple reason that Homer Smith/Poitier does not come to the aid of white protagaonists. Rather, Smith himself is the protagonist of the film and the novel. Sheesh.

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It's more a magical nun movie. The white ladies come to Poitier's character's aid by giving him a mission to accomplish.

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