A social media backlash was not the response that writer and director Kobi Libii and his cast expected when the trailer to his debut feature, “The American Society of Magical Negroes,” dropped back in December. Perhaps false assumptions best sum up some of the response, as in the case of one viewer who said they expected a Black “Harry Potter” adaptation and felt blindsided.
Libii’s film is instead a satire examining the “magical negro” trope, a term Spike Lee is credited with coining decades ago to call out Hollywood’s tendency to spotlight Black characters in supporting roles that cater to white main characters.
Until recently, Black satirical films were a relative rarity on Hollywood’s biggest screen. With writer and director Cord Jefferson grabbing an Oscar win for best screenplay adaptation for “American Fiction,” that may change. In that regard, “The American Society of Magical Negroes” should be right on time.
Actor Justice Smith (“Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves,” “Jurassic World Dominion”) stars as Aren, a young visual artist who shrinks in the presence of white people and is recruited into the American Society of Magical Negroes by Roger, played by David Alan Grier, to hone his ability to make white people comfortable in order to keep Black people from being harmed.
“The happier they are, the safer we are,” Roger reasons to Aren.
Aren’s assignment to play buddy to Jason, a young, white, male tech professional, goes awry, however, when he starts to come into his own sense of self-worth and falls for Lizzie, whom Jason also likes.
“This conversation around the expectation that Black people are prioritizing white comfort over our own history and our own sense of self is an incredibly contemporary problem,” Libii told NBC News. “That’s happening politically in America right now. You see these laws being passed in places like Florida around what Black history is taught that are literally saying that elements…
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