“The American Society of Magical Negroes” has everyone talking in Park City, Utah. The feature debut from filmmaker Kobi Libii premiered during the first weekend of this year’s Sundance Film Festival, weeks after the trailer went viral online, with many varied opinions about it subsequently flooding social media, exploring the film’s satirical approach and whether or not it succeeds in its premise.
Justice Smith stars as Aren, a young man who is “recruited into a secret society of magical Black people who dedicate their lives to a cause of utmost importance: making white people’s lives easier,” as previously reported. An examination of the “magical Negro” trope seen across forms of American media for decades, the satire also stars Tony Award-winning actor-comedian David Alan Grier.
TheGrio got a chance to attend both “The American Society of Magical Negroes” Sundance premiere and a subsequent panel featuring Libii, Smith and Grier, where they got to share a bit more of their respective perspectives regarding the film and its reception.
“The film is about the false promise of assimilation,” Libii explained to the audience at Macro Lodge, referring to some perceptions people may have about the leads of the film before seeing it. “One of the choices that I made in this film is to quite deliberately cast Justice, who is obviously a light-skinned Black man, and An-Li [Bogan] as the romantic lead, who is a very fair Asian-American woman. Part of the deliberateness about that is because one of the things the film is about, it is about the false promise of assimilation and about the proximity to whiteness that is, I think, for people who are closer to whiteness perhaps a bit more seductive.”
“I really believe that that offer of assimilation is so conditional that it’s never really going to be real for us,” he continued. “We’re never really going to be offered the full benefits of white privilege. But, in showing characters who have the greatest proximity to whiteness be rejected from that sort of opportunity to assimilate, to me, that sharpens the critique of this false promise of assimilation.”
For Grier, he appreciates the way Libii, the movie’s director, screenwriter and producer, starts a conversation about race in his script.
“I feel like, especially with social media, we live in an atmosphere of absolute,” he noted. “Are you Black? Are you white? Are you this, are you that?”
Recalling how he discovered that his great-grandmother was biracial, Grier spoke to how “sticky” conversations about race can be, especially for African-Americans. While he remembers having questions about his great-grandmother as a child, he explained, “That was a part of my family tree, and as I got older, those conversations changed.”
Instead of being a straight drama or comedy, “The American Society of Magical Negroes” lands somewhere decidedly in between, something Smith reflected on for the panel’s attendees.
“Comedy and drama are both rooted in truth,” he said, breaking down its satirical tone. “Throughout life, we are laughing at ourselves; we ebb and flow out of tragedy and humor, and often, during tragedy, we invoke humor to cope.”
“I never think about that when I act,” said Smith, who counts roles in “Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves” and “Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom” among his creative work. “I just think about the truth of the moment, and if it happens to be funny, it’s funny. If the script is good and solid, the beat will play how it’s supposed to play.”
“The American Society of Magical Negroes” will have an official premiere in theaters in March.
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