What's up with the clumsy wizard archetype in media?

[Shamash]

The other day I was watching a cartoon called Elena of Avalor with my little cousin. She really liked the fantasy aspects of it, but one thing really bothered me.

The main character is a cool badass princess, one of her friends is a wizard in training. I was expecting someone with a bunch of cool Aztec and Mayan theme spells, but it was a clumsy and shy nerdy guy. What's up with that? Why do kid cartoons always make the magic users silly, nerdy and clumsy?

Think about it? Presto form the old D&D cartoon, Mickey Mouse in the Sorcerer's Apprentice, Madame Razz from She-Ra: Princess of Power, Orko, from He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, Zummi from Gummi Bears etc...

I hate that kids don't have cool magic users growing up, casters are either old and frail, nerdy and incompetent or girls.

What's up with that? Is magic supposed to be a silly thing? Or does it usually attract the loser of the group? I have always been the magic user of my group I don’t believe I was the shy clumsy guy (Ironically the rogue was).

[lord_khaine]

I guess its a question of not making said magic user so cool that they overshadow the main character of the show?

[Keltest]

I think its a two part thing. One is that wizardry, like most intellectual pursuits, requires a lot of time (like, decades) to really become the top of your field in. Therefore wizards in their 20s are still barely more than novices, and inexperienced at their craft.

The other thing is just the nerd stereotype. Theyre intellectual, therefore they must be clumsy and inept physically and socially.

[Gnoman]

There's an element of Absent Minded Professor involved, I think. The influence of Disney's The Sword In The Stone is probably a pretty big deal as well - in that movie Merlin doubles as Wise Old Mentor and Comic Relief, but it makes some sense with his knowledge of the future. I suspect that a lot of your examples (Mickey in The Sorcerer's Apprentice is exactly that - an apprentice. The actual Sorcerer is pretty awe-inspiring) were either inspired by that (just keeping the Comic Relief parts) or copy-catted the ones that were.

[Kitten Champion]

In the case of Presto, if his abilities worked consistently then he'd easily resolve most of the conflicts the party actually faced. Similarly, Mickey Mouse knowing what he was about would've undermined the whole Fantasia short and its moral - the apprentice trying to cheat his way out of hard work with a simple get-around only finds he's created a whole slew of much worse problems he's incapable of dealing with.

You need a justification for why magic can't literally magic-away your problems to sustain conflicts and express a lesson on why work ethic and personal responsibility are valuable -- that there aren't easy means to solve your problems and what seems that way will come back to bite you. While wizards screwing up in general is also more fantastically interesting/funny than mundane examples as a source of conflict and humour, thus Presto-like misadventures.

Most of the plots of Sabrina the Teenage Witch - which can be viewed as a sort of generic examples of how television writers approach magic for family audiences - are largely premised around either or both of these.

[Anonymouswizard]

I guess its a question of not making said magic user so cool that they overshadow the main character of the show?

I think it's a mixture of this and if you aren't too careful magic can render it impossible for a character to be challenged (the lack of limits on magic in Harry Potter already causes a handful of problems leading up to 'why didn't they kill Voldemort and then look for the Horcruxes while he was coming back to life again'). It's generally much easier to sort this out by limiting the character rather than limiting the magic, because then the writer can still justify whatever Deus ex Machina they need.

One thing I'll definitely agree that, at least in terms of actual wizards, this seems to be almost entirely a trait among 'children/family' media, stuff aimed at adults is a lot more willing to have badass wizards as major characters.

Although it's certainly not universal, I read (four of the) the Magyk/Septimus Heap books years ago and found them to be a great series for children with wizard main characters who got to be cool, skilled, powerful, funny, inexperienced, or whatever depending on the character. I also suspect positive discrimination causes modern examples to have less clumsy/comical female magic users (although again it's not universal, there are certainly inept girl wizards).

Note that if you're going to have a wizard both skilled and powerful in children's/family media then the easiest way to maintain tension is to keep them out of the plot, because most of the time you do not want to explain the details of magic to a younger audience (I suspect that this is why Dumbledore is kept out of the climax of most Harry Potter books). It's easier to keep the Warp Drive broken if Scotty isn't available, and unfortunately powerful wizards solve a lot more problems than Scotty to.

Actually, technology is a good example. If you're written plots that revolve around the struggle to get from A to B you aren't going to give the characters a pilot and a private jet, if the problem could be easily resolved by shooting the villain you won't give the characters guns (or will make them rubbish shots). The problem is that being able to competently solves magic fixes a lot more problems than any single piece of technology about 90% of the time.

TL;DR: it's easier to either make a wizard incompetent or out of focus compared to explaining the rules of magic and coming up with situations that can't be solved by spell X, Y, or Z.

[Kyberwulf]

I can't tell if this is a serious post, or just something that is suppose to be sarcastic.

I hate that kids don't have cool magic users growing up, casters are either old and frail, nerdy and incompetent or girls. I love how that last word seemed like it was spit out. Just.. Girls.

I think in most cases, when the show doesn't specifically revolve around magic users. Is that I think that people, either consciously or unconsciously don't want to respect intelligence. Or instill that in children. Magic is pretty much a stand in for Technology.

[dps]

Mainstream entertainment thinks that you need comic relief in works for kids. That in itself isn't a problem, but they think kids' stuff has to be dumbed down, so the comic relief usually turns out as overly slapsticky. You can't really have a fighter type be too clumsy and still be useful, but a magic user can be physically clumsy and still be good at casting magic.

And as for the elderly/frail mage, well, the idea is that it takes a long time studying magic to get good at it, and so a really good caster is going to be old. Note though that old doesn't necessarily mean frail; take Gandalf for example--he's certainly old, and might appear frail, but he's not actually frail.

All that said, I think the OP really cherry-picked examples, and we can easily come up with counter-examples. After all, who's the most well-known magic user in modern juvenile fiction? Harry Potter, who really doesn't match any of the complaints in the OP.

[Psyren]

I can't tell if this is a serious post, or just something that is suppose to be sarcastic.

I hate that kids don't have cool magic users growing up, casters are either old and frail, nerdy and incompetent or girls. I love how that last word seemed like it was spit out. Just.. Girls.

I think in most cases, when the show doesn't specifically revolve around magic users. Is that I think that people, either consciously or unconsciously don't want to respect intelligence. Or instill that in children. Magic is pretty much a stand in for Technology.

I think this is a bit paranoid. Other intellectual professions aren't portrayed in a negative light like this - doctors are nearly universally respected, as are scientists (unless they are intended to be villains.) Hackers and inventors are very often allowed to be cool.

I'd say Kitten Champion and lord_khaine have the right of it - it's a lot less to do with crapping on the smart kid, and a lot more to do with trying to bake in some kind of limitation to their magic that can still be overcome at opportune moments. Presto might fumble a lot, but when he rolls that 20, he's capable of reversing/resolving bad situations that the others can't even hope to touch. It's like having a Rod of Wonder where one of the possible outcomes is a free Wish - no matter what the situation, you might as well roll.

[Kyberwulf]

But that isn't what he is asking about. Like I said, setting matters.

In a show were Magic users are common, of course ALL magic users aren't going to be shown to be clumsy. They become the background characters. What matters is the core group. That is were you see the roles come into play. Such as the Bumbling Magic user, and other roles.

Doctors usually don't fill a role in the group, unless it's a show about doctors. Then again, doctors aren't all going to be respected. Also, Doctors aren't universally respected. There bunch of shows that show the doctors to be pretty bad characters, no one likes.

What those shows do, is create stereotypes. That's all this is. You can change the setting, yet you will always have roles that people fill. The main charcters, his crush, the jock, the cool one. The Nerdy one. That's all it is. The Nerdy one is always smart in some respect, but has no respect.

In these cases, in your group. There are people you respect, and people you don't. The nerd is someone you don't. They will do what they do.. but get respect like a scooby snack.

Smart people who don't fill the bumbling role, are either positions of authority, or the villains. You don't respect intelligence. You respect Authority.

[Kitten Champion]

Another thing that occurred to me - based on what Anonymouswizard said - is that most older animated Western productions were episodic in nature. Which is significant because it's very difficult to define - and thus impose limitations upon - magic within that universe when you have around 22 minutes to work before you're essentially forced to reset your writing to some predefined status quo.

Establishing that Presto's gimmick is a cosmic lottery hat is a hell of a lot easier than explaining the nuances of D&D magic to children, for instance. If you're She-Ra or He-Man you're not going to do much beyond the superficial with your universes magic with the logical constraints of your medium at the time, especially because I can easily imagine that magic-using characters would be perceived as less toyetic than sword-wielding ones in the common sense of production at the time.

This isn't an issue for Avatar: The Last Airbender where Aang is definitively the most competent magic-user in-setting, as defined by hours of serialized and semi-serialized content which establishes what the universe's magic is capable of. Similarly, lengthy anime/manga series like Slayers and Fullmetal Alchemist also have no issue with extremely capable magic-using protagonists as well.

[Aotrs Commander]

A combination of steriotyped cliches and poor writing (if you have to write your magic users as incompetant so they don't fix all the plots, you clearly didn't give even the slightest thought as to how your magic system works and are using as a lazy deus et machina because you couldn't be arsed to put some limitations on it).

The D&D cartoon was a particular offender, because they had a damned pre-written magic system THERE ready for the taking. But no, they had to use the tired old crap idea of transposed modern humans (which was tired even in the eighties) and decided to just completely ignore that system in favour of Random Crap. (And this is why the D&D cartoon was, basically, crap; I never liked it as a child (I'd watch it only if there was nothing else going on).)

I hate that kids don't have cool magic users growing up, casters are either old and frail, nerdy and incompetent or girls.

Really?

[Hopeless]

Regarding Presto...

He conjured up a freaking full sized aircraft carrier!!!

Try pulling THAT off in d&d!😉

[GloatingSwine]

Regarding Presto...

He conjured up a freaking full sized aircraft carrier!!!

Try pulling THAT off in d&d!😉

On this forum I wouldn't be surprised if someone could tell you the DC for doing it :P

[Aotrs Commander]

Regarding Presto...

He conjured up a freaking full sized aircraft carrier!!!

Try pulling THAT off in d&d!😉

And that encapsulates the entire problem. They didn't want to actually bother to have magic be anything other than "ability to do whatever random (usually stupid) thing we come up with" - so they could use as it a cheap deus et machina when they wanted - and as such, they had to then spend the rest of the time contriving reasons why the characters couldn't just handwave the problem away.

It's at that level of bad writing where you stop seeing the world being shown as a world and just see the writer behind it. And when all you can see is the man behind the screen, it doesn't matter what the image he's projecting is.



Mind you, the whole premise of the series as the search for home was tired, old and stale when they started, so...

I often say M.A.S.K was the worst of its stablemates of the eighties, but that is usually because I forget Dungeons & Dragons existed because it was so inept, unlike all the rest, I didn't WANT to watch it again on DVD.



But don't let me ragging on that particular cartoon derail the thread from the wider discussion, because, while the others had less excuses, they did it nearly as badly.

He-Man and She-Ra are almost tailor-made to be a bit jock-verses-nerd-ish (alibeit a unintentionally and without malice, but more of a bit of a reflection of the times. The steriotyping I mentioned earlier), and were aimed a bit lower on the child-adult sliding scale than the contemporaries. I never did see the newer revivial of He-Man, so I don't know if Orko was even it in, and if he was, whether they did a better job there.

I have to - very grudingly - give Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors some credit for their tame magic user. For one, they didn't do the whole magoic vrs science bullcrap. And while Gillian was old, he wasn't incompetant, at least. And to be fair, him being old and not able to use magic like it was water was a fair limitation on his magic system... So, actually, it made it work; for the given value of "work" that Jayce managed.

(Jayce was bad, don't get me wrong, but what made it more painful was the glimpses of how much better it could have been with more polish and less patronising restrictions. I would love to see what MJS could have done with it without those, or with a reboot with a slightly more adult (re: at the level of modern cartoons of that genera, e.g. Young Justice) tone.)

[Psyren]

Doctors usually don't fill a role in the group, unless it's a show about doctors.

Do you watch... like, literally any sci-fi ever? Star Trek? Stargate? BSG? Firefly?

Smart people who don't fill the bumbling role, are either positions of authority, or the villains. You don't respect intelligence. You respect Authority.

And when they get their authority because of their intelligence? Sherlock Holmes didn't rise through the ranks of the police force, rather they listen to him because he knows what he's talking about.

[Dienekes]

It's possibly, but maybe unknowningly, because vague magic is inherently poor storytelling.

So take Gandalf, he's smart, charismatic, and vaguely powerful. How powerful? Who knows. We know he can fight a Balrog which in the Silmarillion could take on armies. But if you have that level of power there really isn't a reason why the plot isn't "And then Gandalf cast a totally wicked cool spell and then Frodo teleported to Mount Doom and chucked the ring in and then Gandalf blew up all the orcs and it was awesome!"

That's not a story. That's crappy wish fulfillment that negates the actual interesting parts of the story.

Now to get around this Tolkien was smart enough to limit Gandalf in a lot of ways. He doesn't really go all out unless he's dealing with another maiar spirit like the Balrog. Because his job is to guide the peoples of Middle Earth. And , importantly, Gandalf disappears. He either dies, or is off on some side mission for the majority of the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings. Notably Rich does the same thing with Vaarsuvius. V could probably solve most of the problems the group faces so, V is mostly off doing something else or couldn't prepare the right spell for whatever reason.

But if you want to have the magic user be the protagonist you can't really do this. So you need a reason why your protagonist can't solve the plot right at the start. There are a few tricks that come up, one popular one is to rigorously plot out what abilities the protagonist has. Limiting the magic drastically. This is the superhero method. What can Iron Man do? He can fly, shoot missiles, and lasers, and then gets sent against enemies where flying and shooting missiles is not an auto-win. Same thing happens for most video game magic. Harry Potter. All the works of Brandon Sanderson, and so on.

The other option is to not limit the magic, but the character. Sure the magic can be used to solve the plot. But our hero can only get it to work half the time. Or maybe he's a coward and freezes up in conflict so he can't cast the right spell. Or any other personal imitation.

Then there are some more modernist takes that do allow the protagonist to basically do anything but make the struggle something internal. One Punch Man does a comedic viewing of this, while something like All-Star Superman plays it straight.

And of course the other obvious solution is to just not have the protagonist use the vague magic. Take any of the old Conan books. How does the magic work? No idea. It often involves sacrifice something and old gods. That's about all I can tel you. But Conan isn't using that magic. He's fighting it. And doesn't that make him so brave and awesome when he clashes with something with powers beyond our understanding? Or does that make him an idiot? I've heard both argued.

[Kyberwulf]

You don't seem to get what I am saying. Shows like star track still have roles they play. Spock isn't bumbling, but he does have moments where he is the butt of jokes. Why? besause he is so smart, he just doesn't get it. MaCoy isn't played for his intellegnce. He is played for his "world-savvy" thus doesn't fill the bumbling smart guy role.

No, in the stories, Sherlock doesn't count, because he is the main character. In those story Watson is the bumbling smart guy, when you compare him to Sherlock.

Also when I say they get their authority, I don't mean in story. I mean who they are suppose to represent. Sherlock doesn't have authority insomuch that he is the one who circumvents authority. He would be the cool guy. Who always seems to be on top of everything.

[Psyren]

You don't seem to get what I am saying. Shows like star track still have roles they play. Spock isn't bumbling, but he does have moments where he is the butt of jokes. Why? besause he is so smart, he just doesn't get it. MaCoy isn't played for his intellegnce. He is played for his "world-savvy" thus doesn't fill the bumbling smart guy role.

They're all the butt of jokes at one time or another. But that definitely isn't Spock's defining trait, nor is it for Bones or Chekov or any of them. They're all very smart (even Kirk) and that is never played negatively.

No, in the stories, Sherlock doesn't count, because he is the main character. In those story Watson is the bumbling smart guy, when you compare him to Sherlock.

Watson, bumbling?
At best he's the audience stand-in and so occasionally needs things explained to him for our benefit, but he's still very sharp in his own right.

Also when I say they get their authority, I don't mean in story. I mean who they are suppose to represent. Sherlock doesn't have authority insomuch that he is the one who circumvents authority. He would be the cool guy. Who always seems to be on top of everything.

And he's extremely intelligent. Funny how that works.

[An Enemy Spy]

You don't seem to get what I am saying. Shows like star track still have roles they play. Spock isn't bumbling, but he does have moments where he is the butt of jokes. Why? besause he is so smart, he just doesn't get it. MaCoy isn't played for his intellegnce. He is played for his "world-savvy" thus doesn't fill the bumbling smart guy role.

No, in the stories, Sherlock doesn't count, because he is the main character. In those story Watson is the bumbling smart guy, when you compare him to Sherlock.

Also when I say they get their authority, I don't mean in story. I mean who they are suppose to represent. Sherlock doesn't have authority insomuch that he is the one who circumvents authority. He would be the cool guy. Who always seems to be on top of everything.

McCoy and Spock are both very smart and both occasionally end up on the receiving end of each other's jokes because they are friends who like to rib on each other. Neither of them is a bumbler, or a nerd, or a way for the audience to laugh at those smart people who just don't get it.

You're just holding on to the most negative interpretation you can think of so you can lambaste mainstream audiences for being anti-intellectual, while ignoring the fact that dumb characters like Homer Simpson are far more often the butt of jokes than smart characters like Spock.

And we get the OP to please address the "girls" comment? I'm struggling to think of any explanation for that beyond plain old sexism. "Lousy wimmins stealing all our wizards."

[Gnoman]

Watson, bumbling?
At best he's the audience stand-in and so occasionally needs things explained to him for our benefit, but he's still very sharp in his own right.

That's true in the original stories and the more recent adaptations. In a lot of the older adaptations, Watson was a complete and utter idiot.

[Kyberwulf]

Is he though? extremely intelligent.. or does he just make logically fallacious guess and happens to be right because he is the main character, and thus. has to be cool.

[Olinser]

With regards to wizards on TV, they are almost always written by writers that haven't really read any fantasy themselves and are incapable of dealing outside of stereotypes because they don't actually have firsthand knowledge. And it isn't confined to wizards. The clumsy wizard, the stupid muscle-bound fighter, the evil plotting chancellor, etc. exist because lazy writers aren't really interested in creating their own characters when its so much easier to just make a recognizable stereotype.

This also applies to stereotypes about groups of people, as well. Stereotypes exist and continue to exist because media writers are, quite frankly, a rather cloistered group, they are almost never actual members of the groups in question, and they are incapable of seeing quite a number of groups and things beyond the stereotypes.

Nerds, video gamers, people that play D&D or any of its equivalents are prime examples (though far from the only ones). They are almost always portrayed the same way in media - pasty, clumsy, skinny, glasses-wearing guys with whiny voices or basement dwelling fat neckbeards, both of them totally incapable of talking to girls.

Stereotypes are used generally because of lazy writers because its easier than actually doing research and finding out actual facts.

[Pex]

The other day I was watching a cartoon called Elena of Avalor with my little cousin. She really liked the fantasy aspects of it, but one thing really bothered me.

The main character is a cool badass princess, one of her friends is a wizard in training. I was expecting someone with a bunch of cool Aztec and Mayan theme spells, but it was a clumsy and shy nerdy guy. What's up with that? Why do kid cartoons always make the magic users silly, nerdy and clumsy?

Is it more he's a wizard or that the wizard is a boy? Not permitted to outshine the main character princess.

I hate that kids don't have cool magic users growing up, casters are either old and frail, nerdy and incompetent or girls.

Perhaps that's a root cause for the popularity of Harry Potter.

[Psyren]

Is he though? extremely intelligent.. or does he just make logically fallacious guess and happens to be right because he is the main character, and thus. has to be cool.

Could you maybe make up your mind? Are smart characters made to be cool or made to be bumbling?

That's true in the original stories and the more recent adaptations. In a lot of the older adaptations, Watson was a complete and utter idiot.

The ones I was exposed to had Watson capable of assisting the police in Holmes' absence and things like that. Of course, we're talking about a 100+ year-old character here, so I freely admit I haven't read every Holmes story that ever existed.

But Kyber hasn't addressed any of the other shows I brought up yet though; Plenty of intelligent characters that are also quite cool. This goes treble for AI characters in sci-fi like Data, Legion, HK-47, K-2SO...

[Dienekes]

The ones I was exposed to had Watson capable of assisting the police in Holmes' absence and things like that. Of course, we're talking about a 100+ year-old character here, so I freely admit I haven't read every Holmes story that ever existed.

But Kyber hasn't addressed any of the other shows I brought up yet though; Plenty of intelligent characters that are also quite cool. This goes treble for AI characters in sci-fi like Data, Legion, HK-47, K-2SO...

The modern interpretation of Holmes is basically returning Watson to his former competence. Actually in many ways they're improving him. In the books he was a smart enough guy, but he really was there just to play off of Holmes and ask him to explain his deductions. Occasionally gather clues for him. Now he's a very active part of the investigative process and comes up with solutions on occasion, which I think only happened once in the books (I could be wrong there, it has been over a decade since my Sherlock phase).

But this wasn't always the case. Most notably the Rathbone-Bruce Holmes movies which for awhile were considered the Holmes incarnation by which all others were judged basically has Nigel Bruce portray Watson as an increasingly incompetent moron whose existence is solely to add some physical comedy and make Sherlock look even better when compared to this idiot that he keeps around as a pet or something.

And they're pretty good for what they are. But then I'm biased, I was basically raised on Basil Rathbone movies. His duel in The Mark of Zorro? Fantastic.

[Dr.Samurai]

And we get the OP to please address the "girls" comment? I'm struggling to think of any explanation for that beyond plain old sexism. "Lousy wimmins stealing all our wizards."

The OP is saying that if a magic user is portrayed female, the character is free to be cool or competent, young, etc. But if the magic user is male, then necessarily he must be old and frail, or nerdy and incompetent.

I'm not agreeing one way or the other, just clarifying.

I guess Dresden would qualify, since he's pretty nerdy.

I'd still be Dresden if given the chance.

[Dienekes]

The OP is saying that if a magic user is portrayed female, the character is free to be cool or competent, young, etc. But if the magic user is male, then necessarily he must be old and frail, or nerdy and incompetent.

I'm not agreeing one way or the other, just clarifying.

I guess Dresden would qualify, since he's pretty nerdy.

I'd still be Dresden if given the chance.

I think it was just referencing the magic girl genre, which I think is an anime thing. Honestly, I don't have much experience with them, but from what I've seen of anime in general, the reality warping power of anime tends to be a bit higher, and sillier, than a lot of western shows.

[Vogie]

The OP is saying that if a magic user is portrayed female, the character is free to be cool or competent, young, etc. But if the magic user is male, then necessarily he must be old and frail, or nerdy and incompetent.

I'm not agreeing one way or the other, just clarifying.

I guess Dresden would qualify, since he's pretty nerdy.

I'd still be Dresden if given the chance.

That makes a whole lot more sense. Women magic-user tropes range wildly from Maleficent to Baba Yaga in the woods. They could be attractive or unattractive, and also use magic to appear the other way.

I think that's largely a culture of the time - If you look down the "Badass Bookworm" list on TV Tropes, you won't see much from before the 90s.

There's Illya from Man from UNCLE, and Indiana Jones... and not much else.

[Themrys]

I love how that last word seemed like it was spit out. Just.. Girls.

Yeah. Girls. Because girls are automatically uncool.

Only males can be cool, apparently.

Nevermind the thousands of examples of male wizards in media, what the world needs is more male wizards. Yeah, right.