ABSTRACT
In The Legend of Bagger Vance Will Smith plays a magical caddie to Matt Damon's Bagger Vance, and in The Green Mile Michael Clark Duncan plays an imprisoned giant to Tom Hanks' prison guard. Linda Williams makes an argument about the role of race in American popular culture that bears considering. She posits that the way that race works in films such as The Green Mile can be best understood by examining the role of melodrama within them. Both Williams and Toni Morrison then are interested in examining the role of race in American cultural production, and the often hidden role it plays in evoking emotion, or addressing larger questions. Before considering their approach to The Green Mile it is first important to give important setting and plot details about the work. Morrison's interest is in examining the Africanist presence specifically within American literature largely because of its status as American high culture.
