ONTD Original: A collection of anti-black & anti-fem moments in Pixar’s Soul (Ft. POC&Fem Creators)
Click to viewVid #1 Description: Discusses the racism in Soul
Vid #2 Description: Points out parallels to Get Out, discusses lessons in Soul
Vid #3 Description: Review of the emotional aspects of Soul, more positive take
Vid #4 Description: Review of the plot and hidden details, generally positive take
Vid #5 Description: Review of Soul and the racism, comparison to Princess & the Frog
Hi ONTD!
I recently watched Soul and loved it to pieces!!! But I also couldn’t help but be bothered by some of the implications in this movie. So I decided to make a list of the problematic moments I noticed.
SPOILER WARNING!!!!!!
[Spoiler (click to open)]
1. Early in the movie, 22 voiced by middle-aged white woman Tina Fey, makes a comment about how middle-aged white women’s voices are annoying. This is an unnecessary and betraying insult to white female audience members.
2. The character that guides and ultimately saves the white female character and black male character is an undeniable white male character in the form of Moonwind voiced by Graham Norton.
3. Two major female POC characters Terry (voiced by Maori actress Rachel House) and Libba (voiced by Phylicia Rashad) are portrayed as unreasonable or wrong-headed and need open-mindedness explained to them.
- Terry is portrayed as the anal-retentive soul accountant who needs to be tricked by the more open-minded soul counsellors for the movie to have a happy ending.
- Libba is Joe’s mom, who is portrayed as unsupportive of Joe’s dreams at the beginning of the movie until 22 intervenes and gets her to listen to Joe.
4. The body-swap storyline where the black character voice of Jamie Foxx loses his body “accidentally” is very very problematic as discussed many times on ONTD.
Problems:
a. Puts a black person’s spirit in the body of an animal when Joe’s spirit ends up in a cat, drawing a connection between black people and animals.
b. Has a white person voicing a black character in an abstract parallel to blackface.
c. Has the white person’s spirit try to steal the black character’s body towards the end of the movie when 22 runs off with Joe’s body, evoking a parallel to slavery.
5. The moral of the story follows the same trend from Princess and the Frog of confusingly lecturing black characters about not being workaholics and being too focused on following their dreams. Completely disregarding the issue that black people have to work twice as hard to get the same as white people.
6. Has the main black character learn a life-lesson through the white character, when Joe learns to be grateful for the little things from 22’s explorations in the city.
7. Has many oblivious and unintentional story parallel’s to Jordan Peele’s Get Out (2017).
Parallels:
a. Stolen black bodies by white people
b. Black life exchanged for white person’s life
c. Black characters being sent to a “sunken place”
d. Black characters interchangeable and mistaken for each other
8. Pixar was debating about Joe’s fate. If they were to kill him off it would be akin to sacrificing a black character for the life of a white character.
Conclusion: I still loved Soul but also recognize its many problems. Even though Soul attempts to be progressive by featuring a black main character and an older white female character in roles that are not tokenized, the movie ultimately betrays women and POC with its jokes and storyline implications. The movie is still pandering to its #1 target audience of white men.
Did you like Soul, ONTD? What other problematic moments did you notice in this movie ONTD?
Source 1, Source 2, Source 3, Source 4, Source 5