‘Animation is not an industry where there’s been a great deal of Black representation’
To quote the great Sam Cooke, itâs been a long time coming.
The upcoming animated adventure Soul will mark Pixarâs 22nd release, when it arrives this holiday season, bypassing theaters and going straight to Disney+. However, Soul marks a milestone in the Disney-owned studioâs two-decade, Oscar-honored run, being the first film to feature a Black protagonist. Jamie Foxx voices Joe, a music teacher and struggling jazz musician who may finally be on the brink of getting his Big Break. Thatâs just when he suffers an accident and winds up on the brink of dying, with his soul transported to the afterlife â and then to a realm of preexistence, when he befriends a rascally soul named 22 (Tina Fey), who resists birth.
âI mean, animation is not an industry where there has been a great deal of Black representation. It just hasnât,â Kemp Powers, the filmâs screenwriter and co-director, said during an early press conference where he was joined by director Pete Docter and producer Dana Murray. âI feel that Pixar is one of the few places that’s been very genuine in recognizing the shortcomings and making a tremendous, tremendous effort to start to rectify it. And I think this film is like that first effort.â
In a separate interviews with Yahoo Entertainment, the three addressed those âshortcomings.â For his part, the accomplished Pixar pro Docter (Monsters Inc., Up, Inside Out) admits that the studioâs record was âshamefulâ in that regard, and that it also posed the filmmakers certain challenges, like not being able to reference their past work. âItâs the first one, so thereâs a lot of pressure because you canât say, âWe did this there, so weâll do that here.â Thereâs been so many other characters of other backgrounds, that in a way you have more freedom because thereâs a chance to compare and balance things out. In this case, we wanted to make sure that it was authentic, that we didnât fall into cultural tropes and stereotypes. And that was not an easy process. It wasnât smooth. It was bumpy. But we kind of leaned into that and we wanted to know if we were doing it wrong before the film came while we still had a chance to correct things.â
That meant leaning on a team of âcultural consultantsâ that included anthropologist and educator Dr. Johnnetta Cole, jazz pianist Jon Batiste (The Late Show With Stephen Colbert bandleader who also composed music for the film) and The Roots drummer ?uestlove, who also provides a voice in Soul. They screened the film early for an all-Black audience. But perhaps most essential was the enlisting of Powers, the former jazz critic and One Night in Miami playwright whoâs poised to have a huge year with the Regina King-directed adaptation of his stage drama drawing early Oscar buzz. Powers was brought on as a writer and later also elevated to co-director.
âI think the most obvious comparison people will probably make is Pixarâs Coco, but itâs important to understand the differences,â Powers tells Yahoo Entertainment in reference to the 2017 hit with an all-Latinx voice cast that marked Pixarâs first to feature a minority lead character. âMexico is another country, and a completely different culture separate from America whereas with Black characters, it is both a unique culture but also an American culture at the same time. So itâs a culture thatâs very specific, where even though itâs American as anyone else, a lot of other Americans who arenât Black might not have an understanding of it or know much about it outside of our creative output, namely our music and a few things like that. So itâs a bit of a tightrope walk in that regard. Jazz is American art form. Joe is an American, but heâs also a culturally specific American.â
As groundbreaking as Soul is, there has already been criticism. Along with 2009âs The Princess and the Frog and 2019âs Spies in Disguise, Soul is the latest in a troubling trend in major studio animation where Black leads seem to spend much of their screen time, well, not actually as Black people. In Princess and the Frog, Tiana became an amphibian. In Spies, Will Smithâs super agent became a bird. And in Soul, Joe becomes a small glowy manifestation of his spiritual essence.
âI think it’s a legitimate concern, but it’s also about context,â said Powers during the press conference. âI’m as sensitive to those things is as anyone else. And for me, it’s definitely about the context in which you tell this characterâs story. There were a lot of caution cones we had to put up about being sensitive about for the first time telling a Black man story in an animated film, being aware of how easy it is to go off the rails. ⌠But we’ve never, at any point, tried to dismiss people’s concerns.â
âThat’s why we relied so heavily on our consultants and our trust,â said Murray. âWe made sure we leaned into those difficult conversations. It was something that we didn’t want to not talk about.â
Docter, meanwhile, says that the majority of the film â at least 50 percent â follows Joeâs life on Earth, while the minority is the soul world.
It feels like such perfect symmetry, the fact that a film called Soul about souls is lead by a man who clearly has soul in the musical sense of the word, but that was not actually the filmâs original design.
âHe was a scientist for a little while. We did a whole draft of him as a struggling actor who wanted to see his name up in the lights. There was a version of this where 22 was the main character. Where we thought, âWhat is this soul who sees Earth and is like, âNo, I donât want any part of that,ââ Docter said.
It wasnât until the filmmakers discovered an old video of Herbie Hancock telling a story about jazz great Miles Davis that the musician lightbulb went off. âOne of our early tasks was, how do we establish a goal for our main character that we are rooting for him,â Docter said. âAnd musician â especially jazz musician â did that because it felt like, âHeâs not out to be rich and famous, he just loves music.â So that gave us a rootable goal for that character to then foil.â
When Powers came on board, one of his central missions was fleshing out Joe and assuring he had the goods to carry the story and lead the audience on his mission.
If the response to that early test screening with a Black audience, not to mention a highly impressive 35-minute preview Disney showed press last month, are any indications, Soul looks primed to be another triumph in Pixarland.
âThis was actually the first time Pixar did a screening for an all-Black audience,â Powers said. âI’ll admit, that was for me on a personal level, one of the most anxiety-inducing days I had on this film because I’ve spent years working on this movie that ultimately I wanted to show to my family so that they could be proud of me. And that Black audience in that theater in many ways represented my family. So I can’t tell you how relieved I was at the end of that screening to hear the overwhelmingly positive reaction to it.â
Soul debuts Dec. 25 exclusively on Disney+.
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