'American Fiction' And The Wet Eyes Of The Sentimentalist | Defector
We tell ourselves stories to feed our delusions. It’s an ugly world out there, and so many Americans prefer the easy way out. We genuflect to the guru and the influencer; we admire the charlatans who can captivate a crowd and turn a quick buck. We prefer the CliffsNotes to the book, and all the […]
Any real art finds its level by meeting humans and life on their own terms. In place of that sort of probing, American Fiction gives you a movie about angst and love, a fantasy of good negro life so mired in sentiment it has no politic but the simplest judgment of the most obvious racism we can all agree is bad, and no depth outside of what we all need is more love in our lives. Implicit in a film like this—as with so much of the cinema, literature, and non-fiction by and about black people that has emerged post-George Floyd—is a participation trophy for the white, liberal audience: Kudos to you for watching; go tell a friend. Assuage your guilt for the price of a ticket; you're the good guys, after all.
Namwali Serpell: Pixar’s Troubled “Soul” (The New Yorker)
The most glaring artistic error in “Soul” is its misprision—its elision, really—of what soul means for black culture.
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Twenty-two’s fumbled attempts to puppeteer Joe’s body are excused as the ineptitude of any newbie soul, but they’re still played for laughs along a racial register.
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Inexplicably, all of Twenty-two’s attempts at being black at first disconcert but then enchant others—including Joe, who takes Twenty-two’s innocence for granted, despite her long history of soul counselling. She means well.
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Pixar’s “Soul” is, in fact, the latest in a long tradition of American race-transformation tales, each of which finds a pretext—a potion, a spell, a medical treatment, or simply makeup—to put a white person in a black body (or vice versa).
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The white desire to get inside black flesh is absolved as an empathy exercise. Blackface gets a moral makeover. It’s telling that, in most race-transformation tales, the ideal is presented as a white soul in a black body.
Well-meaning or no, that’s still slumming. “Soul” calls it “jazzing,” which would depress me were it not for the unwitting pun on, uh, jouissance.
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As in NBC’s “The Good Place,” the dirtbag, depressive white woman teaches the neurotic, brilliant black man how to stop fussing about ambition, cultivate gratitude for what you have, and just be. Not only does Twenty-two use Joe as a vehicle but the movie must also make the grandiose and grotesque claim that he has learned to live through her.
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“Soul” takes as its premise the idea that a soul, branded with a personality, might be swapped in and out of different kinds of bodies. Even if we ignore the problem that unborn souls seem already to have races and genders—it’s a kids’ movie, not Plato!—we have to swallow the still more fundamental premise that the soul is individual, is sole. This idea is built into how we generally use the word, in Standard English: He has a soul.
Black English says, He’s got soul. The most glaring artistic error in “Soul” is its misprision—its elision, really—of what soul means for black culture. The word is used to signify not just an individual unit but also an indivisible substrate, a communal energy, a vibe. For all of the creators’ efforts to thread the needle of racial representation, their desperate wish to be authentic without being stereotypical, “Soul” never utters a sentence like “She’s got soul,” never says “soul brother” or “soul sister” or “soul music.” Perhaps those terms are too antiquated, but there isn’t even a mention of the still popular “soul food”; the film’s universal delicacy is pepperoni pizza, not fried chicken, and we all know why.
