“Soul” Controversy
The movie “Soul” dropped on Disney+ on Christmas day 2020. The overall premise of the movie is about a man that is an aspiring jazz musician. His name is Joe Gardner, and he first found his love of jazz at The Half Note jazz club. He was with his father and he found his love of jazz and learned to play the piano shortly after. Joe then, after being rejected many times and ending up as a full time middle-school band teacher, finally gets his big break with a famous jazz musician. Joe was talking on the phone about his gig and he falls through an open man hole. He then almost dies and goes into the world of the great unknown. Once he realizes that he is dead, he falls off of the conveyor belt to the great unknown, which is death. He then ends up in the Useminar, or the great before, and meets soul #22. They then go on an adventure to try and get Joe back in his body and back on Earth.
There is a lot of controversies over this movie. I personally watching this movie thought it was beautiful. It instantly became one of my favorite movies and has a phenomenal message of friendship, life, and finding your purpose in life. There is a black lead, Jamie Foxx, as Joe Gardner who is also black in the movie. Then there is a white woman, Tina Fay, as the second role. She plays soul #22 that helps Joe get back the Earth, and in turn, Joe helps her find her spark that she needs for her Earth pass.
One of the controversies over the movie is the “race problem.” People online have said that a black man should not have to get help from a white woman in order to help him change his life. If someone changes your life for the better and helps you out, you should not be focused on the color of their skin. Not to mention that people should not be making this movie about race. This is a beautiful movie with a beautiful life lesson and message. So what if there’s a black person as the main character and a white person as the second character? No one would know that unless they looked it up. You want to know why they wouldn’t know? Because the character that the white woman plays is a soul. The souls in the movie are a light blue, for all we know watching soul, it could be a purple person voicing soul #22.
Another thing people need to be aware of is that not everything has a deeper meaning. Not everything is going to be super thought out and meant to have a depper meaning. This for example is one of those things. It is simply one of those coincidences where the people that had the best voice for the part happened to be opposite colors. It doesn’t matter if soemone s black or white, race honestly doesn’t matter. We are all people, we all live in this Earth, we should all respect each other like we did back in the old days. The color of our skin doesn’t affect anything of our lives except for little things like washing your hair. There are millions of people in the world that are all different races. This doesn’t mean that all those people are bad people. Just because someone is black, or white, or Indian, I don’t care, just because they have a different skin color doesn’t mean they are bad people.
It’s a sad thing what our world has evolved into. I would hate to see what happens if we as a nation, and world, progress this way. The fact that people are making a big deal over a movie that is directed towards kids. If you haven’t watched the movie then I reccomend you go watch it. It has a phenomenal story line and had me on the edge of my seat the entire time. There is absolutely no race problem about this whatsoever and is another great work by Disney. My word of adivce from this article, don’t believe everything you read on social media, and live by the golden rule. Treat others the way you want to be treated.
Thank you for listening to angry writing time with Phoebe Matthews and I’ll see you next time.
