Black Men on Screen — Our Bible App

Day 1 of 4: Soul

“And the Word became flesh and lived among us” -John 1:14

Before I went to seminary, I went to film school. I often say that nothing could have prepared me for the former more than the latter. For one, both are deep studies into things that people often consume passively (religion and media). Secondly, scripture (like film) is an artifact of its time.

As we celebrate Black History Month, I want to look at scripture and films side-by-side to look at what our media is saying about Black masculinity to see how that may also inform our understanding of what God is doing in the world. I’ll be talking about key plot points in the films I am exploring: Soul, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, Sylvie’s Love, One Night in Miami, season 5 of This Is Us. Consider this your “spoiler warning.”

Soul may seem like an unusual place to begin an exploration of Black manhood. On Christmas Day in 2020, Disney+ released the Pixar film on their platform to widespread acclaim by both critics and general audiences. Let me say first and foremost that I do love the film! It is beautiful to look at, the overall message is one with which I totally agree, and centering a film around jazz is an easy way to win me over.

So many people, including myself, enjoyed the film… and I can’t ignore that Joe, the main character voiced by Jamie Foxx, spends most of the film not in his body.

Some have argued that this is nitpicking. Perhaps, but it should be noted that this is a recurring trope that appears in animation. Black characters are often disembodied and then re-embodied in animals. Think of Disney’s The Princess and the Frog. Tiana, widely celebrated as the first black Disney princess, spends most of the film with the body of a frog. In Soul, Joe is first disembodied as a blue soul blob and then finds himself stuck in the body of a cat.

Why is this a big deal? Because historically, there has been an assault on Black bodies and a particular association with Black male bodies as a threat. From its early history, this country has gone out of its way to portray black men as threatening to white property (this, of course, includes white women). While Emmett Till’s story was not that long ago, we don’t have to look back even that far to see it played out. At the same time that the Ahmad Aubery case was horrifying the nation, there was also the story of Christian Cooper. Cooper, while bird watching, had a white woman blatantly weaponize the fear of black bodies. In the woman’s own words “I'm taking a picture and calling the cops. I'm going to tell them there's an African American man threatening my life."

Soul is, in many ways, a celebration of the experience of being embodied. The issue is that it is not Joe’s celebration of his own embodiment. It’s the character 22 — voiced by Tina Fey — who is having the experience of enjoying food for the first time, being moved by music and embraced by loved ones — all as Joe watches. There are times when Soul feels like Get Out with a white person receiving benefits from being in a Black body. Yes, I know 22 is a soul and not technically a white person. The film even jokes about 22 having the voice of white woman because of the annoyance factor. Still, the casting of the well-known actress unintentionally creates the experience of a body being taken over. And here is the issue: Blackness is more palatable when co-opted by whiteness or repackaged in a more manageable form (like a cat).

Soul is a great film, but what the world needs now is a celebration of Black men inhabiting their bodies for their own enjoyment instead of the gaze of white eyes. One of the messages of the incarnation is that Christ reveals the holiness of flesh by inhabiting it. It is the holiness of all flesh and—we need to say specifically—the holiness of black flesh. Joe ultimately learns the lesson of appreciating his carnal existence, but the film ends before we get to see it.

Black male bodies are not a threat, nor are they an object for the white gaze to fetishize. They are the holy instruments that God has given us to experience Her world. What the world needs to see now, more than ever, is the richness of that lived experience in all of its beauty, messiness, and complexity.

Loving God, thank you for our bodies. Thank you for Black bodies that reflect the beauty of your world and the limitlessness of your creativity. May we never take the gift of being incarnate, as you once were, for granted. Amen.

Can you name some ways that you have seen the Black male body celebrated in ways that were not exploitative?

Derrick Weston

Day 1 of 4: Soul

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