We Deserve to See a Black Afterlife on Film
Where Pixar’s ‘Soul’ and films like ‘Ghost’ fall short
This story contains the plot details of Pixar’s Soul.
In the spirit of American cinema dealing with Blackness in the afterlife, Soul fails to answer the late Tupac’s question: Does heaven have a ghetto?
In Pixar’s latest animated feature, middle school teacher and languishing jazz pianist Joe Gardner (voiced by Jamie Foxx) realizes the meaning of life after a near-death experience. Along the way, he mentors 22, a soul who does not want to be incarnated on Earth. (During her long purgatory, 22 eventually settles on sounding like a middle-aged Tina Fey because “it was the most annoying voice she could think of.”) Through the movie, as Joe strives to return to the earthly plane, he teaches 22 — who occupies his body for a chunk of the film — why corporeal existence is desirable.
In the Great Beyond, Soul’s endpoint of consciousness, race, and ethnicity are never spoken of or even acknowledged. Despite departed spirits speaking a host of languages, their self-awareness seems to have vaporized. All of the ways we are unique (ethnicity) and how white people have divided the Earth over the last 500 years (race) bear no consequence when entering the Great Beyond.
