Soul

I watched the Disney movie Soul last week. It popped up on the main page of Disney+ and I thought it looked fun because I love how Disney is always able to make family-friendly shows that have significant underlying messages to them. I didn't have to do much looking for interesting movies because most of the movies coming out today have diverse casts from many different backgrounds.

I don't watch many movies, and when I do usually the cast is very diverse. The only exception is that lots of older movies have predominantly white characters, both animation and live actors. I have never chosen movies based on this criteria but movies I hear about are part of American culture and older movies with a white cast are more commonly part of American culture.

I chose to watch this movie because it is about a black man in his thirties who is trying to make it big as a jazz performer. He thinks he knows what he wants in life but throughout the movie he learns what is really important in life. This man, named Joe Gardner, is a middle aged middle school band teacher with a special talent for playing piano. He loves music and cares about his students deeply. His mom doesn't support his dream of being a big-time performer because it likely won't happen and she just wants him to get a job and make money. He doesn't come from a rich family and doesn't have very much living in New York City. As soon as he gets a chance to perform with jazz-sensation Dorothea Williams, he dies and his soul gets sent to "The Great Beyond". He doesn't accept his premature death and makes it to a place where new souls are prepared to enter Earth. He does everything he can to get back to Earth to no avail until he meets a soul that doesn't want to go to Earth out of fear. He ends up helping the lost soul overcome her fear and enter Earth in the end, sacrificing his chance to go back. He is given another chance by the being in charge and is sent back down to perform and fulfill his dream.

This movie would have played out differently if the cast had been biracial like me. Instead of the main character being from lower-middle class in New York City and being infatuated with jazz music, it is more likely the movie setting would be in a different city, and the protagonist would be pursuing a different profession. I say this because there are many more black people living in New York City than biracial people and jazz is an art style that has been passed down through the black community for generations and is more special to some people than others. People like me may have their parents push them to become doctors or to work in a family restaurant or be the successor to a family convenience store.

This movie has many good examples of implicit bias because lots of characters in the movie assume things about Joe because of who he is and how he presents himself. Since he doesn't dress really nicely all the time, people assume he's not performance material. Because he is a middle school teacher he doesn't garner much support or respect from his friends or family. As a middle-aged man people think that his prime days are over and he can't take his life anywhere anymore. However, all of these assumptions are either not true or wrong. Assumptions help us all make sense of the world around us but they are by no means infallible and we should not put people into a box and treat them accordingly thinking we know everything about them.