As much as some would scapegoat marginalized people wanting the media they consume to be more representative and forcing Disney’s hand in submitting to that, it’s about the choices that Disney has decided to make. I think about how Frozen 2 was the big animated tent-pole movie for Disney in its release year, and I was curious if it would do anything to answer the fact that people of color didn’t exist in the first movie. Well, Frozen 2 rectified that in ways that I’d generously label as nefarious. Outside of the fact that Arendelle apparently relaxed its immigration laws because Brown folks could now be seen walking the streets, the way the othered people are seen is used as a bigger issue. In the movie, the Northuldra tribe is basically its stand-in for a fictional Indigenous tribe. It is revealed that the conflict between Arendelle and the Northuldra had been a false narrative given to Elsa and Anna—an opportunity to be a commentary on how we struggle with past tragedies toward a group of people. When we realize that Anna and Elsa’s grandfather was the villain, the agitator who tried to conquer the Northuldra, there is a very clear moment where the princesses could’ve tried to reckon with their family history. One where they were not responsible for the fallout, but also had been given—and believed—false tales of its origins.
At this point, we’ve been given a movie and a half to know that Anna and Elsa are good people. We know they are flawed but kindhearted women. They pursue what is right and just with generosity and empathy. This is a classic “sins of the father with a chance at redeeming the family by doing the right thing” scenario. But Frozen 2 doesn’t do that. Instead, it builds in a way to make the princesses blood related to the tribe through their mother. Which has two immediate effects: First, it allows for a quick reconciliation of the aggrieved Northuldra to instantly forgive and now trust the rulers of a kingdom responsible for its oppression. In the movie it happens in seconds, so fast I had whiplash while seated in the theater as my eight-year-old appropriately asked me what just happened. I had few answers. It was the true wish fulfillment of those that say shit like, “I don’t know why you’re still mad about slavery,” or even those “the only race I believe in is the human race” bastards.
The second issue is the investment factor. Frozen 2 doesn’t make (let’s just call a non-spade a non-spade) white people reckon with their family lineage and what trauma their ancestors caused upon another people. It makes the investment partial to the personal stakes of the white folks involved. By making the princesses some de facto descendants of the Northuldra tribe, now the tribe’s struggle is the princesses’ struggle as well. The action to right those wrongs comes from there and not because it would’ve been the human thing to do in the first place. This tactic is tried and true and problematic as all hell. It is the politician that doesn’t support gay rights until their son comes out. It’s the white executive that speaks with authority of their role in society by positing their adopted, marginalized children. Frozen 2 is the animated version of what fighting the good fight for big business looks like now. We can reckon with systemic and colonizing actions against the oppressed. But only as long as we make it the struggle of the beneficiaries too. And oh yeah, Anna and Elsa are biracial, I guess. I think about this all the time now.
And if Anna and Elsa are biracial now, what is Tiana from The Princess and the Frog? Single race, multispecies? For all my love of Tiana’s characterization and my lightweight unhealthy adoration of Anika Noni Rose, it’s impossible to not see that The Princess and the Frog started a thing where Black voice actors are cast for Black-human-identified characters in movies where the character is only a Black human for part of the time. The math is simple here. You’ve got the big Disney princesses that preceded Tiana like Cinderella, Snow White, Pocahontas, Princess Aurora, Hua Mulan, Ariel… Tiana was the first Black Disney princess and the first one to get turned into some shit that wasn’t a person. Hell, Ariel became MORE human. Where can a sista sign up to become MORE human as her plot point? Now, if you give me a story of a woman in New Orleans wanting to open up her own soul food spot, who also happens to get transformed into a frog, yes, I’d rather her be Black.
The fact that Tiana is turned into a frog isn’t necessarily the problem. This is my [Game of Thrones spoiler warning incoming…………] Missandei dying theory. Folks were mad when Missandei got merked and tossed off of a castle wall. And yes, it was upsetting because Missandei was a great character. But yo, you missed me with the actual problem. The situation wasn’t that a Black woman got killed on Game of Thrones. The whole brutal point of the show was that no one was particularly precious and that fairy-tale narratives were subverted and often dismantled. The problem was that Missandei was the only Black woman of note on the show. And so when she dies, you now have zero.
With Disney, Tiana being a frog most of the movie is made more significant because there are now zero Black princesses who get to be Black women for the majority of the movie. The solution isn’t necessarily for The Princess and the Frog to not exist but for there to be more Disney movies with Black princesses. Now because of Disney’s influence, this has become a thing. Take a movie like Spies in Disguise, where Will Smith is an ultra-cool Black 007-type with way more charisma, but the catch of the film is that he’s a damn bird for most of it. And then, you have a movie like Soul. I don’t really know where to begin with Soul, but for the uninitiated, here’s the pitch: Joe (Jamie Foxx), a Black high school music teacher whose dream it is to play his own gigs as opposed to teaching uninspired kids how to hold a trombone, gets his big break. In the process of celebrating his first big gig, he falls into a manhole, uncovered as they frequently are. And then poof, Joe is dead (or as we learn later, he’s in a coma). But his soul is moving toward the “Great Beyond” nonetheless. Joe freaks out because it isn’t his time yet and finds himself mentoring a very reluctant soul in the “Great Before” named “22” (Tina Fey). Eventually hijinks ensue that land both Joe and 22 on Earth. Except 22’s soul is in Joe’s body and Joe’s soul is in… a cat. Through this misadventure they both come to understand living life for the moment, what their true spark is, and how to repair relationships with themselves and others.
Listen, Pixar has a formula. They know how to circle the human heart and often in the last act devour it like sharks. We are almost helpless to their very well-structured emotional manipulation. They aren’t making bad movies. And Soul isn’t a bad movie. But the weight that Soul tries to carry seems too heavy for the folks that created it, specifically when dealing with the pronounced Black elements of the movie. It’s important to know at least one very big preproduction note about the film: Joe, when the film was conceived, wasn’t originally Black. Who knows how much of this story was constructed with a white protagonist in mind before this change, but here’s the exercise you can do to articulate how much that matters. Was White Joe (sorry, that’s the best code name I got) a musician too? Was he even a teacher? What was in place of the barbershop scene? (I don’t think any of us can see White Joe going into a Sport Clips during this movie.) What was White Joe’s conflict with his mother? Was his father still alive? Yes, these are loaded-ass questions, but it makes it easy to see the “Black checklist” in Soul. Depending on how generous you are, they either make the Black aesthetics in Soul feel authentic or well within the realm of stereotypes. There are scenes where the possible copy and pasting feels prevalent in the film. Take Paul, a very brief antagonist of Joe, who makes fun of Joe and tries to crush his dreams at every interval. The comeuppance for Paul happens later in the film. Terry, the record keeper from the Great Beyond, who is obsessed with finding and retrieving Joe (pardon the slave-catcher vibes, but I didn’t write the movie, yo), finds Paul and briefly pulls Paul’s soul out of his body because she believes that Paul is Joe. Yes, somehow, the record keeper for millions and millions of souls who have passed on mistook one Black man for another. In a movie where Paul is white and this is just “the bully getting scared straight” this probably goes off as a typical gag. But when you have so many examples o
f unprovoked violence placed on Black people, which includes, way too often, mistaken identity, this joke isn’t hitting the same.
Perhaps the most damning thing about Soul though? Probably the gentrification of Joe’s life by 22. We’ve seen movies before where people switch roles, or in this case switch bodies, and through experiencing a differing perspective help solve each other’s problems. The problem is, the culture divide between Joe and the aesthetic we attach to 22 (a middled-aged white woman) isn’t simply different perspectives. It implies that a simple tell-it-like-it-is approach would solve Joe’s problems. Whether it’s his relationship with his mom. His bully. His career choice. It flattens the complexities that occur in these Black relationships and treats them like they operate in a bubble. When 22 stands up to Joe’s Bully (Paul) in the barbershop it assumes the anxiety from Joe is just a product of a typical antagonist relationship. It erases the factors of Black masculinity and the tightrope that Black men walk in their efforts to be accepted within their community and not seem threatening outside of it. When 22 helps facilitate Joe repairing his relationship with his mom, it is spawned by 22 being abrupt and speaking out of turn to his mom. It plays like a very typical parents-not-supporting-my-dreams conversation. But there is an erasure here of the weightiness of Joe’s mom being a Black widow and a business owner in the city. Of wanting her Black son to have easy-to-see hallmarks of success because his father did not. This shouldn’t be as generic a moment as it is, but the revelation is flat. Both of these examples carry the pathology that Joe has just made these situations too complicated to untangle. And that it really just takes this witty and naive middle-aged white woman to solve his problems. Problems that we assume came from years of friction during Joe’s life, she solves in about five minutes of total screen time. And ya know, that’s cute. I’m sure there are plenty of people that responded well to that. “Joe was just in his own way, he just never stood up for himself and thank god 22 showed him the way.” But there’s a lot of historical context missing in those moments. For example, we don’t get to see why Joe’s mother would be apprehensive about Joe pursuing a music career. It assumes she’s just like every other parent who has a pragmatic approach for their children. But there’s a story that feels particularly unique to this Black woman who has owned her own business for decades, now seeing her departed husband’s face when she looks at her son. Her son, she believes, is underachieving. And if we don’t have the screen time to tell that story, we should at least feel the weight of it. Maybe not have the mouthy never-been-a-real-person-before character break down her concerns so easily. That feels reductive, to say the least. And at one point, 22 steals Joe’s body. And when the smoke clears, Joe ends up apologizing for his behavior. Which is after he saves 22’s soul. I mean, we got Black abduction. Magical Negro stuff in the last act… It’s a lot, fam. It’s a whole, Black, lot.
Movies like Spies in Disguise and Soul can be enjoyable films. But it’s a weird way to go with the pressing want and need of diversity to promote these marginalized characters in the name of representation just for them to transform into a thing not representative of the community you’re wanting to appeal to.
Maybe it’s generous, but I still think these blunders or oversights are more neglect based than malicious. The Mulan movie debacle feels different though. I think about all the press of Mulan being this big tent-pole achievement. About how they weren’t going to disrespect China and its folklore this time. How the location and the actors involved proved that they were taking this seriously. And yes, the actors were sort of representative of what Mulan should look like. But behind the camera it was the complete opposite. The tone changes from that tone of “we’re doing the right thing this time” when you see it for what it was: white people telling someone else’s story in a location exotic to them. This was far from the only problem with Mulan from a cultural perspective, including things Disney couldn’t really control like the lead actress being a fierce defender of the Chinese state and its violence against protestors in Hong Kong. But then there’s the Xinjiang thing. And to be more acute, the filming in Georgia thing.
I couldn’t give a damn about what outrages Republican senators have these days… or the length of my personal existence… but Disney made a big show about the possibility of no longer filming in Georgia over an abortion heartbeat bill. And ya know what, this ain’t that essay, but big business taking a stand on “something” that people feel is a worthy social fight? I’m not mad at that, not even a little bit. Butttttt when that same big-ass company decides to film in Xinjiang, which has been a specific region where China has been committing human rights abuses to Uighur Muslims for years, it does make a brotha tilt his head and say, “How, Sway?” What is this supposed to mean? Was it merely an oversight? Was the Georgia thing virtue signaling for progressives in the U.S., thinking no one would notice or care about these issues outside of our borders? Is this some Muslim-hating, self-described liberal Bill Maher shit?! It’s pretty confusing, if you’re not cynical. I am cynical. It just feels like some bullshit to me.
When I say that there are people at Disney that care about diversifying its media, that’s not to be flippant and assuming. I’ve had the privilege to meet a great deal of people working with the Mouse who take these things seriously and do all they can to make a more equitable entertainment complex for the widest range of people. But there’s a limit to the power folks have if they aren’t making the biggest decisions as far as movie scripts and casting calls. And at the end of the day, Disney didn’t become Disney because it didn’t want to maximize profit. TV shows and movies with marginalized figures as the focal point may be an untapped resource, but that still isn’t bigger than predominantly white audiences that may or may not care about reconfiguring the social climate for the movies they already love.
It’s hard to imagine that Disney doesn’t know what it is doing. Disney is huge and fucks up sometimes. And just like every big company, cares enough about power dynamics and how representation affects the consumers it is selling its product to. But to say that Disney has made some misfires with how it treats diversity is to assume that they are mistakes made from lack of knowledge or misaligned execution. With Disney, it’s often neither of those things. It’s just that few have the surgical precision to split the baby so cleanly.
Y’all Mind if I Wyl Out over Black Love and POC Love Real Quick?
OMAR HOLMON, aka Erotic Ebony Fanfic Artisan
MAN, I BEEN a Marvel kid from jump. Matter fact, Storm, aka Ororo Munroe, aka Hadari-Yao, aka Beautiful Windrider, aka Blue, aka Ms. Sun’s Out ’Cause I’m Out, was the very first superhero doll action figure I ever got. Mom bought her as a gift for my sixth birthday. We went to the store to get cake mix and I saw Storm hanging out in the aisle in her X-Men fit in that toy box. I knew upon sight that she would become the GOAT based off the vintage fit alone. Y’all don’t hear me. I said THE VINTAGE STORM X-MEN FIT, muhfuckas: silver fox hair, all-black outfit with the gold lightning bolt on the chest that lit up so you knew it was real. You know what the fuck I’m talkin’ ’bout—that classic Ororo Munroe; that “I am every woman” Ororo Munroe; that throwback “you see we never ever do nothing nice and easy, we always do it nice… and rough” Tina Turner–“Proud Mary” Ororo Munroe. NERD! Oh, it was a wrap ever since then. Storm was, and still is, the Beyoncé of comic books. I been in the stands stanning for this Ororo Munroe ever since. So when Marvel had Storm and T’Challa, the Black Panther, get married in Black Panther, vol. 4, #18 (2006)?! Jagged Edge’s “Let’s Get Married” (the remix version tho) was on full blast while I read that shit.
Are you kidding me? You wanna talk about power couples? You wanna talk about Black on Black on all-Black everything excellence? You wanna talk about a goddamn Marvel moment?! They got married in the middle of Civil War, when superheroes were being told to sign with the government by Iron Man, and Captain America was saying, “Yeah, fuck that noise.” Those two were still in attendance at Storm and T’
Challa’s wedding! T’Challa told them they better act fucking right while they were there too. It was Black superhero Hollywood in attendance for their wedding, man. BET covered their wedding! Prince played the reception. Charles Xavier told Storm that she’s about to become more than a goddess or hero. She’s now become the ambassador of human–mutant relations. Proof that they can coexist. A role she was born to play. Charles Xavier told Storm that she got the juice now, man.
Even Uatu the Watcher, a cosmic being that records the major historical events of our solar system, showed up for this wedding. Storm and T’Challa had Uatu the Watcher, a being that’s millions of years old, eating hors d’oeuvres at their wedding ceremony. There is no greater fucking flex. None greater. They even allowed a number of white folks in as well. They had to sit in the back tho. Yo, even Dr. Doom sent a gift letting it be known he was mad he ain’t get an invite. Dr. Doom was out here mad he ain’t get to dance to Prince live. Dr. Doom fucks with Prince.
T’Challa even brought Storm to the spirit world for her soul to be judged by Bast, the Panther God, to bless their union. Bast stared Ororo right in the windows of her soul, growled, then licked her face saying, “All right, y’all go on ahead now.” This union was everything. We got some adventures with Storm and T’Challa. They went on a world tour and had some adventures. Then six years later, the Avengers vs. X-Men crossover was happening. The Avengers and X-Men were beefing due to the cosmic entity known as the Phoenix Force coming back to Earth for a host. The Avengers showed up on the X-Men’s door to take custody of Hope Summers, who would be the host of the Phoenix Force. This caused a rift in the X-Men and led to the Phoenix Force being split among five mutants. Namor the Sub-Mariner was aligned with the X-Men and was one of those five mutants. Shit got wild when Namor chose to flood Wakanda for hiding the Avengers. T’Challa then annulled his marriage with Storm when she arrived during the aftermath, seeing her as siding with the X-Men. For the record, Storm and the X-Men had no idea what Namor was up to. Fam, this was the biggest “what the fuck?” moment. T’Challa can be stoic but bruh is mos def not heartless. We throwing away six (real-time) years of marriage as a wack-ass “major” consequence of this “major” summer crossover event? Get the fuck outta here with that mess, man.
Black Nerd Problems Page 10