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Thursday, December 31, 2020

Pixar’s Soul: How to live, not die, is the message.

 

Psychology, Psychoanalysis, Race, Pixar, Disney, Soul, Peter Docter




 

Pixar’s Soul has received a lot of hype, including that it includes Pixar’s first animated African American in a lead role.  Part of the reason that I was excited about this film is that it was directed by Peter Docter, who also directed Inside Out: the delightful articulation of the mind of a tween, but, by extension, all of our minds.  I was curious what Docter would do with the afterlife.  Given the double entendre in the title, the hype about Jon Batiste writing much of the music, and the concept of writing about death, the Reluctant Wife and I were both excited about the possibilities that this movie held, but we were disappointed in the execution.  I had not planned to write about it until an online psychoanalysis group based discussion led me to a better understanding of the movie and a psychoanalytic “way in” to understanding an aspect of it.

The plot of the movie is pretty straightforward – and was, for me, anxiety provoking.  I kept having to remind myself that it was a Disney movie so that everything would be alright in the end.  Docter, who apparently wanted to explore the nature of how personalities are formed, decided to have his protagonist die at a moment when on the brink of something important so that there would be enough energy to overcome the conveyor belt to the afterlife, or, in the language of the movie, the great beyond.  He initially thought a scientist (perhaps on the brink of a great discovery) would do it, but then decided to have it be a musician on the edge of a breakthrough because that would be more relatable.  Having decided on music, and given the relationship between Jazz and African American Culture, only then did the idea of having the protagonist be African American emerge.

Now this should give us pause.  The protagonist, when he jumps off the conveyor belt taking him to the Great Beyond, lands in the Great Before – the place where souls get stamped with the things that they bring to their lives on earth.  This raises all kinds of nature versus nurture questions that have led us into the very tricky waters, including the theory of Eugenics – and to all kinds of theories about the relative values of the races.  Are all men (and women) created equal?  If not, should we stack the deck so that more valued traits will out?

The movie doesn’t take on these questions.  The newbie souls that have not yet been put in bodies are given attributes that have good empirical support for inborn differences.  Things like being shy versus outgoing.  Intelligence and beauty – these are not addressed, at least not directly.  Joe Gardner (Jamie Foxx) is the frustrated Jazz Musician who has just been offered both a full time job – with benefits – as a Junior High School band teacher and a chance to play a gig with a world famous saxophonist – and she seems taken with his chops.  Joe’s mother, Libba (Phylicia Rashad) lobbies for him to take the steady gig of teaching – even though she supported Joe’s father’s peripatetic and not very lucrative jazz career.

Sitting on the horns of a dilemma, and emotionally high after having gotten the nod of approval from the saxophonist Dorothea Williams (Angela Bissett) in his audition, Joe has an accident, ends up on the escalator to the Great Beyond, and jumps off in an effort to get back to the land of living, but ends up as an unaccounted for soul in the Great Before.  Here he unintentionally impersonates a mentor, the deceased people in this place who help give the souls here the spark they need to make the leap to living.  The particular mentor that Joe is mistaken for is a great child psychologist, who has been assigned to help 22 (Tina Fey) decide to finally make the great leap to being human.  22 has resisted being helped by the likes of Ghandi, Mother Teresa, and brilliant philosophers.  She, like all souls waiting to be born, needs to get her spark, but no one has been able to engender that and even the most saintly mentors have become frustrated with her.

Joe does not try to "spark" 22 – he just wants to get back to earth, wake his dead body, and get to the first show at the Half Note with Dorothea Williams.  But 22, who is his ticket home, leads him on a wild goose chase to a fourth space – neither earth, the Great Beyond, nor the Great Before, but The Zone.  This is an intermediate space somewhere between earth and the Greats, and it is the zone that people get into when they are caught up in something – like playing a playing a game the way it was meant to be played – or playing an instrument the way it should be played.  Abraham Maslow would say that this is where we are when we are having what he called peak experiences.  It is along the path to enlightenment.  22 and Joe discover Moonwind in the Zone, a hippie sign twirler (he gets into the zone when he is twirling his sign) and captain of a fantasy ship in the zone itself that moves to the cadences of folk rock.

So, I want to stop here and talk again about the racial context of the film.  Docter brought in a bunch of African American consultants to avoid turning Joe into a visual or a cultural stereotype.  They wanted Joe to be a positive and real African American character – whatever that means.  22 states that she is not a middle aged woman, but that she uses that voice because it is the most grating and annoying voice there is – all the better to frustrate the mentors who would encourage her to make the leap to living.  Moonwind – propelled by Crosby, Stills & Nash (in a movie titled Soul, I’m just saying) and 22 are Joe’s guides in the middle of this film.

There is something subtly or not so subtly wrong with this pivotal and essential part of the plot.  Somehow we have gone to back to the sixties – but kept our current Karen on board – to try to build a bridge to African American culture.  The reluctant wife and I speculated that the film makers did not want to alienate a broader audience, so they included a comfortable and known soundscape and cultural vernacular.  My deeper fear would be that the intent is to reduce racist fears by showing that Joe accepts direction from white cultural figures – though to avoid that patronizing position, they have Joe end up in the body of a cat who directs 22, in Joe’s body, to get him to the show at the Half Note.

There is good stuff here.  Lots of sight gags.  A poignant reunion with one of Joe’s students (a child with Asian features) who is a trombonist at heart even though she doesn’t want to be.  And 22 and Joe become buddies as they have to rely on each other to navigate in the world.  And this is where the psychoanalytic perspective sneaks in.  The film is not about death, or even about the anxiety of dying.  It is about a much more paralyzing fear – the fear of living.

My psychoanalytically informed interlocutor cited Adam Phillips’ work “Missing out: In Praise of the Unlived Life and James Hillman’s “Suicide and Soul”.  For me, it was Thomas Ogden articulating these ideas in such books as “Dreaming Undreamt Dreams”.  The idea that all three share, I think, is that the analytic process can help an analyst and analysand appreciate together how dead the analysand feels.  How closed off from life they are.  And the analysis can help them appreciate why and how the analysand is feeling dead.

The movie illustrates one of the ways this can happen.  In order for an unborn soul to be ready to be born, it must pick up the characteristics mentioned above (shyness or outgoingness), but it must also pick up the final ingredient: the spark.  This sounds like a passion – and many of us become passionate about something.  22 was mentored by many who had not just been passionate, but their passions, combined with their abilities – and their privilege - had led them to become household names.  But instead of inspiring 22, these models had led her to feel shame.  She could never live up to them as models.  Joe (and I as the viewer) became confused about this when the spark was explained.  It was as if the spark were a calling – the thing that would make this soul happy.  It is as if we are born to be a trombonist or a scientist - though I think the spark is something much more powerful and broad - it is the ability to seek and engage and discover something about which we become passionate - based in part on who it is that are, including what we are apt to do.

What 22 experienced when she was inhabiting Joe’s body is something different than accomplishment.  She learned just how wonderful it is to simply be alive; to notice the sunlight streaming down, to see a maple seed spinning through the air and to hold it in your grasp.  This became the spark for her. 

Joe thought that playing the gig with Dorothea would be his spark.  When they finally play the gig at the Half Note, it is a transcendent session.  They are in the zone – and the crowd is there with them.  Dorothea herself commented that the set was rare - and out of this world.  Joe, trying to ride that Peak Moment, wanted to know what was next.  Dorothea stated that, in her experience, they would come back and do it again the next day.

This is a powerful, but also over-communicated message.  Be here now.  Be mindful.  Be one with the Force.  Don’t focus on the outcome, focus on the process.  But, and this is where the intersection with race could have been really powerful, someone has to mind the store.  If we are just being mindful of the moment, someone else is likely to grab the power and use it so that what we have the freedom to become mindful of becomes smaller and smaller. 

James Cone, an African American theologian, points out that the blues, which is played not nearly enough in this movie, reminds the African American that though his or her body may be chained, their soul is not.  And what form of music is more free than Jazz?  Isn’t it the assertion of the freedom of the soul in the face of physical and psychological oppression?

22 comes to grips with her shame and fear of not being able to perform when she is reminded of the maple seed.  Just being is enough to push her over the edge – to want to live her life.  And Joe is finally resigned to his death when he realizes that the goal is not to be the best Jazz musician, but to be the best Joe – which he has been by connecting with 22.  And, ironically, for helping 22, he gets a reprieve and promises to live each moment to its fullest.  But isn’t that really what he should have been rewarded for – living a moment to its fullest? 

Yes, the aesthetics of life are important.  Yes, the soul should be free to live – and therefore live, not wander like the dead through life, being too afraid of life to be open to it.  But shouldn’t the point be that living is an active verb – not a passive one?  Or that it can be.  That in striving, we may never produce a number one hit – but we may, at one moment and then another, be in the zone, doing whatever it is that gives us the spark.

I think this movie is wrestling with really big issues – character/personality, race, the opportunity and the oppression of living – and I think it is trying to make those issues work for a broad audience – and to do that it makes sure that it doesn’t offend anyone; that it doesn’t make anyone uncomfortable.  And this means that it will likely, also, not challenge anyone.  It will not, therefore, bring us to life, even though we will admire 22 for coming to life – and Joe for facilitating that process, with 22 and his trombone student and Dorothea.  And we might even, like Joe, one day stand up to a maternal figure who would tell us to take the safe road and instead we might choose the uncomfortable route that will challenge and reward us more.  But we will be more likely to do that in response to another interaction, another movie, another work of art – one that moves us not just to tears, but to the kind of discomfort that leads to action.  

This film will doubtless be watched many, many times by kids (and their parents).  I think the kids will be trying to distill from the film its essence - we want to know what the film has to tell us about the world (at least I think something like that is going on in those repetitive viewing sessions - I'm not really sure).  In this case, I hope that kids are able to get the surface message - you are OK and living is OK and when you live, when you get your spark, the rest will follow.  Perhaps the message I want them to get is that when they use their spark to find their passion, they will not only spend time in the zone - they will also connect with people around them in ways that are not on another plane, but very much in this one.  That the people who benefit from Joe (and I think the choice of the name Joe is important - he is just an average Joe) include the people around him who are sparked - Dorothea, the trombonist, and, ironically, 22 - the antisparker.  The one who is so afraid that, when he spark is released, it is likely to start a conflagration.

The sad part is that, if this message had been crafted from within the African American tradition, rather than grafted onto it, I think it could have been a much more powerful, and potentially transformative message.  One that might even have appealed to the Karens - and future Karens - among us.



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