On Christmas Day 2020, Disney and Pixar's animated feature film Soul, a meditation on finding the spark that illuminates the beauty of living, streamed on Disney+ for the first time. Soul is Pixar's first film to feature an African American main character. Told through the perspective of Joe Gardner, a middle school band teacher and pianist, Soul situates him in the boroughs of a multiethnic and multiracial New York City. On the very day that he believes he has at last achieved his dream, a gig with a prominent jazz band at a well-known jazz club in, arguably, the jazz capital of the world, he has an accident landing him in The Great Before, “where new souls get their personalities” before coming to Earth. Gardner must make it back into his comatose body lying in a hospital before the gig begins.1
Before we see the accident, we see...
