MOVIE REVIEW: Soul Man (1986)
My father and mother came from a country other than America, and they did not experience racism until they emigrated here. When my siblings and I came into the picture, racism still existed but my parents did their best to keep us insulated. They surrounded us with Black professionals and good Black people they could trust, and if they experienced racism in the world they left it out there in the world. It didn’t matter because they still got passed over for promotions, were still questioned about their right to be at their station, and are still harassed by police because they fit the description.
The issues of racism really came to a head when I entered my middle school’s magnet program and we all learned a new word: prejudice. No teacher taught me this word, I learned it from the Black students who directly or indirectly suffered unjustly from systemic racism. Oddly enough, our teachers never explained to us what the word was or encouraged us to find out, they simply told us to stop using the word. NOTE: Kids often say things they don’t understand because they’re parroting what they hear. Having to hear my classmates complain without anyone trying to give us the tools, pointing us in the right direction to fix the problem, or even preventing us from fixing the problem made me want to not participate, and I retreated into the world of media.
Local UHF broadcast channels were the place to be on the weekends, and they filled their weekend hours with feature-length programming. The UHF channel where I watched today’s reviewed movie — Soul Man — specialized in comedies. Looking back nearly 40 years at the content, the concept alone is proof positive that cocaine controlled the 1980s at nearly all levels of social strata because you’d have to be on drugs to think this was OK to release into theaters, let alone write the script.
UCLA rich-kid Mark Watson (80’s heart-throb C. Thomas Howell, E.T.: the Extra-Terrestrial, Red Dawn, The Outsiders, The Amazing Spider-Man, Jailbait [1994]) comes from wealth and assumed he would always be wealthy, even when he transitioned into law school. His parents (actors James Sikking [Stay Tuned, The Pelican Brief] and Maree Chatham [Beetlejuice, Dangerous Curves]) had other ideas: they would be withholding any funding for his education, thanks to the American baby-boomer idea of cutting off their children at age 18 without any savings or financial education. Mark’s focus is equally misaligned: to put his Los Angeles mindset into perspective, he just HAD to go to law school— it’s where his friends were gonna be! He applied for several scholarships, but couldn’t get any of them mainly because of the financial status of his parents: they were too rich and paid for everything during his undergrad period, leaving Mark with no money of his own. As a last resort, Mark hatched a plan with his buddy Gordon (Arye Gross, “Ellen” [TV-ABC], “The Wonder Years” [TV-ABC], Minority Report) using tanning pills to get a scholarship — a scholarship reserved for an African-American student. Wait…how many tanning pills did this White person take to look like a Black person?
A WHOLE LOT, including putting on a Jheri curl Afro wig to complete the disguise. Not only did Mark get the scholarship, he also got into Harvard Law School. He got in with his government name, but is hiding with the help of Gordon under the name “Kareem Abdul Ali”. Once at Harvard, the elitism and racism became clear as Mark (who had previously been insulated from both constructs thanks to his White skin and wealth) now had to face the world as what people perceived him to be — a Black man. His skin garnered an intense focus from the law professor that teaches the majority of his courses, Professor Banks (legendary actor James Earl Jones, The Lion King [1994], Star Wars: A New Hope, Coming to America, Conan the Barbarian), whose booming voice made a point to expect more from Mark as his skin color would cost him in a world made easier for those with lighter skin.
Mark also got to meet his love interest— Sarah (Rae Dawn Chong, Commando, Quest for Fire, Denial [1990]), a single mother working off her tuition in the cafeteria...because she’s the person he beat out for the scholarship. It is here where not only does Mark’s scheme come full circle to affect the ones he loves and cares about, but the specter of racism comes out in the form of two White male students that always seem to make derogatory and racist comments against Sarah in front of Mark. When they see Mark’s dark skin they back off and always say they were just joking…because they’re scared of what the Black guy will do because they said these nasty things to and about a Black woman.
You would be hard-pressed to think of this movie as a comedy given what I’ve told you about it, and that it would take a hard turn. The tone of the movie says NOPE and leads into lots of mix-ups, poor celebrity impressions, comic moments, and even addresses racial fetishism and racial perceptions portrayed in a twisted send-up of 1967’s Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner. Once the movie’s had its “fun” the hard turn does come when Mark can’t keep up the lie anymore and has to reveal the truth. Mark is spared any serious punishments (you get three guesses as to why) and has to pay the Harvard scholarship back. Surprisingly, Sarah stayed with Mark: she only learned he was White after he told her. Though she was super mad about the lie, they worked it out and they both worked their way through law school in the cafeteria — with Mark taking out a high-rate loan to pay for law school. One he was able to get easily, I might add.
For a long time, I thought other people saw Soul Man and also thought that it was funny. When I asked around at my HBCU, the only people who had seen it were my professors…and they had a LOT of things to say about the movie. None of the students I asked about Soul Man had seen the movie either; it seems my parents weren't the only ones shielding their children from anti-Black racism. I later learned director Spike Lee started an NAACP boycott of the film — for the blackface AND the idea that in the story no other African American candidates for the scholarship could be found in Los Angeles. There’s so much wrong with this movie, its production, and the idea no one else saw the problem — that this was OK. Were the people working on the project scared of losing jobs if they said something to the racist old Hollywood guard? Or did it align with prevailing ideas at the time of how to talk about racism: do it in the worst way possible just to say that you did? Despite the lapse of consideration on behalf of the people at all levels responsible for creating this movie, Soul Man actually did well that year and put any issues about it to rest. It made money for the company; they moved on to new projects. The disrespect this movie showed to half the people this movie is about didn’t matter to them socially or the financial outcome.
Time has marched on also, and we all are still grappling with racism in America and across the world. Counting the 1992 LA riots, the failed 2001 Durban World Conference against Racism, the reaction to the 1994 O.J. Simpson murder trial, the global antics of digital blackface and cultural appropriation, code switching, the parallel rise of anti-Semitism and radical right-wing populism, Missing White Woman Syndrome and Ebony Alerts, and everything Black Lives Matter fought for 10 years to change, we are still working this thing out. For all the noble effort our elders took to shield us from racism through changing the view, we still experienced it at school and in the world. No amount of programming via Cosby Show reruns or “respectable outfit” costumes would protect us; we needed something that reflected our world while making us feel good about ourselves so we would not be shocked out there by the hate we would encounter. Some enterprising filmmakers served the need, and Black people ended up with TV shows like FOX’s “South Central” and movies like Do the Right Thing and DROP Squad —productions simultaneously affirming their reality while preventing them from finding escape in any form for fear of denying their Blackness. It is a conundrum and contradiction; it is a trap that kills hearts and minds.
Black people cannot run away from their Blackness, no matter if we choose to identify alternatively as a nationality in a racial census OR how many non-Black people we use to surround and insulate ourselves through colorism marked as “preference” for something other —alternately, as prejudice against something similar: It’s in our mirror’s reflection, under all the aesthetic choices. Black people should not run from their Blackness while others run to it for social clout and financial gain. We should be able to imagine ourselves as what we wish outside of the racial construct, and produce media about ourselves that we control. Learn the lesson this movie teaches — that folks constantly mess up what isn’t theirs from the start — and claim what belongs to you and improve on it before someone else does and denies you your birthright. Because they’ll poop out another one of these misrepresentations out and not blink as they count your streaming service subscription money for making it possible — whether or not you watch it.
CHOICE CUTS <<SPOILERS AHEAD>>
- The movie’s title was inspired by the 1967 Sam & Dave song “Soul Man” from their album “Soul Men”. If the writers called it anything intrinsic to the story, they would have been kicked off the studio lot.
- Like most racists, when standing next to one of their own they clamor for validation. Thankfully Mark had learned his lesson about racism by this point and beat the cafeteria racists’ asses.
- The 80s were weird: it wasn’t enough to wear sunglasses to indicate blindness, you had to sway like Stevie Wonder also to deliver the message with pop-culture reference.
- The people on the Harvard acceptance board behaved that way so the movie could happen, because actual Black people don’t look like this. They didn’t ever look like this — not even in the 80’s, or former president Barack “Barry-O” Obama, or a Jheri-curled Michael Jackson. If anything, the skin and hair and facial features makes him look South Asian — then we’d be in Short Circuit territory, but that’s another story.
- SPECIAL CAMEO: Comedy queen Julia Louis-Dreyfuss (“Seinfeld” [TV-NBC], “Veep” [TV-NBC]) plays Lisa, a friend from LA who suspects “Kareem Abdul Ali” is not what he seems.
- The movie posters for Soul Man all seem to focus on remarking about “soul” as a euphemism for dressing up as a Black person.
- The copy on the posters as a whole is atrocious: one poster proclaims “He didn’t give up. He got down.” and another has a send-up of Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner prominently, as “Guess who’s coming to college?”
- Despite everything Mark went through and thinks he learned about Black people and racism, he is reminded that he could have changed back to White at any time —a luxury Black people don’t have.
- Shoutout to Jonathan “Fudge” Leonard (“Highway to Heaven” [TV NBC], “The Women of Brewster Place” [TV-ABC]), the child actor that plays Sarah’s son.
- The visit to the Black Law Students Association was priceless, as Mark was pranked by Gordon in believing it was a “real militant organization”. He went to the meeting dressed up in Black militant costume— camo pants, beret, combat boots, black turtleneck sweater. Imagine his surprise when he learned they were not “militant”, but simply pooling their knowledge without bias and were intolerant of racist behavior in their learning environment. He DID look like a fool, and it was played for laughs. It’s a good thing too, since understanding WHY such an organization exists in an institution of higher learning would be a lot harder to mine for comedy.
- NOTABLE QUOTE: “I could really feel 400 years of oppression and anger in every pelvic thrust” — Whitney Dunbar (played by Melora Hardin, “The Office” [TV-NBC], Lambada)
- NOTABLE QUOTE: “I have a study date with Sarah. I’m thinking about growing some dreads.” — Mark Watson, the dumbest man on the planet as he toys with his wig while speaking with Gordon.
- Towards the end of the movie, Whitney had already moved on once she learned Mark was White and found a Native American guy to carry on her racial fetishism.
- The looks the Black butler gave Mark were pretty stark: either he’s not fooled by the disguise or he’s disappointed at Mark’s ignorance about Whitney’s intentions about the interracial relationship. Or both.
- THE DINNER SCENE: This is a focal point for the film, as it features several wonderful actors playing out contemporary America perceptions of Black people via fantastic imaginary scenes. Let’s set the scene: Because Whitney did not tell her father, Mark’s racist landlord Mr. Dunbar (Leslie Nielsen, Forbidden Planet, the Naked Gun series) about who was coming over for dinner, the room is a tense one. Mrs. Dunbar (Ann Walker, Sordid Lives [2000], Southern Baptist Sissies) keeps the secret she fantasizes about Black men, and younger brother Bundy (child actor Bo Mancuso in his only role) loves MTV and music from Black musicians. All that changes when they begin to fantasize about the Black guest in the room with them.
- Starting with Bundy, he imagines that Mark is a provocative entertainer like Prince — standing on the table in gender-bending velvet and gyrating with his guitar. Moving onto Mrs. Dunbar, she imagines Mark as a wild-eyed African with a dagger in his teeth who says he wants nothing but to ravage a WHITE WOMAN — with her as the main subject! Mr. Dunbar is the coup de grace for the tension, as he imagines Mark as a shiftless violent pimp that eats watermelon while placing his feet on the table. Mark’s skin is even darker than usual under the exaggerated red hat with feather and leisure suit as he screams for a pregnant Whitney (filled with yet another of his mixed-race children) to bring his heroin and hypodermic needle, prompting Mr. Dunbar to stab his cherry pie in a rage.
- Checking in on the Wikipedia page, I read a part where this film’s director compared it to the 1982 film Tootsie starring Dustin Hoffman (where a man dresses up as a woman to get hired and promoted in the workplace).
- The financial aid struggle was real, even back then: Using the Financial Aid Form (now known as the FAFSA) would have been a boon, as the abuse was probably rampant for those who knew about it. They probably would have gamed the system to get him all the money he needed. But then we wouldn’t have a movie, so here we are.
- In case you’re wondering, I think this is a bad movie for a LOT of reasons. It’s still kind of fun if you think of it as using Blackface to dunk on clueless White people because that’s the intent. The only problem is that most people don’t look past the surface (which is how we got the NAACP protests), and I doubt any Black people were included in the production of this movie or script . This may explain why this movie is bad when it deals with the interactions between White and Black people, interracial relationships notwithstanding.
- The real movie should have been about the stoner scientist that invented the tanning pills.
