Entertainment is a medium that many people believe falls outside the sphere of political and religious influence. However, it is increasingly being used to push agendas on those who may believe they are simply consuming mindless amusement.
Ironically, the word “amusement” broken down literally translates as “without thinking.” People who are consuming entertainment are often doing so with their critical thought shields lowered, thus exposing themselves to the normalization of worldviews and messages they would normally object to.
This is where dangerous dogma and propaganda can be presented to the viewer as “harmless fun”, especially to children.
A retired law professor by the name of Nicholas Johnson has a quote I always repeat to myself when I consume movies and television. He says, “All television is educational television. The question is, what is it trying to teach?”
Pixar as of late, has been teaching disturbing New Age philosophy.
Films like ‘Coco’ and ‘Soul’ are dramatically diverging from the traditional, pro-family values of films like ‘The Incredibles’ by diving into the supernatural.
Both ‘Coco’ and ‘Soul’ promote the Biblically forbidden practice of communication with the dead. While ‘Coco’ focuses more on ancestor worship and the pagan “Day of the Dead” traditions of the Latin culture, ‘Soul’ promotes the New Age agenda which includes astral projection, various Wiccan rituals, reincarnation and numerology.
Pixar’s ‘Soul’, released on Christmas Day, is a blatant attempt to replace the moral absolutes of the Judeo-Christian culture and expose children to several dangerous worldviews. A major theme to lookout for in this film is the “doing away” with the old and bringing in the “new” as in the New Age.
‘Soul’ opens with an African American Middle School band teacher named Joe Gardner, voiced by Jamie Foxx (the man who joked on live television that he enjoyed filming Django Unchained because he got paid to kill white people).
Joe is an aspiring jazz performer “waiting for his shot” while he teaches middle school students various instruments. On the chalkboard behind Joe is written the name of the song the class is currently trying to learn.
The words “Things Ain’t What they Used to Be” hover prominently in the background of Foxx’s character, a fitting theme for a new age movie devoid of moral absolutes and supernatural consequences.
To calm his chaotic class, he begins passionately playing the piano and enters what looks to be a trance-like state, which is where the astral projection theme will Trojan Horse itself into the film later on. Not long after, he is told via phone call from a former student that he has been given an audition with a supposedly famous Jazz performer named Dorothea Williams.
As Joe runs to his audition, his old phone in hand, a cellular provider billboard is directly behind him. This time the words “Your New Phone is Calling, Answer It” are prominently displayed.
Joe then, distracted by his phone, falls down a manhole and dies. He has transformed into some sort of amorphous ghost being and finds himself on an escalator headed towards a massive energy field that is absorbing other “souls” with little static shocks occurring when it consumes one. Another “soul” he runs into claims that they are heading to “the Great Beyond.”
Joe states, “I’m not dying the very day I get my shot!” reminiscent of the parable of the rich man who thought he had more time on earth. Luke 12:21 in response to the rich man says, “Fool! This night your soul is required of you and the things you have prepared, whose will they be? So is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God.”
Joe, apparently with the power to escape death and judgement, attempts to run back down the escalator but falls off into another hypothetical spirit realm resembling a garden where infant-like “souls” are being grown and harvested.
He is greeted by a two-dimensional Picasso-esqe energy being that appears to be the caretaker of these new souls and refers to itself as “the coming together of all quantized fields of the universe” but says to call it “Jerry” since his feeble human mind won’t comprehend anything else.
The writers, here, conveniently project intellectual superiority onto those who might question something they themselves can’t objectively communicate to the audience.
Joe asks if he’s in Heaven or Hell to which Jerry and all the young “souls” around him laugh and chuckle as if it’s the most absurd question they’ve ever been asked.
This scene serves not only to mock those who believe in the Biblical teachings of being eternally in the presence of or separated from God, but is also dangerous in how it can affect the children watching.
This scene has the potential to make children believe asking about Biblical absolutes like Heaven and Hell will be met with ridicule and scoffing. It can also encourage children to collectively ridicule and mock any of their own peers who dare raise these same questions.
New age “rebranding” of spiritual absolutes continues on to be a major theme in this movie.
“Jerry” tells Joe that he is in “the Great Before” but that they call it the “You Seminar” now as the young, childlike souls bounce around repeating the word “hell” over and over curiously as if they have never heard it mentioned before.
Jerry then winks at the camera and says, “re-branding.” Again, reinforcing the New Age theme of “re-branding” spiritual absolutes specifically to deceive children.
Proverbs 22:6 states, “Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to stumble, it would be better for him if a great millstone were hung around his neck and he were thrown into the sea.”
Joe, unable to get back to earth, then becomes assigned as a soul “mentor” and is brought to a movie theater where mentors are watching a “You Seminar” informational video.
Another Jerry character states “I’m a councilor here at the You Seminar. Now, you don’t remember it but you’ve been here before” strongly implying reincarnation and the recycling of life in direct contradiction of Hebrews 9:27 which states, “Just as it is appointed for man to die once, and after come the judgement.”
It’s here that mentors are given their purpose which is to help new souls find their “spark” which they define as their reason to live.
During the Seminar, human beings are shown back on earth doing what gives them their spark. A Kamala Harris looking woman is shown to be at an Oval Office looking desk with flags surrounding. The Stars and Stripes are conveniently missing.
Joe is then assigned to the troublesome soul named “22” as all souls are referred to by impersonal numbers and not names.
It turns out that “22”, voiced by Tina Fey, has refused for thousands of years to find her “spark” and has been in a state of spiritual limbo, burning out various “mentors” over that period of time. The number 22 is prominent among numerologists, representing talent and meaning in life.
We are then taken through various flashbacks of 22 thwarting the past “mentors” she’s had, implying that once souls have passed on from earth, they are brought to this “great before” to mentor new souls.
One of these soul mentors is Mother Teresa. In a flash back, 22 throws a crucifix at her face before showing the cross fall to the ground. The Cross is the only symbol of another religion blatantly disrespected in this film.
22 then takes Joe to her secret room where she has proudly displayed all of the nametags of “mentors” she has caused to give up on her. This scene isn’t for children, as most of them won’t recognize any of the names. What is telling in this scene are the names that AREN’T displayed.
Completely lacking are the names of Jesus, any of the Apostles, John Wycliffe, William Tyndale, Martin Luther, C.S Lewis, any of the Founding Fathers etc.
In a laughable attempt to be inclusive, Soul only proves to be exclusively exclusive to Christianity and its most celebrated advocates while displaying obscure degenerates like Harvey Milk and violent radicals like Nelson Mandela front and center in terms of cosmic importance.
The inane and confusing world building continues as 22 then takes Joe through a portal to yet another hypothetical construct called “the Zone.” 22 describes the “Zone” as “the space between the physical and the spiritual.” According to 22, it is something humans can allegedly enter when they are in a moment of bliss while performing what talent their “Spark” is giving them.
22 then demonstrates how she can “mess” with these spiritual projections by popping their zone bubble. 22 interrupts an actress during her Romeo and Juliet speech, causing her to forget her line back on earth. Another time, 22 keeps a Knicks player from scoring a basket during a game.
This is implying souls can interact with other souls through acting out their passions aka astral projection.
I stated that this was astral projection while watching this spiritually sickening film with a female friend. She laughed at me as “overthinking it” until the next scene occurred.
Joe and 22 are attacked by a dark, twisted soul being that breaks off from a herd of other “lost souls” in this realm.
They are saved by an “astral traveler” named Moonwind voiced by openly homosexual talk show host, Graham Norton. He disembarks from his neon-colored ship, blaring Bob Dylan’s “Subterranean Homesick Blues”, the same artist who wrote “The Times They Are A Changin.” He then greets them, saying “Ahoy there, fellow astral travelers!” to which my friend simply said “No way!”
Again, the suspension of disbelief that entertainment causes in us, leaves us open to subconscious programming if we are not looking for it.
Joe asks Moonwind if he can help him get back to his body. Moonwind says that’s exactly what he and his fellow travelers do and refers to themselves as the “mystics without borders”, a not-so-subtle wink at globalism and open border advocacy.
Moonwind and his fellow spirits then perform a wiccan/shamanic ritual involving drawing a circle around the “lost soul” with a crystal encrusted staff which returns the soul to its pure form before shooting down into the earthly body of the hedge-fund manager to which it belongs.
Aboard Moonwind’s ship, Joe asks where Moonwind’s and the rest of his crew’s bodies are. They all respond that they’re alive back on earth. One of the crew members states that his body is in a trance in Palawan. Another says she is a shamanic healer meditating in Berkeley, California. They then cut to Moonwind’s body which is sign-twirling on a street corner in New York.
Moonwind then asks if Joe is dead as the same ritual isn’t working on him. He then takes them to a place where they can attempt to locate his body. He says joe will have to tune back into his physical surroundings. To accomplish this, he instructs Joe on how to “breathe into his crown chakra.” Joe then enters a trance and is told not to break his meditative connection by opening his eyes.
A portal opens in the circle after Joe can smell and feel that he is in a hospital bed in New York. Joe jumps through the portal after seeing his body below but accidentally pulls 22 with him. 22 enters Joe’s body while Joe’s soul enters a cat laying at his feet.
The movie then takes us on an annoying attempt to be funny as Joe and 22 have a Freaky Friday romp through Downtown New York which includes stealing pizza and gyros from local vendors to keep 22 from being “hangry.”
They then remember that Moonwind’s body is sign twirling at a specific address not far from them. They locate him, breaking him out of his astral projection, and ask how they can switch Joe back into his body from the cat.
Moonwind then casually says they’ll have to perform “an old fashioned astral transmigration displacement” which he describes as “glorious and full of chanting.”
Joe and 22 end up back at Joe’s apartment to figure out their next move.
The movie takes this time to take a dig at George Orwell’s distain for state sponsored education. While in the body of Joe, one of his young band students, Connie, arrives at his door and says school is a waste of time and wants to quit.
The naïve 22 says, while in Joe’s body, that “of course it is. Like my mentor, George Orwell said, ‘state sponsored education is like the rattling of a stick inside a swill bucket.”
22 continues on saying “The ruling class’s core curriculum stifles dissent, it’s the oldest trick in the book.” The thirteen year old then goes, “Yeah! I’ve been saying that since the 3rd grade!” implying anyone who believes in the overreach of the government is a naïve soul or on the same mental plane as a thirteen-year-old band student.
This movie ironically ignores another quote from George Orwell who said, “The very concept of objective truth is fading out of the world. Lies will pass into history” which sums up this film perfectly.
We then cut to two worn out “quantized energy fields” aka “Jerry’s” that now appear to be assigning large groups of new souls their personality traits by herding them into “pavilions” with personality symbols above them.
One of the Jerry’s goes “Ok, you five will be insecure and you twelve will be self-absorbed” as they are powerlessly shoved into their respective pavilions. The other Jerry jokes, “We really should stop sending so many through that one.”
This movie humorously replaces a loving God who “knit you in the womb” (Psalm 139) and made you unique in every way with callous, impersonal energy blobs that assign negative traits to innocent souls in mass for the sake of convenience.
The soullessness of ‘Soul’ continues in a barber shop that Joe and 22 visit to fix his hair for the jazz performance he’s still trying to attend.
Referring back to Orwell’s quote about objective truth fading, as he gets his hair cut, 22 in Joe’s body begins to rant to the barber shop inhabitants about “existing as a theoretical construct in a hypothetical way station between life and death” and continues on a pretentious monologue about reincarnation and whether “life is worth dying for.”
The rest of the barber shop inhabitants are shown to be intrigued and hanging on every word he’s saying in a “sermon on the mount” type of reference despite literally almost nothing being said.
22 then steals a handful of lollipops meant for children and takes off. Apparently, kleptomania is becoming 22s “spark.”
The “Accountant” spirit, Terry, who has been trying to find Joe’s missing soul this entire time is finally sent to earth, apparently to kill Joe once again to retrieve his soul to the great beyond. Terry accidentally drops the wrong African American into another man hole, giving him a glimpse of death before threatening him to “leave processed foods alone” as he’s eating a bag of chips when the Terry spirit murders him, leaving the man emotionally crippled.
They then come to a subway where a man is playing a jazz-ish type song where the main lyric is “the purpose is to recycle life” once again nodding to reincarnation and other anti-Christian, eastern belief systems. 22 then throws a piece of stolen bagel into the man’s guitar case.
Joe continually coaches 22 on what to say or not do and not once does Joe tell 22 that stealing is wrong.
Joe and the cat are then murdered once again by the Terry spirit and brought back to the host of Jerry’s. It is then noticed that 22 has her “earth pass” activated. 22 secretly gives it to Joe so he can go back to earth and perform in his gig. The Jerry spirit congratulates Joe on helping 22 find her spark but we’re not told what that spark is.
Joe, before sneaking off to rejoin earth with the pass, asks the Jerry what 22s purpose was. The Jerry just laughs saying “we don’t assign purposes.” The spirit goes on to mock him saying “You mentors and your passions…your purposes and your meanings of life…so basic” and walks off not answering anything. Almost mocking those who ask what the meaning of life is.
22 then sulks off back into the “zone” muttering “I have no purpose” and slowly becomes one of the depressed monsters roaming the fields.
Joe successfully plays his gig with the Dorothea Williams band but feels disappointed that he isn’t as happy as he thought he’d be. He goes home and pulls out the items 22 stole from their excursions and begins to feel bad for the lost soul. He then begins to slowly play piano until he is in “the zone” and is astral projecting his soul where he finds Moonwind’s ship again.
They attempt to wrangle 22 but she overpowers them. It eventually ends in a convoluted process of Joe getting 22 to not be depressed anymore and gives her back the earth pass. 22 goes to earth but we’re never told who she embodies. Joe, about to enter the Great Beyond again, is stopped by the Picasso spirit Jerry and given another chance to live.
Credits roll with “Have a Good Time, Cuz it’s Alright” playing as the outro song.
Not content with debauching traditional morality and spiritual absolutes, the writers decided to play a song essentially saying “have a good time because nothing really matters” as its parting theme.
Nowhere does this movie attempt to explain why evil exists or how terrible people like Stalin, Mao, etc. became the monsters they were or if evil is punished.
If anything, this Nihilist worldview only serves to excuse the atrocities Man has committed because there is no punishment for sins nor redemption through a Savior. Simply live your life according to your passions, no matter what those passions may be.
On a day specifically reserved for the Christ, when millions of children should have been taught the meaning of Christmas and why they need Jesus, millions of children were instead taught New Age Nihilism, Moral Relativism, and Sorcery.
Galatians 1:8 “But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let them be accursed.”
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