Performance of Everyday Life [Week 8] : WALKING 1
October 28th, 2024: WEEK 8
A Brief Moonwalk in A Goofy Movie
Reading(that inspired the work): Brooke Baldwin, “The Cakewalk: A Study in Stereotype and Reality”
Performance Prompt: Write a brief performance analysis of a version of the moonwalk
Media: Written
Eye to Eye - Powerline
Dear Reader,
If you want to start an argument with a group of 'blerds' (Black Nerds) ask this question:
Is A Goofy Movie a Black Movie?
The room will split 50-50. Half will say "FUCK NO" and the other half will go, "oh, beyond formative."
Without going into extensive detail, the early Disney characters are designed based on minstrel performers. Their black skin, white gloves, oversized facial features. It's hard to miss.
Goofy, too. So there are myriad levels of inception going on when Goofy does the "perfect cast" dance alongside fictional pop star Powerline.
In a underfunded film made by Walt Disney Animation, founded by famous racist and antisemite Walt Disney, a minstrel anthropomorphic dog, Goofy (voiced by a white voice actor), plays the out of touch "lame" father of his son, Max (also portrayed a minstrel character and voiced by a white voice actor), doing a ridiculous dance, one his son and friends have mocked him for on stage with a faux Michael Jackson/Prince/Bobby Brown pop figure at the behest of his son to impress his son's obviously white coded love interest.
AND THAT DANCE CONTAINS THE MOONWALK? I think Goofy might have been hit in the face with a cake during this film... but there are so many shenanigans that it's har to keep track of them all.
I have no idea what's going on this film, but I will say this, even if it's only for a moment, this is the most impactful moonwalk I've seen.
Is this Black reclamation? Is this appropriation? Is this something that subconsciously connected with a child who didn't know he was Black until decades after he first saw this movie?
I don't have those answers, but I imagine that it's in no small part the complexity of its presentation that makes me feel so attached and seen by Goofy, Max and Powerline doing the moonwalk.
Also, for the record, A Goofy Movie is a Black film.
I'll die on that hill.
-Ian/Apollo
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