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A Goofy Movie: A Staple of Black Culture (VIDEO SCRIPT)
🕑 Added 2022-02-10 00:01:00 +0000 UTCI wanna talk about A Goofy Movie
A Goofy Movie is an animated musical released by Walt Disney Studios in 1995. Set in the same universe as the Disney Afternoon show Goof Troop, it tells a father-son bonding story about Goofy and his son Max, now a teenager in High School. In an attempt to grow closer to him after receiving some very one-sided news from his principal before school let out for the summer, Goofy takes Max on a road trip across the United States to fish at the same lake his father took him to as a child. This ruins Max’s plans to attend a house party with his newly acquired date Roxanne to view the Powerline concert, who he reflexively tells her is the reason he has to cancel their date, and is given the opportunity to change the destination of the trip to the concert in LA. And with that trajectory comes a story about bonding, trust, and communication.
While its resources were limited in comparison to other animated titles from the studio when it was made, and didn’t receive THAT much love in theaters, the home video release for A Goofy Movie was where the movie found most of its love and appreciation, quickly becoming a cult classic to millennial 90’s kids. However, while A Goofy Movie’s story and themes can easily be relatable to Millennials of every ethnicity, its Black Millennials of that era that resonated with it as much as they did that caused us to claim A Goofy Movie for the culture
Now there is a possibility that some of you out there only believe our need to claim A Goofy Movie is thanks to Powerline, which I completely understand. He's a dark-skinned pop sensation voiced by Tevin Campbell, famously known for the R&B bop “Can We Talk” -- the same song who’s lyrics are pretty much embedded in all of our DNA at this point -- and his real-life inspiration are 3 famous black pop stars; specifically Michael Jackson, Prince and Bobby Brown
But outside of Powerline being the first time we see a dark-skinned Goof-related character, there’s more to why black millennials are so quick to claim A Goofy Movie for themselves that reaches subconscious levels. It’s Max and how he goes out of his way to impress Roxanne. It’s seeing the differences in how Pete raises PJ vs Goofy raises Max. And it’s also in seeing Goofy and Max’s lack of communication being the result of pretty much most of their strife over the course of the movie hitting so close to home with a lot of black 90’s kids who watched this movie in 1995.
What is meant to be a universal story about child and parental bonding for every color and creed ended up having so much subtext in its story, that we Black Millennials pretty much claimed A Goofy Movie as our own the more some of us picked up on it. And while I can’t speak for EVERYONE, the most I can do is speak for why these aforementioned moments of A Goofy Movie spoke to my black millennial self growing up now that I’m capable of reflecting on these emotions with a better sense of maturity. But in order for me to do that, I first must acknowledge the effort made by certain members of a generation that put in the time to make A Goofy Movie such a staple for millennials in the first place.
(Some) X’ers Just Don’t Understand
Chris Matheson helped write A Goofy Movie, who was also the co-writer of the Bill & Ted trilogy along with Ed Solomon. Because of that, a lot of the themes revolving around Max reflected that of the “Parents Just Don’t Understand” aspect of early Gen X, with him being a Gen-Xer himself. But because the movie was released in 1995 and Matheson put in the work, the Gen X angles & tropes that you would think would be present in the movie were instead substituted with elements a lot of us Millennials experienced growing up in the 90’s in one way or another.
Now as someone who has watched media written by and made for Gen X, while there’s a bit of evergreen relatability in aspects of it that future generations can possibly relate to, there’s definitely a degree of separation depending on what’s going on. With every generation, the previously transferable content from previous generations becomes more and more questionable. What might have helped members of Gen X feel noticed and empowered might leave future generations with questions and concerns about how they viewed society. This is mostly because empathy and evaluation becomes more and more prominent with certain individuals who digest movies, television, books and whatnot with each passing generation.
That would explain why some Gen Xers can look at Bender’s actions in The Breakfast Club as rebellious and unconforming, but some Millennials and Zoomers just see an asshole bully based on his actions over the course of the movie. Why some Gen Xers supported Ferris Bueller talking Cameron into spending the day hanging out with him and his girlfriend across downtown Chicago despite being actually sick, while some Millennials and Zoomers thought that considering everything Ferris was asking of him that he was being a shitty manipulative friend. Why some Gen Xers didn’t really see a problem with Sandra D’s transformation at the end of Grease, while some of us Millennials and those who are Zoomers only saw someone who already liked themselves as they were until they met a specific crowd of individuals, being willing to change aspects about themselves just to both fit in with them and win the attention of a man, who was already going to do the same for her but immediately reverted to his default when he saw that Sandra already put in the work.
This type of generational gap in media for certain generations is pretty constant depending on where individuals range in the timeframe of their current generation. Sometimes you as a Millennial child of the 90’s and teen of the 2000's luck out and get exposed to content that’s both aimed at your demographic and written by individuals in your demographic. But most of the time, the content you experience is literally the second-hand smoke of the generation that came before you.
Then when it’s OUR turn to create mainstream content, we subconsciously do the same thing. We create shows, books and television shows aimed for younger generations, but they're either OUR stories, or the stories we always wanted to see when we were their age but couldn’t because they were written by individuals who never experienced it.
That’s why Euphoria... No, that’s it. That’s the whole sentence.
Thankfully, in the case of A Goofy Movie, millennial kids who grew up in the 90s had Chris Matheson; a Gen X writer who not only grew as a screenwriter as he advanced in his career with the popularity of Bill & Ted, but also learned, adapted and aimed to better understand the voices of the generations that came after him in order to properly tell stories that they can relate to and learn from. To paint a better picture, both he and his Bill & Ted co-writer Ed Solomon had both Bill and Ted say a homophobic slur in both Excellent Adventure and Bogus Journey. While it was a widely used insult in a lot of PG rated films in the late 80s featuring kids and teens -- I’m looking at you, Monster Squad -- both he and Solomon regretted adding it in the first two movies and made sure Face The Music would do right in applying the changed behavior to both Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter’s relief.
Now while some would be absolutely justified in saying that such a decision is miniscule in comparison, others like myself can see this decision in at least Matheson’s writing career over the course of the 31 years since Excellent Journey play out in how he was willing to expose himself to the changing times of the 90s to better reflect the generation A Goofy Movie aimed to reach for. And while Disney initially contracted Jymn Magon -- one of the OG writers of Goof Troop -- to write the script, you can see that Matheson’s hand in how he grew in storytelling and being adaptable for younger audiences helped in delivering the reasoning behind why it's such a hit with millennials; specifically millennials of color.
While yes, the connection between parent and child and getting them to better understand each other was a driving force for millennials overall, it’s the small things and story beats that black children at the time both consciously and subconsciously experienced that made A Goofy Movie such a unique experience for them. Because while they’re key factors into how the story progresses, for a lot of us black folk who watched the movie as children, a lot of the touches that were made to give the scenarios uniqueness subconsciously hit us heavily in the relatability department. Both good, bad, and somewhere in-between. So let’s start with somewhere in-between.
After Today...
I don’t know about you, but a lot of the schools I attended being a black kid living in the city of Detroit, were underfunded thanks to things such as redlining. I covered the old racist practice in my video essay on the first Candyman movie, but for a refresher, it’s the systematic denial of multiple services to the residents of specific neighborhoods. It was -- and still is, real talk -- a way of denying loans and government funding to people of color and poor white folk and the neighborhoods they resided in by going not by race and creed to avoid civil rights discrimination, but by city districts and neighborhoods that were listed as hazardous or in the red.
At least on the side of the individual, this practice shifted from going by redline maps to personal credit scores once the government started cracking down on these discriminatory actions that separated predominantly middle-classed white folks placing themselves and gaining proper funding in their suburban neighborhoods to invest in better school systems and extracurricular activities, while the practice kept people of color in underfunded urban areas and from building generational wealth of their own. Nevertheless, despite putting an end to said practice, the damage was already done, and the effects it left in sectors such as the difference in public and private schools can still be felt well into the 21st Century.
Being a child and a teen growing up in the city of Detroit, only having the Detroit Public School system at your disposal throughout your tenure as a student, the closest thing you could get to having a similar experience as those who attended properly funded white suburban high schools was if you made it into one of the three prestigious high schools in the Detroit Public School system via testing or audition; Lewis Cass Technical High School - the school that I attended - Martin Luther King Jr. High School, or Renaissance High School.
Now I was in elementary school when A Goofy Movie was released in theaters -- about to finish first grade, specifically -- so I didn’t really feel the result of these situations that the public school system of Detroit had to deal with until I was much older. I might’ve always had an old-slash-mature soul about me, but I think it’s fair to say that at 6 years old about to turn 7, my soul was around maybe 25 at the time.
Despite me not having Disney Channel growing up and my exposure to Goof Troop strictly being Disney Afternoon on ABC and CBS, the one thing I mainly related to teenaged Max in A Goofy Movie at the time was his willingness to impress Roxanne because I was a kid with a crush on a girl in my class and only had Doug Funnie’s anxious ass to help me learn how to deal with it.
Then as I got older, I gained more experience in my blackness being an inner city black kid in the 90’s. I became wiser and more mindful of my surroundings and situations. I saw the differences in the field trips I used to go on being in DPS versus the ones my white suburban counterparts did. I saw the differences in our school plays, the fact that the fundraisers we had involved selling cookie dough from Little Caesars while they barely ever had ONE. And in regards to my rewatches of A Goofy Movie on home video, I was less invested in what Max DID to impress Roxanne and more invested in how he was able to pull it off.
Because let’s be honest. As black folk -- specifically black millennial adolescents -- hijacking the last assembly of the school year with your AV club friends just to perform the latest single of a 90’s pop star for your high school crush isn’t one of the things we’d actively decide to do
But thanks to how hand-in-hand black millennial youth was with the parental discipline of “acting a fool” we never really entertained the idea of doing it in the first place. Especially if we didn’t have teachers that knew the importance of students being allowed to express themselves. And that theory is shot down to the ground even further once you take into consideration the long-lasting effects of redlining that kept said funding from even being considered in most public school systems within previously red and yellow areas. You also have to remember that this takes place in the mid-90’s, when predominantly black public schools across the country started saving money by cutting budgets in their programs for the arts thanks to the at-the-time modern day result of the same discriminatory actions of the past.
That’s why for a lot of black youth who timely watched and grew this, the first act of A Goofy Movie is a power fantasy; a way of allowing us a way of doing things otherwise impossible by living vicariously through a character that doesn’t have to worry about being disciplined by their school or their parents from the decisions they made. And the fact that the decision was made with something black-coded in the universe of the story helps with the immersion.
Because if any black folk did what Max did in real life, we all know we wouldn’t be Max in this situation. We’d be PJ.
Speaking of how to not raise your kids...
Under Your Thumb
Even during the days of Goof Troop, Pete and PJ’s relationship was never the blueprint. And while it was played up for laughs when it was used as a device to show off PJ’s worried and timid demeanor on the show, A Goofy Movie answered the age-old question about how abusive of a father Pete TRULY is to his son.
If Max hijacking the end of the year assembly to put on a faux Powerline concert for Roxanne is the power fantasy, then for black millennials who were brought up during the time of A Goofy Movie, PJ’s reaction to the principal informing Pete of the part he played in the matter is not even the tip of the reality iceberg we’d face if a lot of our parents or grandparents found out. There’s a reason why a lot of us look at situations when either younger generations or non-black individuals find themselves in, shake our heads and go “My momma-slash-daddy woulda beat the black off of me if I ever did something like that.” Because depending on the parent, Pete’s “under your thumb” way of initiating discipline in the household is the ONLY way they know how to do it. And in thinking it establishes respect -- because that’s how they were raised and they “turned out fine” -- there’s a chance it actually establishes fear.
I honestly can’t count on one hand how many times I didn’t want to tell my mom something growing up because I was afraid of how she’d react to it. I’m not even counting the times I actually received whuppings. And while what they were preaching rings true -- especially nowadays -- getting those heated-ass talk-downs about how we as black folk can’t be casually doing what we see white folks do, and how we have to be twice as good to get half of what they have -- always done in a tone that made us feel like shit for just trying to live, by the way -- always tended to drive home the fear of not being able to come to them for anything, because “you know how momma and daddy gonna react; you can’t talk to them about nothin’.”
Pete’s parenting might not have COMPLETELY reflected the problems a lot of black millennials had in discussing things that resulted in that way, but Pete’s ideals and how PJ reacted to said ideals every time we saw them on screen -- both separately and together -- was enough of a comparison for those of us who grew up in those types of households to realize the similarities. And it’s even more disheartening when you see that Pete not only is naturally respectful of those older than him, but also naturally seeks out the respect of his father; most of the time to no avail.
But not EVERYTHING regarding the way Pete treats PJ in A Goofy Movie is a projection of relatability with the black fanbase the movie gained over the years. Because while the abuse he suffers PJ through over the course of it is psychological rather than physical, the “under your thumb” mindset Pete has is very reminiscent of generations of black parents who believed in whupping their kids -- especially under the excuse of Christianity -- only Pete’s phrase is a replacement for the more popular phrase, “Spare the rod, spoil the child.”
If we are to assign allegories here, Pete and his opinions regarding the place of children is very reflective of what a lot of Christian fundamentalist pastors preached to their congregation. That children are naturally prone to lying and manipulation and must be taught their place sooner than later. This mentality is what runs through Pete’s mind when it comes to how he feels he’s raising PJ and his overall opinions regarding Max’s upbringing. Because according to the saying “spare the rod, spoil the child,” it leaves us believing that an unruly or spoiled child, one who is a threat to family, community, and society, lives in a house where no hitting is allowed. Or, in the case of A Goofy Movie, no psychological abuse.
To Pete, the house where no “hitting” is allowed is Goof’s house. And the spoiled child in this case is Max. And while he’s doing nothing but perpetuating the cycle of violence and abuse probably brought on by HIS dad when he passes said “discipline” on to PJ, he sees his child’s fear as respect, and disregards any attempt PJ makes to impress him enough in order to truly gain it, and treats any attempt made to have a HEALTHY connection with him as a joke because “children are innately devilish, liars and manipulators.”
This is why Goofy’s take at parenting Max leaves Pete so confused whenever he witnesses the differences, gives Pete a bit of a superiority complex when said differences gives him the opportunity to either gloat about the psychological trauma he puts PJ under or gives him the opportunity to tell Goofy “I told you so” regarding Max, and makes him insecure about what he’s been brought up to be true whenever he sees Goofy and Max defy it with the ACTUAL intention behind the phrase “spare the rod, spoil the child.”
What do I mean by the actual intention? Well, while those of us who were brought up Christian know the phrase thanks to Proverbs 13:24 -- He who spare the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is careful to discipline him -- this verse is most of the time paired with other verses in Proverbs regarding corporal punishment for adults. The ACTUAL context for the verse is found by actually applying proper Hebrew terminology to it, such as the Hebrew word for rod being “shebet,” a shepherd’s crook, used for guidance and protecting sheep from wolves and has since been used as a symbol for leadership, wisdom, and the aforementioned guidance and protection.
Because people under the Christian faith associate the rod to punishment thanks to verses like “A rod is for the back of one who lacks common sense,” Proverbs 10:13, or “A whip is for a horse, a bridle for a donkey, and a rod for the back of fools,” Proverbs 26:3, we take Proverbs 13:24 -- and the saying it birthed by 17th Century poet Samuel Butler -- out of context. The rod in its proper context represents leadership, wisdom, guidance and protection. And if we SPARE it, the child in question will be overindulged in the wrong things.
And while all of this can easily be applied and relatable to individuals of other ethnicities, this is a subconscious factor in a good amount of black millennials who had parents along these lines; I wouldn’t be surprised if there were some people who attached themselves to the implied trauma as much as there were people who attached themselves to the expression fantasy and overall vibes. However, It’s important to note that just because Pete represents the widely misinterpreted take on how most of us were disciplined, that doesn’t mean Goofy was a follower of the true iteration of the phrase from jump. Just like Max, Goofy made a choice. And from what I’ve experienced growing up, it’s a choice a lot of black parents made all too well...
Left or Right?
None of the events of A Goofy Movie after Goofy received the phone call from the principal would’ve happened, if he simply sat down with Max and talked about what ACTUALLY happened and why he did what he did. Instead, Goofy let the hysterical words of an adult of his generation worry him into making the spontaneous decision of the two going on a long road trip to go fishing, fueled by his own worry that his son was going down a dark path. And every time Goofy hinted at said words to Max upon arriving home, no form of communication was made between the two regarding understanding the bigger picture. By the time the two of them DID actually talk about what happened that resulted in Goofy forcing Max on this trip, so much happened that both simultaneously healed and hindered their relationship that all there was left to do WAS talk.
What Goofy and Max experienced over the course of A Goofy Movie was the theory of intersectionality. Specifically, intersectionality applied to individuals of different generations, but part of the same community. Now traditionally, the theory is used to show the disadvantages people have that overlap with each other thanks to oppression; race, gender, sexual orientation, things like that. But it can also be used to see a disconnect in members of different generations as well. Goofy and Max are actually pretty decent examples here. Despite being a Goof and afraid of being more and more like his dad as he gets older, Max is bold, daring, willing to do big things to -- forgive the pun -- stand out above the crowd to impress people he likes; something that his dad Goofy doesn’t understand until the end of the movie.
And why doesn’t Goofy understand it? Because thanks to receiving a fraction of the whole picture from the high school principal -- an important authority figure of the school belonging to the same generation as him with his own limited perception of the younger generation he oversees -- the overexaggerated actions of Max are immediately translated to him as red flags, and no attempt at trying to understand the bigger picture is made. So because it was a way that made sense to HIM, Goofy initiates a road trip in order for the two to bond just like HIS dad did with him. In the case of trying to bond with his son, Goofy is allowing his own personal lived experiences to get in the way of seeing Max’s own experiences and complex identities that were manifested in ways that resulted in this happening, thus making it difficult for Goofy to connect with Max over the course of their trip.
And it happens in multiple ways. The fight over the radio. The second-hand embarrassment Goofy delivers to Max at Lester’s Possum Park. Goofy doesn’t really make any REAL attempt to put the picture Max’s principal painted for him aside and get to the bottom of what’s going on with him that prompted said phone call to begin with, until they’re both using the car as a white water raft; until there’s literally nothing left to do but talk. Because he isn’t given the opportunity to understand why all of this was necessary, or even explain the reason for his actions after trust was formed between them with Goofy’s passing down of the map, Max experiences a form of discrimination among an individual of his community -- or family in this case -- at a different generational stage than him.
While it’s easy to apply this aspect of intersectionality theory to people of color in the workplace and whatnot in order to better understand how our overlapping layers of identity are used to discriminate against us from porcelain people, it’s just as important to take this theory and apply it to why our parents were so slow to hear our side of things whenever we got in trouble, or add another factor outside of the fear of extreme discipline as to why WE were so slow to communicate with our parents, because how this cycle applied to the members of the household made it hard to talk to anyone that wasn’t 15+ years older than us
And as before, despite multiple people being able to relate to this experience, this is something that can be 100% understood and relatable to black millennials feeling the pressure of growing up in a world where you have to be as pleasant, hardworking, and unthreatening as possible in order to thrive in a world that -- while still mirrors the one your parents did grow up in -- is making strides in getting better in ways to allow yourself your freedom of expression as much as it allows for your white counterparts. Especially when, despite them aiming to make sure we had access to bigger and better than they did, said parents are still influenced by the times they themselves were brought up in.
All that to say that I don’t think they’re gonna sneak us into a Powerline concert anytime soon.
Conclusion
For a movie that wasn’t given the same amount of time and dedication from its studio as its bigger projects, but was still given so much time, care and dedication from its creative team as it did, it’s both simultaneously surprising and unsurprising knowing that A Goofy Movie was such a unanimous sleeper hit with a whole generation of people.
And to make things more shocking, seeing that said creative team utilized what they assumed were very universal aspects of growing up and struggling to find common ground with parents, in ways that both spoke to and resonated with the experiences of a whole ethnicity within that generation to the point where they possibly looked at what was presented, pointed at the theater or television screen and said “this is my life.”
Because like I said time and time again; many millennials of multiple ethnicities relate to A Goofy Movie in multiple ways. But there is a reason why black folk of said generation hold it so near and dear to the point where we constantly expect it to show up at the Cookout without a proper invitation. And while MY experiences that I’ve explained in this video with how A Goofy Movie connected with my sense of blackness may be different than yours, the fact that there’s another black millennial that’s watching this right now that can recollect how the movie specifically connected with theirs just highlights the very power this film has in giving us a sense of unity.
And if that’s not a way to see things I 2 I, then I don’t know what is.
