Jingle Jangle : A Christmas Journey— The Beauty of Blackness in Film

The Thanksgiving treats I devoured the night before had not even settled in my stomach before the Christmas decorations in my house were up. My parents propped up the ladder to the attic by Friday morning, and jingle bells, leafy wreaths, and ornaments spilled out in front of my eyes. 2020 has flipped almost everything upside down, but if there is one thing this year can't shake, it is the holiday cheer that warms my heart like a cup of hot cocoa.

If holiday cheer is the hot chocolate in my life, then Christmas movies are snuggly sherpa blankets. Elf, Disney's A Christmas Carol, and Mickey's Twice Upon A Christmas hold me tight, comfort me after long mundane school days, and wrap me into a burrito of love. Now, after last weekend, I have a new film to add to the list: Jingle Jangle: A Christmas Journey.

Writer-director David E. Talbert's new film is a Netflix musical set in the colorful fictional town of Cobbleton featuring a powerhouse of actors in this all-Black cast. The film begins with grandmother (Phylicia Rashad) reading the story of whimsical toy-maker Jeronicus Jangle (played by Justin Cornwell as a young man and Forest Whitaker as an older man) to her grandchildren.

Jeronicus Jangle's toys are wondrous and during the holidays' children and their parents flock to his workshops to see what new inventions he has whipped up. This time around, Jangle awaits one last ingredient to bring his latest creation to life. After his package arrives, Jangle is so thrilled that he gives free inventory away to everyone in the store, launching a Broadway-style musical number choreographed by The Greatest Showman's Ashley Wallen. People fly from ladder to ladder, characters leap in their bright Dickensian attire, and Jangle laughs happily because now he can give his daughter and wife everything they've asked for and more.

Jangle brings his new invention to life, a mechanical bullfighter with a ridiculous ego comically voiced by Ricky Martin. He wants to manufacture enough for every child in the world. But the bullfighter is hellbent on being one-of-a-kind. He convinces Jangle's apprentice, Gustafson (Miles Barrow as a young man, Keegan-Michael Key as the older man), to steal him Jangle's book of designs.

In a beautiful CGI scene, the next few decades unfold before our eyes, and we see that Jangle loses everything. His wife passes away and the relationship he once had with his daughter vanishes. Jangle's toy shop becomes a pawn shop, and he turns into a recluse. All the while, Gustafson becomes the richest toymaker on the planet.

Now his daughter is grown and has a child of her own, Journey (played by captivating newcomer Madalen Mills.) In a twist of fate, Journey spends days leading up to Christmas with her grandfather. Curious, bubbly, and innovative Journey doesn’t let Jangle’s initial harsh demeanor get her down. It is up to her to retrieve all that is lost and remind her grandfather what he loved to do in the first place. It is never too late to believe. You just have to tap into your soul and find out what it is you wish for.

Jingle Jangle is unlike anything Talbert has done before — his previous credits include dramedies First Sunday (2008) and Almost Christmas. In an interview with Indie Wire, he recalls that he grew up watching movies like Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

Talbert remembered when he showed his four-year-old son the Dick Van Dyke-starrer for the first time in 2017. “I sat with him and I’m singing the songs and everything, and he just wasn’t into it at all and asked if he could go play with his LEGOs,” said Talbert. “As he walked away, I looked at him, I looked at the screen, and I realized, he doesn’t see himself in the film. But this was my childhood, because there were no other options for diversity of representation on the screen at the time. He has Black Panther and Miles Morales on his wall. So that’s when I thought, it’s time to do it, because if my son is experiencing this, how many sons and daughters of color, around the world want to see themselves represented as well?”

Hollywood is obsessed with Black pain. But it ignores Black happiness. For generations, the only films featuring Black performers revolved around stories of slavery, poverty, gang violence, and racism. Cinema has normalized exploiting the Black mind, body, and soul to assuage white guilt. Black actors are stuck with the same old narratives because the film industry can't imagine giving us more. The "Black Best Friend," "Sassy Black Woman," and "The Magical Negro” are only a few of the typical tropes assigned to Black actors over and over again. If I see Octavia Spencer play a maid one more time, I will lose my mind. In Variety's Actors on Actors interview in 2016, Spencer told Dev Patel, "And right after I did The Help, I was all excited about the possibilities that would come, and 90% of the roles [offered were] a maid. And I'm thinking, I just played the best damn maid role written. I don't have a problem with playing a maid again, but it has to top this one – and none of them did."

After the killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor earlier this year, several news sites published articles with the same theme, "Want to Understand Racism? Here are 19 Anti-Racist Movies and TV Shows You Can Stream Right Now" — following a list of the duplicate dozen titles (Malcolm X, Boyz n the Hood, 12 Years A Slave.) These films are, of course, meaningful and necessary to watch no matter what race you are. But you have to take a step back and assess what the real goal of these lists are. As film scholar Racquel Gates explains, "such lists reduce Black art to a hastily constructed manual to understanding oppression, always with white people as the implied audience." You can open a shiny golden box with 19 anti-racist movies wrapped inside, but that does not mean you understand the centuries of oppression Black people have faced. The idea that a film, or a collection of movies, is all you need to understand Black history is naive and simplistic. It's a step in the right direction, but there is a long road ahead that lies undiscovered.

Gates also notes that "the very idea that Black film's greatest purpose is to be an educational primer on race in America is a notion that we need to lay to rest." Black Americans are so much more than vessels of pain, trauma, hurt, and anguish. We need more films that explore the deep, complex, and beautiful humanity in Black people's everyday lives. No one is saying that film-makers need to exclude race from their productions, but it doesn't always have to be the focal point.

During the halfway point in the movie, as Journey and Jangle’s relationship starts to flourish, they have a snowball fight and dance scene with the rest of the ensembles. "Life would have been amazing if Black people were equal, like everyone else back then!" I laughed as my brother and dad did the robot, my sister jumped around, and my mom grooved from her spot on the bed. It was a breath of fresh air to see actors that looked like me, basking in the joy of life and having fun with every inch of their soul. Through the television screen, a happiness filled my chest that swarmed around my body for days to come. Elf, A Christmas Carol, and Mickey's Twice Upon A Christmas have never given me quite the feeling.

I hope I see so many more "Jingle Jangles" in my lifetime. If I have kids, by the time I do, I hope to have an entire collection of Black holiday films that I can sit down with them and watch. There are plenty of holiday movies with white families and white Santas. Why not have Black, Hispanic, Asian, and all types of Santas and families popping up all over the movie scene? Everyone's story matters — during the holidays the themes of love, care, and family are universal.

Jingle Jangle shows us that there is no better time than now to give Black actors the chance to take part in the storytelling. Directors should have done that from the very beginning.