we walk through this world aimlessly and sometimes we just need to be embraced." Brooke Obie, writing for Esquire, opined that Black Is King is a blueprint for black men to decolonize masculinity. Obie quoted a passage read by an African-American man in the film:We've been conditioned to be inside of a box. We've been created with this image that Black men are supposed to be this way. And I feel like we're kings. We have to take responsibility of stepping outside of those barriers that they've put us in, for the next generation.Obie explained how slavery and colonialism forced toxic religious and social traditions onto black men which "leads to violence against women and girls, queerphobia, and destruction of self". Black Is King therefore shows "how the world could thrive when Black men step into kingship", not one which is based on the "white supremacist ideas of hierarchy, dominance, and oppression", but instead one which embraces an "African egalitarian way" and is "rooted in stewardship to community". Sophia Ordaz of Slate noted that as well as the message of the film being "that Black kingship amounts to responsible manhood, Black femininity is just as integral". Ordaz highlights a spoken word passage read by a man in the film, which states: "Many times, it's the women that reassemble us. Men taught me some things, but women taught me a whole lot more." Janell Hobson of Ms. wrote that the "Brown Skin Girl" video is "a reminder of how Black women's collective gaze on each other is powerful enough to challenge the male gaze", as well as "a reminder of the community and solidarity of women to build each other up and raise our daughters toward the confidence they need to navigate a white imperialist and hetero-patriarchal world". Fordjour explained that a scene where women are standing on a beach holding hollowed-out calabashes (which symbolize health, fertility and rebirth in some African cultures) acts as "a monument of mothers", highlighting "those day-to-day things that a mother has to do to constantly take care of her family and the sacrifices that she has to make to keep this world turning". Background On July 19, 2019, The Lion King (a photorealistic computer-animated remake of Disney's traditionally animated 1994 film of the same name) was theatrically released in the United States. The same day, an accompanying tie-in album titled The Lion King: The Gift