And what does having soul really mean? Perhaps it’s just about the music. Northern Soul was an up-tempo offshoot of black American soul music. Its fans preferred lesser known artists to the traditional Motown sound. The case could be made that what feels off about this campaign is actually a reflection of a specific subset of a wide-ranging culture.

Then again, in the video Gucci posted on Instagram to celebrate the start of the campaign, the models are dancing to “The Night” by Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons. The Jersey Boys are a lot of things but they’re not soul. In this instance, the music is in service of the image, rather than the other way around.

Even the early audition videos showed a strange willingness to smash authentic expression together with carefully scripted postures in service of a concept. Not to mention the awkwardness of asking black models to display their facial profiles, name their spirit animals and dance on command. Is this soul? What, actually, is this? It’s part of an audition, of course, but the minute a brand puts the footage online as part of a marketing campaign it loses even the appearance of being benign.

The campaign is commodity, not culture. It looks like us, but it is not us. There is no thread count on black joy. I’m reminded of the ’90s pushback against the FUBU line. FUBU stands for For Us, By Us, a simple statement made by the label’s black founders that staked a claim and drew a perimeter that offended some white cultural commentators. “Why does this have to be for you? Why can’t I have it, too?” some asked. Similar questions seem to be at the heart of the new Gucci campaign.

In 1970, Gil Scott-Heron recorded “Comment No. 1,” in which he excoriated a largely white radical movement that tried to embrace blackness while fundamentally misunderstanding black life. “What does Webster’s say about soul?” he mused archly. Mr. Scott-Heron’s question is a coincidental but telling precursor to the one Gucci would pose to its models, and consumers, nearly 50 years later. What does it mean to have soul? If you have to ask, you haven’t found it yet.