If diplomacy is the act of telling a man to go to hell in such a way that he looks forward to the trip, then Black Panther is the Ofay and the Sally Ann of the 21st century.
Black Panther is the most complete illustration of complexities in courage, challenge and race in a very long time, perhaps since ‘A Soldier’s Story’…no wait, Rod Serling’s ‘Planet of the Apes’, as it expresses on different levels with a decidedly much deeper effect than even those Pixar movies you take your kids to; while they see talking toys, you see your kid leaving you for college and adulthood. And don’t come for me because its Planet of the Apes and you want to assume some stereotype in my reference. Black Panther captures the multi-dimensional character development that comes from comic books.
It was too well written a movie to not get censored by the studio—too many shots at dominant culture. Perhaps because they didn’t get the references, that itself is a byproduct of living in racism. You get so used to it, that you cannot recognize what it is like to step out of it. White people think blacks love the movie only because there are black superheroes; black people are enamored with Black Panther for the Wakandans fully understand racism but thrive in spite of it by living life out of its influences. The notion that black people want to live without white influence is such a revolutionary construct, that racism blinds white folk to it…they cannot imagine black people wanting to live without white people, yet, not fully assessing what life with white people has meant. A professor told me if she had children, she would keep them away from white people for their first twelve years. It was not that she despised white people, but she understood the impact of dominant imagery and the social impact of racism on young souls, and she wanted to incubate them from that damage. Black Panther was a two-hour incubation, in the way that movies are supposed to be: a feel good release from the norm. Black people finally felt what it was like to be Luke and Leia.
Criticisms I’ve read over the last two weeks that made no sense: (these are reasonable ones; I am not getting into others like why weren’t light skinned or LGBTQ people represented—in the former they were there, and in the latter you don’t know if they were, because the movie wasn’t about pointing out what made us different–and that is the real point of diaspora inclusiveness, isn’t it?)
- The technological advancements in Africa are far-fetched.
That was such a bigoted position that it supports the imagery of Africa being incapable of intellectual achievements. And every movie with white people outrunning fire, dodging volcano eruptions, escaping earthquakes, surviving ice ages, outliving apocalyptic breakdowns, and having teen age suburban girls save the planet is fine, right? All Marvel comics include the same fantastic technology and superpower scenarios. Why would this be any different?
- Why didn’t Black Panther fill in the holes of arcs of other villains or story lines (i.e., when did so and so get his technology?)
That’s why they have more movies; if someone created a perfect movie, there would be no need for a sequel. I don’t think it was Black Panther’s role to explain the other movies in the series.
- What was going to happen to these powerful women? Why didn’t we see their story?
The roles were written in a manner that the franchise can go with several spinoffs about the strong female leads. It was already 2 hours…I guess folks wanted a 10-hour miniseries…
The Technology Premise
I won’t get into the weeds looking at the origins, discussing what the metal could or could not do. The real reason vibranium allowed them to advance was not because it is a precious metal—it was that they were smart and disciplined enough to see the value in it—it’s articulated on two levels: vibranium has properties that when manipulated, creates incredible results in healing, cultivation and power. So, it wasn’t the Africans that really managed it; anyone could have done it, had they the vibranium. Safe explanation, first world-maintained hegemony, doesn’t paint the Africans as being smarter than anyone else type of storyline. That’s the official line carried in the film.
The real narrative was that white people had in real life a sort of vibranium; call it clippers or iron or coal—yet they used it to wage war, to enslave people and to damage the environment. Indo China made powder, Africa harnessed iron, Europeans merged these, making guns to conquer them both. Instead of using their powers for good, they used them to colonize and to hoard the world’s resources. A host of arguments imply the outside world–white people—cannot be allowed to have a more advanced gun. This premise led the ancestors into understanding that no matter what, we cannot share the resources, we cannot negotiate with…surprise, surprise… terrorists (like Klaw). It also made me wonder if they thought that it better for the world to implode, and then start over? It was never explored, even by Kilmonger. This recurring interventionist theme manifests itself with Thor and Wonder Woman, and in true comic book-ese, Black Panther faces this conflict.
Make no mistake, the movie is about the impact of technology and what should be done with it, giving us a glimpse that even if the people who look like you wielded it, that doesn’t mean that they would have performed any better, without the traditions and culture of the Wakandan.
The Other
Not all oppressors are white, or colonizers. The other was also on the mother continent, and they dispatched of the kidnapper soldiers in the same manner as anyone else.
Kilmonger was an outsider because he never fit into the humanity of Africans. He never understood the Wakandan way; in effect, he never understood the black way either, and the movie was clear to illustrate. Before he did away with his partner, Klaw called the Wakandans ‘savages’, saying they would never accept him, with the inference that Kilmonger was just like the Europeans. Not allowing the viewer to believe that being CIA/military trained and developed showed his positive abilities for leadership and character, the movie skillfully positioned it to illustrate his lack of civility and offering a reason for his penchant for annihilation. Usual movies view military training as a positive, unless that agent goes rogue by attacking his leadership…Kilmonger attacked the people he was trained to attack.
To know why Wakadans considered Kilmonger (and his father) wrong and warped in his views was to understand the meaning of black independence. Black people rising up has never been with the aim of world domination; it was and is always about self-determination and personal freedoms. Reference to slavery never matched to freedom; only to retribution or absolute rule. This is the brilliance of the argument, yet most people I’ve heard argue about attacking the European systems seem to not just sympathize with Kilmonger, but are absolutely in line with his logic, and most of these folk need to see the movie at least twice to discern the difference. Kilmonger saw the world through his oppression, seeing the solution to the tyranny in a zero-sum game through the values of the oppressor; that is, he only saw that the solution to being the victim was to become the victimizer. In the age of Trump, I especially enjoyed how it illustrated that even in the most prosperous of societies, factions could be split and willing to turn on each other very quickly, the result of outside agitation.
Unfortunately, there was a minimization for contributions made by blacks in the ‘Oaklands’ of the world. Kilmonger almost took over the mightiest empire on the planet within days yet thought of himself as just a kid from Oakland. The narrative suggested a futility of black effort across the world unless someone else stepped in, negating the resistance, rebellion, stewardship of those left out of Wakanda, and no one spoke to our strength as a people. Again, our situation was seen through an oppressor’s eyes, where one can see the minimization of the African diaspora…it needed to have one Wakandan say something to the effect that “I see greatness in them; or they can accomplish much on their own, but they can be much greater with us.’ To be affected by the city of the birthplace of the Black Panthers, there must be an acknowledgment of our ancestors as well. We saw no black adults in America, and there was no impact of blacks outside of Wakanda, and that was the only place that missed the mark.
T’Challa realized his people promoted an intractable caste hierarchy; Wakandans, outsiders, oppressed, and colonizers, in the same manner of Spanish rule—you can serve with us but you cannot be as us–and this was evidenced in the fact that T’Chaka did not bring Klimonger back when his father was killed. It wasn’t because of the death of the father, but somehow the offspring of an outsider seemed too much to absorb, even as the father said that he thought his son would always be seen as lost, or an outsider. That was a hell of an indictment on African-African American relationships. A side note: I’ve always wondered why we couldn’t get dual African citizenship in all but one country……
Isolationism
Was T’Challa’s first mission in the movie a mistake, in the sense that he interfered with a known attack, or was it his plan all along to participate? It seems as if it was the latter. When he took care of the kidnappers, his ex was in disguise, telling him that he messed up her stakeout. It left the impression that the Wakandas reluctantly intervene for intra-African conflict but not when anyone else is affected.
Korea
With a nod to Koreans for participation in making the movie, it looked as if the scenes were to show off Korea’s technology, beauty, and rising presence of Asian power, luring all parties to mystery and mayhem. Twenty years earlier, the setting surely would have been Hong Kong (Rush Hour 2, anyone?) The African had to beg for forgiveness to enter, while the white criminal was greeted with a hug and a welcomed kiss.
But the most important thing about being in Korea was the general in that wig. Black beauty products are a $15 billion industry in America, with over 90% of the stores owned by the Korean community, they control the manufacturing, distribution and retail sale of hair extension products—the center of the beauty market—and blacks are excluded from the supply chain. I don’t think it was any accident that General Okoye hated her wig in Korea and commented about how unnatural it was to be wearing it.
Black Women
The closest advisers to T’Challa and Kilmonger; they also happened to be the only people in the movie that never wavered in their support even as death was imminent. Superhero movies are the best sources of gender equality, but Black Panther took it to a new level. They saved lives, were decision makers, they counseled, they fought side by side with the men and each other. And to say that we’ve never seen this many black powerful people in a movie is a misnomer—we have never seen this many powerful black women in any movie before. They could kick your ass, tell you why they’re doing it, fix you up, and then kick your ass again…..and I couldn’t think of any movie where women were more sexy at the same time.
Religious Overtones
I wanted to call this article Wakanda and Ben Carson, but that is for another article….
Be in this world but not of the world.
I was raised in a ‘superior’ religion. We were most spiritual as we had the best grasp on what it meant to be a Christian. We didn’t follow average religious goers, black or white, harbored sentiment that they were the others, backward; we did not use our superior religious standing to help others unless they came to us. We were taught to be in the world with everyone else, to respect them as creatures of the creator, but keep it moving. Remain separate and do not mix with their kind. We were not alone; there are faiths in which people don’t vote, for voting is man’s construct (even though nation states and college degrees and driver’s licenses are forms of a human’s system to be honored and accessed), voting is akin to gambling. And what about inoculations? Technology? Interracial marriage? Minority rights?
Where we you in the time of slavery, Christian..er Wakandan? Where were you during the Civil Rights Era? Where were you when it was time to take a stand? These are powerful arguments woven into the rhetoric of Kilmonger, who has disdain for those who sat back while calamity engulfed a continent.
Last week, Reverend Billy Graham, America’s Evangelical Pope, was placed in rest. Though Graham proselytized in Africa and included blacks in teachings in the US, he was not a friend of Africans or black Americans. Whether it was civil war erupting in Africa with blacks fighting for independence from European rule or seeing the bombings and lynching and freedom marches in America over Civil Rights, history shows in Graham’s own words he believed that faith leaders needed to stay out of politics, essentially telling the flock to let the vulnerable fight their own battles. While the world crumbled around him, he gave whites the false impression that faith without works for the oppressed was ok. If Blacks have no friends among white evangelicals to support them, why show them any mercy?
African culture (and Latinos in Coco) illustrate in death a reverence to the ancestors before us, and a reckoning of those to follow. Believing the dead are watching our actions, and ready to embrace us in afterlife if we maintain the character and the traditions, meanwhile, banishment or erasing us out of existence when we do not, is a concept lost on the dominant culture. If Wakanda was Eden, then the rest of the world was cast out…who do you think the serpent was?
Who Was the Real Oppressor?
Kilmonger was trading one subjugation for another. And while you might have thought it included black folk at the top of the pyramid, he made it clear that it was about putting the people at the head who supported him, and those that valued the other T’Challa’s form of leadership in the dirt.
In a week where Trump allowed another dictator to go unfettered for his comments, heck, Vladimir Putin’s video showing how he could destroy America with weapons and it would be incapable of stopping him, is juxtaposed against the man that many people supported, overnight, without real insight to his temperament, his intellect, his purpose. Kilmonger came to Wakanda, and with the support of a few angry men who wanted to tear up shit around the planet, was on the verge of war before anyone sat down and figured out what the hell happened.
Kilmonger is seen as being American; not African, not Wakandan; it feels as if the black folk in America are viewed as lacking an African sense of self as well. That lack of awareness makes them untrainable and tainted. It is an oppressor’s perspective on the slave and does feel like an African perception of us.
Kilmonger and his father didn’t debate the issue of when or how or even why to engage who they considered to be the enemy. T’Chaka saw this as being radicalized by America. A poignant statement on US cowboy diplomacy over the last 150 years. No reason to flush out an argument, no reason to have mutual targets or goals. No reason to talk with others; kick ass and take prisoners. Neither father or son worked with community yet they spoke for the lives of others.
Love
The Wakandan women were willing to end their love relationships in favor for protecting community; in fact, they were protecting their community from their men.
The men never assumed that the women would leave their sides, despite their actions.
Kilmonger had no mother and was lighter than the rest of his Wakandan family, perhaps because of his American ancestry; it allowed for the audience to wonder if his mother was black or not; in the end, the mother’s background only mattered because she was not there to give him compassion. Wakandan men derived their humanness from the women, especially when challenged to make a moral choice.
We Can Save You
With the FBI agent at the stages of death, T’Challa argues that they can save him. Facing the implication of bringing in an outsider, knowing the risk of the outsider reporting what he saw.
When Kilmonger is on the throws of death, T’Challa says, “I think we can save you…”
In both cases, the saving was more than the simply the body—it was about saving the soul of the man; the former had no choice in the matter, he was chosen because his actions deemed him worthy. The latter’s actions should have deemed him unworthy, yet he was given choice. The path he chose was replete with a legacy of anger and violence that made him incapable of accepting redemption.
Speaking of redemption, watch Hollywood mess it up and fire the producer, switch to a suburban writing team, and make T’Ckalla fall in love with Princess Elsa….
holowe 
Very astute analysis.
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