I would hesitate to say this next thing if it hadn’t been for
multitudes of people saying it before me. In fact, before seeing
Black Panther I would have
argued against it. I would have pointed to about thirty years
of movies starting with Spike Lee and John Singleton to argue that
black representation in film has been around for awhile. Important
movies about the black experience in America have been made by
distinguished filmmakers (say Amistad and
12 Years a Slave).
There have even been black super-hero movies (Blade and
Hancock). But Black
Panther is a special movie. Never before has a very large studio thrown so much money and
effort in such an unadulterated way towards making an arguably
“African” movie. Black people have always been with us but not
really like this. Like India in Slumdog Millionaire
and China in the opening ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, Black
Panther can be categorized as a
“coming out” party. And what a party it is.
For one thing, black people are
being represented from a position of strength. The Black Panther, as
a Marvel Superhero, is the crown-prince of the fictional kingdom of
Wakaanda. Wakaanda is based on the old European myths of utopic
cities such as El Dorado and Shangrila that stayed in static idyllic
peace while the outside world suffered through the hell of progress.
Wakaanda is situated on top of large deposits of Vibranium, a mineral
that seems to literally do everything from providing energy, making
airplanes, and cloaking entire cities from view of the outside world.
As far as the country’s wealth in concerned, Wakaanda is a
production designer’s magnum opus of contradictory elements.
Wakaanda is essentially a science fiction version of Africa, traditional
elements intertwined with technology several decades ahead of the
rest of the world. The same can be said of the costumes and makeup of
the movie, all three of which should run away with Oscars next year. Black Panther is
a gorgeous movie in all its respects. Wakaanda is also an Enlightened
country. Even though Wakaanda’s political model is based on fights
to the death for dominance (this is a comic book movie after all), women apparently have equal status as men
and actually form the most prestigious parts of the army as well as,
as far as I could tell, the one and only scientific post in the whole
country.
(For reasons that could fill several books, the idea of an isolated
highly technological egalitarian utopia is stupidly wrong. The
apparent location of Wakaanda, northeast Congo, also known as the
world capital of anarchy, poverty, and rape, is the perfect location
for the manifestation of a stupidly wrong idea. However, as this is a
comic book movie, I will try to refrain from lecturing on the subject
of economics.)
The main theme of the movie is
whether or not Wakaanda should use its wealth and technology to help
the rest of the world or to conquer it in revenge for the oppression of black people. In an interesting
twist, the rest of the world is mainly represented by the projects of
Oakland, California (where it should be noted, Director Ryan Coogler
is from and where he made his first great movie Fruitvale
Station). The movie handles this
subject the way Nelson Mandela would handle it, with great maturity.
I’m not exactly sure what the black panther legend means in
Africa or where exactly it comes from.
Here, in America, the Black Panthers were a militant vigilante group that took it upon themselves to police the police, sometimes coming in direct conflict with them (I am also told they did community service). The Marvel superhero
actually precedes the militant group by several years and simply does
not have the same philosophy. Actually, the philosophy of the
militant group is more closely aligned in Black Panther
by the main bad guy, a man named Killmonger, played by Michael B.
Jordan. This is a black panther in the American sense. Fueled by
resentment and hatred, he is bent on using Wakaanda’s wealth and
technology to burn everything down. Coogler’s treatment of
Killmonger is empathatic but not sympathetic. He develops the
character well and explains his actions, but ultimately does not
agree with him.
There is one particular scene that stood
out to me. When the Black Panther (Chadwick Boseman) is first made a
King, he goes through an ancient ritual in which he visits his
ancestors in an ethereal version of the Serengeti. Later on in the movie, Killmonger goes through the same
ritual. However, as his father was an exile from Wakaanda, Killmonger
visits him where he ended up dying, a project in Oakland, California.
It is a scene of great gravity and incongruity and one
of the best manifestations of cultural displacement I have ever seen in a movie. It perhaps can be
said that a King of a wealthy country like Wakaanda is privileged and can afford then to take a Nelson Mandela (also of royal blood) view of the world
whereas Killmonger grew up poor and excluded and is entitled to his resentment. But no matter, the
point I believe is that black people want to have the decision to
choose to be included in the world. Given the choice, it seems that
Black Panther is
stating that they would choose inclusion. That’s
fine with me. If that is where the words "black panther" lead
now, I will follow.
So much of black culture seems to be
simply reactionary to white culture (a dumb generalization but I
don’t want to spend the space to get any more specific). By
positioning Black Panther’s
arguments and themes in a place outside of white influence, it allows the “peace and inclusion” choice to avoid the Uncle Tom label of appeasement. In recent years, I have been continually
annoyed by other black movies (“black movies” another gross
generalization but I won’t spend forever writing this) from the
incompetent Selma to
the insult-to-history which was Birth of a Nation
to the multitudinous iterations of "untold stories" of the "first black
___ to do ___” like Hidden Figures that arrive in theaters in a ever-reliant stream. If the complete
absence of white people in Black Panther
indeed enabled its philosophical maturity and creativity, then we
should start producing more "black movies" set entirely in Africa and/or space (having said that, the performance of Andy Serkis and Martin Freeman were fantastic in Black Panther).
I also hope that Ryan Coogler can make some more personal movies.
Chistopher Nolan got to switch between regular movies and
blockbusters. Hopefully Coogler gets a similar deal.
