Superheroes help Hollywood put Africa in the spotlight

The Afro-futuristic marvel blockbuster Black Panther has generated megahype both in Africa and its US diaspora.

Hollywood has produced a revolutionary action adventure with an almost all-black cast of strong characters — particularly women — who have historically been invisible in Tinsel Town.

The film also has a black director, co-screenwriter and costume designer, as well as a hip-hop soundtrack.

Black Panther is set in a mythical African land of Wakanda: the most technologically advanced country in the world, based on its vibranium wealth. The movie is visually spectacular, raking in $1.3bn in sales. But despite the importance of Black Panther as a thrilling spectacle, one wonders if the euphoric reaction to the film represents black therapy for a people that have suffered more humiliation — through four centuries of slavery and colonialism — than any other race in history.

Black Panther makes a great effort to represent an authentic Africa. The film is set in an Afropolis echoing visions of the biblical Garden of Eden. This is simultaneously a black El Dorado and a black Atlantis, with its architecture recalling the glories of the ancient Songhai, Mali and Ghana empires. The assorted array of costumes are from the Tuareg, Maasai, Dogon and Zulu. The main characters speak Xhosa.

The plot centres on the fight to rule Wakanda between the sensitive African noble, T’Challa (Chadwick Boseman) whose father T’Chaka (John Kani) has been murdered. T’Challa is surrounded by strong women allies like his genius scientist sister Shuri (Letitia Wright) who made him the bullet-proof Black Panther bodysuit. The other contender for the throne, Erik “Killmonger” Stevens (Michael B Jordan), is a former US soldier trying to avenge the death of his father, N’Jobu, by his brother, Wakandan King T’Chaka. N’Jobu, like his son, had sought to use Wakanda’s technology to liberate oppressed black people. Star power is provided by two Oscar-winning actors: Kenyan Lupita Nyong’o is impressive as an emotionally detached spy while Forest Whitaker is graceful as the high priest, Zuri.

Black Panther’s first problem is that a successful, industrialised African country has to be hidden from the world: even in this fantasy movie, everything outside Wakanda in the rest of the continent is chaos and anarchy.

The constant references to African “tribes” falls into the very stereotypes the movie claims to be escaping. A constant striving for western technology as the epitome of where Africa’s socioeconomic development needs to reach, is also discomforting. The film could have built more on the continent’s own authentic traditions, as Japan and China have successfully done in the real world. Wakanda is, in stark contrast, the product of a fertile western imagination, replicating the way in which Hollywood constantly flaunts the supposed superiority of US technology to the rest of the world.

Much of the ferocious debates about this film have centred on the contrasting visions of the blood feud between T’Challa and Killmonger. T’Challa wants to keep technology solely for the use of his kingdom and maintain a hermitic existence that excludes outsiders. He is a moderate isolationist committed to the status quo. His monarchical rule is presented as benevolent, while Killmonger’s radical rebellion is depicted as a descent into blood-thirsty despotism.

By portraying Killmonger as a psychopath, the filmmakers encourage us to support T’Challa’s more moderate vision. Killmonger — as his name unsubtly suggests — does not adopt the nonviolent approach of Martin Luther King Jr, but rather the radical, selfhelp separatism of Malcolm X.

The fact that a white CIA agent is on the winning side replays the tired Hollywood trope of the “White Messiah syndrome” seen in such movies as Tarzan, Biko, and Hotel Rwanda.

But despite these flaws, Black Panther is ultimately more positive than negative. If Hollywood could just figure out how to make more films with real African characters, this would go a long way in changing negative perceptions about Africa in the West.

Adebajo is director of the Institute for Pan-African Thought and Conversation at the University of Johannesburg.

THE FILM COULD HAVE BUILT MORE ON THE CONTINENT’S OWN TRADITIONS, AS JAPAN AND CHINA HAVE SUCCESSFULLY DONE IN THE REAL WORLD HOLLYWOOD HAS PRODUCED A REVOLUTIONARY ACTION ADVENTURE WITH AN ALMOST ALL-BLACK CAST OF STRONG CHARACTERS