The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Black Panther: strong in its questions
By now it is clear that the movie Black Panther has lived up to the hype. It’s an unbelievably good movie. But what is the meaning of a megahit populated almost completely by actors of African descent under the direction of a black American filmmaker? The money, after all, still goes to Disney. Can a movie make a difference?
First, it is clear that the movie has deep significance for millions of black Americans. In think pieces, social media, and in our daily lives we have been treated to a deluge of words, images, and spontaneous reaction demonstrating that the movie is a joy. That joy has not been limited to the black community, however. You don’t have to be black to leave the theater feeling that you have been part of something special, and you don’t have to be black to feel that the movie posed questions you will ponder for a long time.
The only super hero movie that can be compared to Black Panther, in terms of being both familiar and a revelation, is last year’s smash, Wonder Woman. Both movies feature established superheroes but feel completely new. You might prefer — for reasons that escape us — other comic book dramas, but until Robert Downey’s charismatic Tony Stark inspires Elon Musk to deliver clean water to Flint, Michigan instead of firing overpriced cars into space, they don’t matter. Only the Star Wars movies have felt bigger, but they are limited by anodyne politics, several misfires, and, alas, Jar Jar Binks.
As works of commercial art that inspire, Wonder Woman and Black Panther stand apart, even as the two are very different. (Here come the spoilers.) Wonder Woman celebrates women’s power and abilities through the character of Diana, who turns out to be Zeus’ daughter. After a prelude set in Paris’s Louvre Museum, a century after the main events of the movie, Wonder Woman begins with an ecstatic celebration of women’s prowess demonstrated by Amazons training on their hidden island. The rest of the plot involves World War I and Wonder Woman’s heartbroken reaction to that conflict, as she abandons her belief that her power carries a responsibility to others not like her. Ironically, she ends up curating old artifacts, hidden away in the world’s most famous museum, spending a century in anonymity under a glass pyramid that imitates Egypt’s architectural glory.
The movie is great, and Gal Gadot is beyond fabulous, but her character’s self-imposed isolation represents the worst excesses of upper middle class white feminism; she is empowered, she got a good job, and that is the end of it. Still, the movie celebrates women’s strength and acumen. The politics of the movie lie in the images and representations, not as a meditation on WWI. But the only question to ponder after seeing the movie is, when are we getting the sequel? The answer, not soon enough.
Black Panther is also deeply joyful. Unlike Wonder Woman, however, some of the film’s importance flows from the questions it asks. Early in the movie the villain, Michael B. Jordan’s N’Jadaka, a.k.a. Eric Killmonger, visits a fictional version of the British Museum and challenges the curator about the provenance of the collection. The power of this anti-colonial critique is muted when he and other villains kill the staff and steal the artifacts, but his words bite, and already the issue of who owns African culture is raised. Throughout the film N’Jadaka offers trenchant critiques of power and global inequality. In the end our hero, Chadwick Bosman’s T’Challa, a.k.a. the Black Panther, defeats N’Jadaka, but in the process has to rethink practices of separation and isolation.
Wakanda, the hidden world of African power and the home of the Black Panther, chose isolation as a matter of national and cultural survival. Where Wonder Woman’s Diana closed herself off because she was unable to answer the existential question of her role as an individual in a complex and violent world, the Black Panther sees a different ending. T’Challa understands that Wakandan anti-imperialism and resources must be linked to improving the lives of oppressed people of the African diaspora, scattered by the Atlantic Slave Trade. Whether it is Killmonger’s arguments, which were anticipated by Lupita Nyong’o’s Nakia earlier in the movie, or that T’Challa sees his murderous cousin as a product of Wakandan neglect, is immaterial. The responsibilities of Diasporic bonds call T’Challa to action.
Perhaps the weight of the movie is in size of the challenge sketched. At the end, as T’Challa and his sister, Letitia Wright’s genius Shuri, arrive in writer/director Ryan Coogler’s hometown of Oakland, California, which is also, not ironically, the birthplace of the political Black Panther Party of the 1960s, to begin the work. The prospects are daunting, whether in the Marvel universe or ours. But the looks of admiration and wonder on the faces of the boys seeing the Wakandan ship speaks to how we all felt watching the movie.
The Wakandan promise of constructing a community through its gifts of intelligence, compassion, and pride, through an unselfish sharing of resources, provides a much-needed antidote for the movie-goer as well. Outside Wakanda, we face persistent racial tension and animus, dramatic reductions in funding for public resources such as schools and clinics, and an ungenerous political climate. Fantastic technological innovation is deployed in ways unlikely to improve the lives of most people.
Black Panther is a terrific movie; it will be a shame if we don’t recognize it as a challenge to envision a better and more equitable world.
Perhaps the weight of the movie is in size of the challenge sketched.