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In 1992, a little Black kid on a makeshift basketball court in Oakland, California disrupts his game to glance up at the sky. Figuratively, he’s looking at the loss of hope, a departure represented by glowing lights drifting away into the night. As we learn later, those lights belong to a futuristic flying machine returning to the mysterious African country of Wakanda, the setting of “Black Panther." The young man was once told by his father that Wakanda had the most wonderful sunsets he would ever see, so he cradles that perceived vision of beauty through his darkest hours. When he finally sees the sun go down over Wakanda, it provokes a haunting emotional response.

That same response will be felt by viewers of “Black Panther,” one of the year's best films, and one that transcends the superhero genre to emerge as an epic of operatic proportions. The numerous battle sequences that are staples of the genre are present, but they float on the surface of a deep ocean of character development and attention to details both grandiose and minute. Wakanda is a fully fleshed-out, unapologetically Black universe, a world woven into a tapestry of the richest, sharpest colors and textures. Rachel Morrison ’s stunning cinematography and Ruth Carter’s costumes pop so vividly that they become almost tactile. You can practically feel the fabric of the hat worn by Angela Bassett as it beams in the sunlight on the day her son becomes king.

Bassett is just one of numerous familiar and up-and-coming actors of color who bring their A-games to “Black Panther.” Forest Whitaker , Sterling K. Brown and “ Get Out ” star  Daniel Kaluuya are just a few of the others. The entire cast creates characters with complexities rarely afforded minorities in cinema; these people are capable of contradictory human responses that have lasting consequences. Their feelings are deep, instantly relatable, and colored with the shades of grey not often explored in blockbuster entertainment. When the villain still manages to make your eyes tear up despite trying to murder the hero in the previous scene, you know you’re in the presence of great acting and storytelling.

The villain in question, nicknamed Killmonger, is played by Michael B. Jordan . Someday, the team of Jordan and writer/director Ryan Coogler will be mentioned with the same reverence reserved for Scorsese and De Niro. The duo have done three films together, and though this is the first where Jordan is in a supporting role, they still convey a cinematic shorthand that’s representative of their trusted partnership. A film like this is only as good as its villains, and Jordan deserves a place in the anti-hero Hall of Fame alongside such greats as Gene Hackman ’s Little Bill Daggett from “ Unforgiven .” Like Hackman, Jordan lures you in with his likeable comic swagger before revealing the shocking levels of his viciousness. He is hissable, but his character arc is not without sympathy nor understanding.

Coogler is the perfect fit for this material. It hits all the sweet spots he likes to explore in his films. So much gets written about which prominent directors should helm a superhero film next, but relatively few would be allowed to leave such a personal mark on a product so slavishly devoted to fan feelings. Coogler turns the MCU into the RCU—the Ryan Coogler Universe—by including everything we’ve come to expect from his features in the script he co-wrote with Joe Robert Cole . Like Oscar Grant in “ Fruitvale Station ,” T’Challa ( Chadwick Boseman ) is a typical Coogler protagonist, a young Black man seeking his place in the world while dealing with his own personal demons and an environment that demands things from him that he is unsure about giving. Like Donny in “ Creed ,” T’Challa exists in the shadow of a late father once known for a greatness he also wishes to achieve through similar means.

Coogler extends these same character traits to his muse Jordan’s Killmonger who, true to comic book lore form, has a “two sides of the same coin” relationship with the hero. Even their plans apply this theory. T’Challa wants to keep Wakanda away from the rest of the world, protecting his country by using its advanced technology solely for its denizens. Killmonger wants to steal that technology and give it to others, specifically to underprivileged Black folks so they can fight back and rule the world.

Additionally, the dual, reflective imagery of T’Challa and Killmonger is beautifully drawn to the surface in a scene where both men undergo the same spiritual journey to visit the fathers they long to see. But these similar journeys are polar opposites in tone, as if to prove the adage that one man’s Heaven is another man’s Hell. These scenes have a way of burrowing into your skin, forcing you to reckon with them later.

Coogler’s universe also isn’t male-dominated. In each of his films, there are women who advise and comfort the male leads while still having their own lives and agency. In “Fruitvale Station,” it’s Octavia Spencer ’s Mrs. Grant; in “Creed,” it’s Tessa Thompson ’s artistic girlfriend. “Black Panther” really ups the stakes, presenting us with numerous memorable, fierce and intelligent women who fight alongside Black Panther and earn their own cheers. Lupita Nyong’o is Nakia, the ex for whom T’Challa still carries a torch. Letitia Wright is Shuri, T’Challa’s sister and the equivalent of James Bond’s Q; she provides the vibranium-based weapons and suits Black Panther uses. And Danai Gurira is Okoye, a warrior whose prowess may even outshine T’Challa’s because she doesn’t need a suit to be a badass. All of these women have action sequences that drew loud applause from the audience, not to mention they’re all fully realized people. Okoye in particular has an arc that replays Black Panther’s central ideological conflict in microcosm.

For all its action sequences (they’re refreshingly uncluttered, focusing on smaller battles than usual) and talk of metals that exist only in the mind of Stan Lee , “Black Panther” is still Marvel’s most mature offering to date. It’s also its most political, a film completely unafraid to alienate certain factions of the Marvel base. It’s doing a great job upsetting folks infected with the Fear of a Black Planet on Twitter, to be sure. To wit, Wakanda has never been colonized by White settlers, it’s the most advanced place in the universe and, in a move that seems timely though it’s been canon since 1967, Wakanda masquerades as what certain presidents would refer to as a “shithole nation.” Coogler really twists the knife on that one: In the first of two post-credits sequences, he ends with a very sharp response about what immigrants from those nations can bring to the rest of the world.

Speaking of endings, Coogler is a man who knows how to end a movie. His last shot in “Creed” is a tearjerking thing of beauty, and the last scene (pre-credits that is) in “Black Panther” made me cry even harder. As in “Creed,” Coogler depicted young brown faces looking in awe at a hero, something we never see in mainstream cinema. “Black Panther”’s last scene is a repeat of the scene I described in my opening paragraph: In the present day, a little Black kid on a makeshift basketball court in Oakland, California disrupts his game to glance up at the sky. Figuratively, he’s about to gain some hope, an addition represented by a humanitarian hero with much to teach him and his fellow basketball players. The young man stares in awe, realizing that his life, and the lives of those around him will be changed.

It’s an ending rife with meta, symbolic meaning. Starting this weekend, a lot of brown kids are going to be staring at this movie with a similar sense of awe and perception-changing wonder. Because  the main superhero, and almost everyone else, looks just like them . It was a long time coming, and it was worth the wait. 

Odie Henderson

Odie "Odienator" Henderson has spent over 33 years working in Information Technology. He runs the blogs Big Media Vandalism and Tales of Odienary Madness. Read his answers to our Movie Love Questionnaire  here .

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Black Panther (2018)

Rated PG-13

134 minutes

Chadwick Boseman as T'Challa / Black Panther

Michael B. Jordan as Erik Killmonger

Lupita Nyong'o as Nakia

Forest Whitaker as Zuri

Andy Serkis as Ulysses Klaue / Klaw

Danai Gurira as Okoye

Angela Bassett as Ramonda

Sterling K. Brown as N'Jobu

Martin Freeman as Everett K. Ross

Daniel Kaluuya as W'Kabi

Florence Kasumba as Ayo

Winston Duke as M'Baku / Man-Ape

Letitia Wright as Shuri

Phylicia Rashād

• Ryan Coogler
• Joe Robert Cole

Cinematography

• Rachel Morrison
• Ludwig Göransson
• Michael P. Shawver
• Claudia Castello

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The Revolutionary Power of Black Panther

Marvel’s new movie marks a major milestone By JAMIL SMITH

The first movie I remember seeing in a theater had a black hero. Lando Calrissian, played by Billy Dee Williams, didn’t have any superpowers, but he ran his own city. That movie, the 1980 Star Wars sequel The Empire Strikes Back , introduced Calrissian as a complicated human being who still did the right thing. That’s one reason I grew up knowing I could be the same.

If you are reading this and you are white, seeing people who look like you in mass media probably isn’t something you think about often. Every day, the culture reflects not only you but nearly infinite versions of you—executives, poets, garbage collectors, soldiers, nurses and so on. The world shows you that your possibilities are boundless. Now, after a brief respite, you again have a President.

Those of us who are not white have considerably more trouble not only finding representation of ourselves in mass media and other arenas of public life, but also finding representation that indicates that our humanity is multi­faceted. Relating to characters onscreen is necessary not merely for us to feel seen and understood, but also for others who need to see and understand us. When it doesn’t happen, we are all the poorer for it.

This is one of the many reasons Black Panther is significant. What seems like just another entry in an endless parade of super­hero movies is actually something much bigger. It hasn’t even hit theaters yet and its cultural footprint is already enormous. It’s a movie about what it means to be black in both America and Africa—and, more broadly, in the world. Rather than dodge complicated themes about race and identity, the film grapples head-on with the issues affecting modern-day black life. It is also incredibly entertaining, filled with timely comedy, sharply choreographed action and gorgeously lit people of all colors. “You have superhero films that are gritty dramas or action comedies,” director Ryan Coogler tells TIME. But this movie, he says, tackles another important genre: “Superhero films that deal with issues of being of African descent.”

Black Panther is the 18th movie in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, a franchise that has made $13.5 billion at the global box office over the past 10 years. (Marvel is owned by Disney.) It may be the first mega­budget movie—not just about superheroes, but about anyone—to have an African-American director and a predominantly black cast. Hollywood has never produced a blockbuster this splendidly black.

The movie, out Feb. 16, comes as the entertain­ment industry is wrestling with its toxic treatment of women and persons of color. This rapidly expanding reckoning—one that reflects the importance of representation in our culture—is long overdue. Black Panther is poised to prove to Hollywood that African-American narratives have the power to generate profits from all audiences. And, more important, that making movies about black lives is part of showing that they matter.

The invitation to the Black Panther premiere read “Royal attire requested.” Yet no one showed up to the Dolby Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard on Jan. 29 looking like an extra from a British costume drama. On display instead were crowns of a different sort—ascending head wraps made of various African fabrics. Oscar winner Lupita Nyong’o wore her natural hair tightly wrapped above a resplendent bejeweled purple gown. Men, including star Chadwick Boseman and Coogler, wore Afrocentric patterns and clothing, dashikis and boubous. Co-star Daniel Kaluuya, an Oscar nominee for his star turn in Get Out , arrived wearing a kanzu, the formal tunic of his Ugandan ancestry.

After the Obama era, perhaps none of this should feel groundbreaking. But it does. In the midst of a regressive cultural and political moment fueled in part by the white-nativist movement, the very existence of Black Panther feels like resistance. Its themes challenge institutional bias, its characters take unsubtle digs at oppressors, and its narrative includes prismatic perspectives on black life and tradition. The fact that Black Panther is excellent only helps.

Back when the film was announced, in 2014, nobody knew that it would be released into the fraught climate of President Trump’s America—where a thriving black future seems more difficult to see. Trump’s reaction to the Charlottesville chaos last summer equated those protesting racism with violent neo-Nazis defending a statue honoring a Confederate general. Immigrants from Mexico, Central America and predominantly Muslim countries are some of the President’s most frequent scapegoats. So what does it mean to see this film, a vision of unmitigated black excellence, in a moment when the Commander in Chief reportedly, in a recent meeting, dismissed the 54 nations of Africa as “sh-thole countries”?

As is typical of the climate we’re in, Black Panther is already running into its share of trolls—including a Facebook group that sought, unsuccessfully, to flood the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes with negative ratings of the film. That Black Panther signifies a threat to some is unsurprising. A fictional African King with the technological war power to destroy you—or, worse, the wealth to buy your land—may not please someone who just wants to consume the latest Marvel chapter without deeper political consideration. Black Panther is emblematic of the most productive responses to bigotry: rather than going for hearts and minds of racists, it celebrates what those who choose to prohibit equal representation and rights are ignoring, willfully or not. They are missing out on the full possibility of the world and the very America they seek to make “great.” They cannot stop this representation of it. When considering the folks who preemptively hate Black Panther and seek to stop it from influencing American culture, I echo the response that the movie’s hero T’Challa is known to give when warned of those who seek to invade his home country: Let them try.

The history of black power and the movement that bore its name can be traced back to the summer of 1966. The activist Stokely Carmichael was searching for something more than mere liberty. To him, integration in a white-dominated America meant assimilation by default. About one year after the assassination of Malcolm X and the Watts riots in Los Angeles, Carmichael took over the Student Non­violent Coordinating Committee from John Lewis. Carmichael decided to move the organization away from a philosophy of pacifism and escalate the group’s militancy to emphasize armed self-defense, black business ownership and community control.

In June of that year, James Meredith, an activist who four years earlier had become the first black person admitted to Ole Miss, started the March Against Fear , a long walk of protest from Memphis to Mississippi, alone. On the second day of the march, he was wounded by a gunman. Carmichael and tens of thousands of others continued in Meredith’s absence. Carmichael, who was arrested halfway through the march, was incensed upon his release. “The only way we gonna stop them white men from whuppin’ us is to take over,” he declared before a passionate crowd on June 16. “We been saying freedom for six years and we ain’t got nothin’. What we gonna start sayin’ now is Black Power!”

Black Panther was born in the civil rights era, and he reflected the politics of that time. The month after Carmichael’s Black Power declaration, the character debuted in Marvel Comics’ Fantastic Four No. 52. Supernatural strength and agility were his main features, but a genius intellect was his best attribute. “Black Panther” wasn’t an alter ego; it was the formal title for T’Challa, King of Wakanda, a fictional African nation that, thanks to its exclusive hold on the sound-absorbent metal vibranium, had become the most technologically advanced nation in the world.

It was a vision of black grandeur and, indeed, power in a trying time, when more than 41% of ­African Americans were at or below the poverty line and comprised nearly a third of the nation’s poor. Much like the iconic Lieutenant Uhura character, played by Nichelle Nichols, that debuted in Star Trek in September 1966, Black Panther was an expression of Afrofuturism—an ethos that fuses African mythologies, technology and science fiction and serves to rebuke conventional depictions of (or, worse, efforts to bring about) a future bereft of black people. His white creators, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, did not consciously conjure a fantasy-world response to Carmichael’s call, but the image still held power. T’Challa was not only strong and educated; he was also royalty. He didn’t have to take over. He was already in charge.

“You might say that this African nation is fantasy,” says Boseman, who portrays T’Challa in the movie. “But to have the opportunity to pull from real ideas, real places and real African concepts, and put it inside of this idea of Wakanda—that’s a great opportunity to develop a sense of what that identity is, especially when you’re disconnected from it.”

The character emerged at a time when the civil rights movement rightfully began to increase its demands of an America that had promised so much and delivered so little to its black population. Fifty-two years after the introduction of T’Challa, those demands have yet to be fully answered. According to the Federal Reserve , the typical African-American family had a median net worth of $17,600 in 2016. In contrast, white households had a median net worth of $171,000. The revolutionary thing about Black Panther is that it envisions a world not devoid of racism but one in which black people have the wealth, technology and military might to level the playing field—a scenario applicable not only to the predominantly white landscape of Hollywood but, more important, to the world at large.

The Black Panther Party, the revolutionary organization founded in Oakland, Calif., a few months after T’Challa’s debut, was depicted in the media as a threatening and radical group with goals that differed dramatically from the more pacifist vision of civil rights leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. and Lewis. Marvel even briefly changed the character’s name to Black Leopard because of the inevitable association with the Panthers, but soon reverted. For some viewers, “Black Panther” may have undeservedly sinister connotations, but the 2018 film reclaims the symbol to be celebrated by all as an avatar for change.

The urgency for change is partly what Carmichael was trying to express in the summer of ’66, and the powers that be needed to listen. It’s still true in 2018.

Moviegoers first encountered Boseman’s T’Challa in Marvel’s 2016 ensemble hit Captain America: Civil War , and he instantly cut a striking figure in his sleek vibranium suit. As Black Panther opens, with T’Challa grieving the death of his father and coming to grips with his sudden ascension to the Wakandan throne, it’s clear that our hero’s royal upbringing has kept him sheltered from the realities of how systemic racism has touched just about every black life across the globe.

The comic, especially in its most recent incarnations as rendered by the writers Ta-Nehisi Coates and Roxane Gay , has worked to expunge Euro­centric misconceptions of Africa—and the film’s imagery and thematic material follow suit. “People often ask, ‘What is Black Panther? What is his power?’ And they have a misconception that he only has power through his suit,” says Boseman. “The character is existing with power inside power.”

Coogler says that Black Panther , like his previous films—including the police-brutality drama Fruitvale Station and his innovative Rocky sequel Creed —explores issues of identity. “That’s something I’ve always struggled with as a person,” says the director. “Like the first time that I found out I was black.” He’s talking less about an epidermal self-awareness than about learning how white society views his black skin. “Not just identity, but names. ‘Who are you?’ is a question that comes up a lot in this film. T’Challa knows exactly who he is. The antagonist in this film has many names.”

That villain comes in the form of Erik “Killmonger” Stevens, a former black-ops soldier with Wakandan ties who seeks to both outwit and beat down T’Challa for the crown. As played by a scene-­stealing Michael B. Jordan, Killmonger’s motivations illuminate thorny questions about how black people worldwide should best use their power.

In the movie, Killmonger is, like Coogler, a native of Oakland. By exploring the disparate experiences of Africans and African Americans, Coogler shines a bright light on the psychic scars of slavery’s legacy and how black Americans endure the real-life consequences of it in the present day. Killmonger’s perspective is rendered in full; his rage over how he and other black people across the world have been disenfranchised and disempowered is justifiable.

Coogler, who co-wrote the screenplay with Joe Robert Cole, also includes another important antagonist from the comics: the dastardly and bigoted Ulysses Klaue (Andy Serkis). “What I love about this experience is that it could have been the idea of black exploitation: he’s gonna fight Klaue, he’s gonna go after the white man and that’s it—that’s the enemy,” Boseman says. He recognizes that some fans will take issue with a black male villain fighting black protagonists. Killmonger fights not only T’Challa, but also warrior women like the spy Nakia (Nyong’o), Okoye (Danai Gurira) and the rest of the Dora Milaje, T’Challa’s all-female royal guards. Killmonger and Shuri (Letitia Wright), T’Challa’s quippy tech-genius sister, also face off.

T’Challa and Killmonger are mirror images, separated only by the accident of where they were born. “What they don’t realize,” Boseman says, “is that the greatest conflict you will ever face will be the conflict with yourself.”

Both T’Challa and Killmonger had to be compelling in order for the movie to succeed. “Obviously, the superhero is who puts you in the seat,” Coogler says.

“That’s who you want to see come out on top. But I’ll be damned if the villains ain’t cool too. They have to be able to stand up to the hero, and have you saying, ‘Man, I don’t know if the hero’s going to make it out of this.’”

“If you don’t have that,” Boseman says, “you don’t have a movie.”

This is not just a movie about a black superhero; it’s very much a black movie. It carries a weight that neither Thor nor Captain America could lift: serving a black audience that has long gone under­represented. For so long, films that depict a reality where whiteness isn’t the default have been ghettoized, marketed largely to audiences of color as niche entertainment, instead of as part of the mainstream. Think of Tyler Perry’s Madea movies, Malcolm D. Lee’s surprise 1999 hit The Best Man or the Barbershop franchise that launched in 2002. But over the past year, the success of films including Get Out and Girls Trip have done even bigger business at the box office , led to commercial acclaim and minted new stars like Kaluuya and Tiffany Haddish. Those two hits have only bolstered an argument that has persisted since well before Spike Lee made his debut: black films with black themes and black stars can and should be marketed like any other. No one talks about Woody Allen and Wes Anderson movies as “white movies” to be marketed only to that audience.

Black Panther marks the biggest move yet in this wave: it’s both a black film and the newest entrant in the most bankable movie franchise in history. For a wary and risk-averse film business, led largely by white film executives who have been historically predisposed to greenlight projects featuring characters who look like them, Black Panther will offer proof that a depiction of a reality of something other than whiteness can make a ton of money.

The film’s positive reception—as of Feb. 6, the day initial reviews surfaced, it had a 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes —bodes well for its commercial prospects. Variety predicted that it could threaten the Presidents’ Day weekend record of $152 million, set in 2016 by Deadpool .

Some of the film’s early success can be credited to Nate Moore, an African­-American executive producer in Marvel’s film division who has been vocal about the importance of including black characters in the Marvel universe. But beyond Wakanda, the questions of power and responsibility, it seems, are not only applicable to the characters in Black Panther . Once this film blows the doors off, as expected, Hollywood must do more to reckon with that issue than merely greenlight more black stories. It also needs more Nate Moores.

“I know people [in the entertainment industry] are going to see this and aspire to it,” Boseman says. “But this is also having people inside spaces—gatekeeper positions, people who can open doors and take that idea. How can this be done? How can we be represented in a way that is aspirational?”

Because Black Panther marks such an unprecedented moment that excitement for the film feels almost kinetic. Black Panther parties are being organized, pre- and post-film soirées for fans new and old. A video of young Atlanta students dancing in their classroom once they learned they were going to see the film together went viral in early February. Oscar winner Octavia Spencer announced on her Insta­gram account that she’ll be in Mississippi when Black Panther opens and that she plans to buy out a theater “in an underserved community there to ensure that all our brown children can see themselves as a superhero.”

Many civil rights pioneers and other trailblazing forebears have received lavish cinematic treatments, in films including Malcolm X , Selma and Hidden Figures . Jackie Robinson even portrayed himself onscreen. Fictional celluloid champions have included Virgil Tibbs, John Shaft and Foxy Brown. Lando, too. But Black Panther matters more, because he is our best chance for people of every color to see a black hero. That is its own kind of power.

Jamil Smith is a journalist born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio. He lives in Los Angeles.

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Why ‘Black Panther’ Is a Defining Moment for Black America

Ryan Coogler’s film is a vivid re-imagination of something black Americans have cherished for centuries — Africa as a dream of our wholeness, greatness and self-realization.

Credit... Photo Illustration by Najeebah Al-Ghadban. Source photographs: Matt Kennedy/Marvel Studios.

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By Carvell Wallace

• Feb. 12, 2018

T he Grand Lake Theater — the kind of old-time movie house with cavernous ceilings and ornate crown moldings — is one place I take my kids to remind us that we belong to Oakland, Calif. Whenever there is a film or community event that has meaning for this town, the Grand Lake is where you go to see it. There are local film festivals, indie film festivals, erotic film festivals, congressional town halls, political fund-raisers. After Hurricane Katrina, the lobby served as a drop-off for donations. We run into friends and classmates there. On weekends we meet at the farmers’ market across the street for coffee.

The last momentous community event I experienced at the Grand Lake was a weeknight viewing of “Fruitvale Station,” the 2013 film directed by the Bay Area native Ryan Coogler. It was about the real-life police shooting of Oscar Grant, 22, right here in Oakland, where Grant’s killing landed less like a news story and more like the death of a friend or a child. He had worked at a popular grocery, gone to schools and summer camps with the children of acquaintances. His death — he was shot by the transit police while handcuffed, unarmed and face down on a train-station platform, early in the morning of New Year’s Day 2009 — sparked intense grief, outrage and sustained protest, years before Black Lives Matter took shape as a movement. Coogler’s telling took us slowly through the minutiae of Grant’s last day alive: We saw his family and child, his struggles at work, his relationship to a gentrifying city, his attempts to make sense of a young life that felt both aimless and daunting. But the moment I remember most took place after the movie was over: A group of us, friends and strangers alike and nearly all black, stood in the cool night under the marquee, crying and holding one another. It didn’t matter that we didn’t know one another. We knew enough.

On a misty morning this January, I found myself standing at that same spot, having gotten out of my car to take a picture of the Grand Lake’s marquee. The words “ Black Panther ” were on it, placed dead center. They were not in normal-size letters; the theater was using the biggest ones it had. All the other titles huddled together in another corner of the marquee. A month away from its Feb. 16 opening, “Black Panther” was, already and by a wide margin, the most important thing happening at the Grand Lake.

Marvel Comics’s Black Panther was originally conceived in 1966 by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, two Jewish New Yorkers, as a bid to offer black readers a character to identify with. The titular hero, whose real name is T’Challa, is heir apparent to the throne of Wakanda, a fictional African nation. The tiny country has, for centuries, been in nearly sole possession of vibranium, an alien element acquired from a fallen meteor. (Vibranium is powerful and nearly indestructible; it’s in the special alloy Captain America’s shield is made of.) Wakanda’s rulers have wisely kept their homeland and its elemental riches hidden from the world, and in its isolation the nation has grown wildly powerful and technologically advanced. Its secret, of course, is inevitably discovered, and as the world’s evil powers plot to extract the resources of yet another African nation, T’Challa’s father is cruelly assassinated, forcing the end of Wakanda’s sequestration. The young king will be forced to don the virtually indestructible vibranium Black Panther suit and face a duplicitous world on behalf of his people.

This is the subject of Ryan Coogler’s third feature film — after “Fruitvale Station” and “Creed” (2015) — and when glimpses of the work first appeared last June, the response was frenzied. The trailer teaser — not even the full trailer — racked up 89 million views in 24 hours. On Jan. 10, 2018, after tickets were made available for presale, Fandango’s managing editor, Erik Davis, tweeted that the movie’s first 24 hours of advance ticket sales exceeded those of any other movie from the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

The black internet was, to put it mildly, exploding. Twitter reported that “Black Panther” was one of the most tweeted-about films of 2017, despite not even opening that year. There were plans for viewing parties, a fund-raiser to arrange a private screening for the Boys & Girls Club of Harlem, hashtags like #BlackPantherSoLit and #WelcomeToWakanda. When the date of the premiere was announced, people began posting pictures of what might be called African-Americana, a kitsch version of an older generation’s pride touchstones — kente cloth du-rags, candy-colored nine-button suits, King Jaffe Joffer from “Coming to America” with his lion-hide sash — alongside captions like “This is how I’ma show up to the Black Panther premiere.” Someone described how they’d feel approaching the box office by simply posting a video of the Compton rapper Buddy Crip-walking in front of a Moroccan hotel.

None of this is because “Black Panther” is the first major black superhero movie. Far from it. In the mid-1990s, the Damon Wayans vehicle “Blankman” and Robert Townsend’s “The Meteor Man” played black-superhero premises for campy laughs. Superheroes are powerful and beloved, held in high esteem by society at large; the idea that a normal black person could experience such a thing in America was so far-fetched as to effectively constitute gallows humor. “Blade,” released in 1998, featured Wesley Snipes as a Marvel vampire hunter, and “Hancock” (2008) depicted Will Smith as a slacker antihero, but in each case the actor’s blackness seemed somewhat incidental.

“Black Panther,” by contrast, is steeped very specifically and purposefully in its blackness. “It’s the first time in a very long time that we’re seeing a film with centered black people, where we have a lot of agency,” says Jamie Broadnax, the founder of Black Girl Nerds, a pop-culture site focused on sci-fi and comic-book fandoms. These characters, she notes, “are rulers of a kingdom, inventors and creators of advanced technology. We’re not dealing with black pain, and black suffering, and black poverty” — the usual topics of acclaimed movies about the black experience.

In a video posted to Twitter in December, which has since gone viral, three young men are seen fawning over the “Black Panther” poster at a movie theater. One jokingly embraces the poster while another asks, rhetorically: “This is what white people get to feel all the time?” There is laughter before someone says, as though delivering the punch line to the most painful joke ever told: “I would love this country, too.”

Ryan Coogler saw his first Black Panther comic book as a child, at an Oakland shop called Dr. Comics & Mr. Games, about a mile from the Grand Lake Theater. When I sat down with him in early February, at the Montage Hotel in Beverly Hills, I told him about the night I saw “Fruitvale Station,” and he listened with his head down, slowly nodding. When he looked up at me, he seemed to be blinking back tears of his own.

Coogler played football in high school, and between his fitness and his humble listening poses — leaning forward, elbows propped on knees — he reminds me of what might happen if a mild-mannered athlete accidentally discovered a radioactive movie camera and was gifted with remarkable artistic vision. He’s interested in questions of identity: What does it mean to be a black person or an African person? “You know, you got to have the race conversation,” he told me, describing how his parents prepared him for the world. “And you can’t have that without having the slavery conversation. And with the slavery conversation comes a question of, O.K., so what about before that? And then when you ask that question, they got to tell you about a place that nine times out of 10 they’ve never been before. So you end up hearing about Africa, but it’s a skewed version of it. It’s not a tactile version.”

Around the time he was wrapping up “Creed,” Coogler made his first journey to the continent, visiting Kenya, South Africa and the Kingdom of Lesotho, a tiny nation in the center of the South African landmass. Tucked high amid rough mountains, Lesotho was spared much of the colonization of its neighbors, and Coogler based much of his concept of Wakanda on it. While he was there, he told me, he was being shown around by an older woman who said she’d been a lover of the South African pop star Brenda Fassie. Riding along the hills with this woman, Coogler was told that they would need to visit an even older woman in order to drop off some watermelon. During their journey, they would stop occasionally to approach a shepherd and give him a piece of watermelon; each time the shepherd would gingerly take the piece, wrap it in cloth and tuck it away as though it were a religious totem. Time passed. Another bit of travel, another shepherd, another gift of watermelon. Eventually Coogler grew frustrated: “Why are we stopping so much?” he asked. “Watermelon is sacred,” he was told. “It hydrates, it nourishes and its seeds are used for offerings.” When they arrived at the old woman’s home, it turned out that she was, in fact, a watermelon farmer, but her crop had not yet ripened — she needed a delivery to help her last the next few weeks.

When I was a kid, I refused to eat watermelon in front of white people. To this day, the word itself makes me uncomfortable. Coogler told me that in high school he and his black football teammates used to have the same rule: Never eat watermelon in front of white teammates. Centuries of demonizing and ridiculing blackness have, in effect, forced black people to abandon what was once sacred. When we spoke of Africa and black Americans’ attempts to reconnect with what we’re told is our lost home, I admitted that I sometimes wondered if we could ever fully be part of what was left behind. He dipped his head, fell briefly quiet and then looked back at me with a solemn expression. “I think we can,” he said. “It’s no question. It’s almost as if we’ve been brainwashed into thinking that we can’t have that connection.”

“Black Panther” is a Hollywood movie, and Wakanda is a fictional nation. But coming when they do, from a director like Coogler, they must also function as a place for multiple generations of black Americans to store some of our most deeply held aspirations. We have for centuries sought to either find or create a promised land where we would be untroubled by the criminal horrors of our American existence. From Paul Cuffee’s attempts in 1811 to repatriate blacks to Sierra Leone and Marcus Garvey’s back-to-Africa Black Star shipping line to the Afrocentric movements of the ’60s and ’70s, black people have populated the Africa of our imagination with our most yearning attempts at self-realization. In my earliest memories, the Africa of my family was a warm fever dream, seen on the record covers I stared at alone, the sun setting over glowing, haloed Afros, the smell of incense and oils at the homes of my father’s friends — a beauty so pure as to make the world outside, one of car commercials and blond sitcom families, feel empty and perverse in comparison. As I grew into adolescence, I began to see these romantic visions as just another irrelevant habit of the older folks, like a folk remedy or a warning to wear a jacket on a breezy day. But by then my generation was building its own African dreamscape, populated by KRS-One, Public Enemy and Poor Righteous Teachers; we were indoctrinating ourselves into a prideful militancy about our worth. By the end of the century, “Black Star” was not just the name of Garvey’s shipping line but also one of the greatest hip-hop albums ever made.

Never mind that most of us had never been to Africa. The point was not verisimilitude or a precise accounting of Africa’s reality. It was the envisioning of a free self. Nina Simone once described freedom as the absence of fear, and as with all humans, the attempt of black Americans to picture a homeland, whether real or mythical, was an attempt to picture a place where there was no fear. This is why it doesn’t matter that Wakanda was an idea from a comic book, created by two Jewish artists. No one knows colonization better than the colonized, and black folks wasted no time in recolonizing Wakanda. No genocide or takeover of land was required. Wakanda is ours now. We do with it as we please.

Until recently, most popular speculation on what the future would be like had been provided by white writers and futurists, like Isaac Asimov and Gene Roddenberry. Not coincidentally, these futures tended to carry the power dynamics of the present into perpetuity. Think of the original “Star Trek,” with its peaceful, international crew, still under the charge of a white man from Iowa. At the time, the character of Lieutenant Uhura, played by Nichelle Nichols, was so vital for African-Americans — the black woman of the future as an accomplished philologist — that, as Nichols told NPR, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. himself persuaded her not to quit the show after the first season. It was a symbol of great progress that she was conceived as something more than a maid. But so much still stood in the way of her being conceived as a captain.

The artistic movement called Afrofuturism, a decidedly black creation, is meant to go far beyond the limitations of the white imagination. It isn’t just the idea that black people will exist in the future, will use technology and science, will travel deep into space. It is the idea that we will have won the future. There exists, somewhere within us, an image in which we are whole, in which we are home. Afrofuturism is, if nothing else, an attempt to imagine what that home would be. “Black Panther” cannot help being part of this. “Wakanda itself is a dream state,” says the director Ava DuVernay, “a place that’s been in the hearts and minds and spirits of black people since we were brought here in chains.” She and Coogler have spent the past few months working across the hall from each other in the same editing facility, with him tending to “Black Panther” and her to her much-anticipated film of Madeleine L’Engle’s “A Wrinkle in Time.” At the heart of Wakanda, she suggests, lie some of our most excruciating existential questions: “What if they didn’t come?” she asked me. “And what if they didn’t take us? What would that have been?”

Afrofuturism, from its earliest iterations, has been an attempt to imagine an answer to these questions. The movement spans from free-jazz thinkers like Sun Ra, who wrote of an African past filled with alien technology and extraterrestrial beings, to the art of Krista Franklin and Ytasha Womack, to the writers Octavia Butler, Nnedi Okorafor and Derrick Bell, to the music of Jamila Woods and Janelle Monáe. Their work, says John I. Jennings — a media and cultural studies professor at the University of California, Riverside, and co-author of “Black Comix Returns” — is a way of upending the system, “because it jumps past the victory. Afrofuturism is like, ‘We already won.’ ” Comic books are uniquely suited to handling this proposition. In them the laws of our familiar world are broken: Mild-mannered students become godlike creatures, mutants walk among us and untold power is, in an instant, granted to the most downtrodden. They offer an escape from reality, and who might need to escape reality more than a people kidnapped to a stolen land and treated as less-than-complete humans?

At the same time, it is notable that despite selling more than a million books and being the first science-fiction author to win a MacArthur fellowship, Octavia Butler, one of Afrofuturism’s most important voices, never saw her work transferred to film, even as studios churned out adaptations of lesser works on a monthly basis. Butler’s writing not only featured African-Americans as protagonists; it specifically highlighted African-American women. If projects by and about black men have a hard time getting made, projects by and about black women have a nearly impossible one. In March, Disney will release “A Wrinkle in Time,” featuring Storm Reid and Oprah Winfrey in lead roles; the excitement around this female-led film does not seem to compare, as of yet, with the explosion that came with “Black Panther.” But by focusing on a black female hero — one who indeed saves the universe — DuVernay is embodying the deepest and most powerful essence of Afrofuturism: to imagine ourselves in places where we had not been previously imagined.

Can films like these significantly change things for black people in America? The expectations around “Black Panther” remind me of the way I heard the elders in my family talking about the mini-series “Roots,” which aired on ABC in 1977. A multigenerational drama based on the best-selling book in which Alex Haley traced his own family history, “Roots” told the story of an African slave kidnapped and brought to America, and traced his progeny through over 100 years of American history. It was an attempt to claim for us a home, because to be black in America is to be both with and without one: You are told that you must honor this land, that to refuse this is tantamount to hatred — but you are also told that you do not belong here, that you are a burden, an animal, a slave. Haley, through research and narrative and a fair bit of invention, was doing precisely what Afrofuturism does: imagining our blackness as a thing with meaning and with lineage, with value and place.

“The climate was very different in 1977,” the actor LeVar Burton recalled to me recently. Burton was just 19 when he landed an audition, his first ever, for the lead role of young Kunta Kinte in the mini-series. “We had been through the civil rights movement, and there were visible changes as a result, like there was no more Jim Crow,” he told me. “We felt that there were advancements that had been made, so the conversation had really sort of fallen off the table.” The series, he said, was poised to reignite that conversation. “The story had never been told before from the point of view of the Africans. America, both black and white, was getting an emotional education about the costs of slavery to our common American psyche.”

To say that “Roots” held the attention of a nation for its eight-consecutive-night run in January 1977 would be an understatement. Its final episode was viewed by 51.1 percent of all American homes with televisions, a kind of reach that seemed sure to bring about some change in opportunities, some new standing in American culture. “The expectation,” Burton says, “was that this was going to lead to all kinds of positive portrayals of black people on the screen both big and small, and it just didn’t happen. It didn’t go down that way, and it’s taken years.”

Here in Oakland, I am doing what it seems every other black person in the country is doing: assembling my delegation to Wakanda. We bought tickets for the opening as soon as they were available — the first time in my life I’ve done that. Our contingent is made up of my 12-year-old daughter and her friend; my 14-year-old son and his friend; one of my oldest confidants, dating back to adolescence; and two of my closest current friends. Not everyone knows everyone else. But we all know enough. Our group will be eight black people strong.

Beyond the question of what the movie will bring to African-Americans sits what might be a more important question: What will black people bring to “Black Panther”? The film arrives as a corporate product, but we are using it for our own purposes, posting with unbridled ardor about what we’re going to wear to the opening night, announcing the depths of the squads we’ll be rolling with, declaring that Feb. 16, 2018, will be “the Blackest Day in History.”

This is all part of a tradition of unrestrained celebration and joy that we have come to rely on for our spiritual survival. We know that there is no end to the reminders that our lives, our hearts, our personhoods are expendable. Yes, many nonblack people will say differently; they will declare their love for us, they will post Martin Luther King Jr. and Nelson Mandela quotes one or two days a year. But the actions of our country and its collective society, and our experiences within it, speak unquestionably to the opposite. Love for black people isn’t just saying Oscar Grant should not be dead. Love for black people is Oscar Grant not being dead in the first place.

This is why we love ourselves in the loud and public way we do — because we have to counter his death with the very same force with which such deaths attack our souls. The writer and academic Eve L. Ewing told me a story about her partner, a professor of economics at the University of Chicago: When it is time for graduation, he makes the walk from his office to the celebration site in his full regalia — the gown with velvet panels, full bell sleeves and golden piping, the velvet tam with gold-strand bullion tassel. And when he does it, every year, like clockwork, some older black woman or man he doesn’t know will pull over, roll down their window, stop him and say, with a slow head shake and a deep, wide smile, something like: “I am just so proud of you!”

This is how we do with one another. We hold one another as a family because we must be a family in order to survive. Our individual successes and failures belong, in a perfectly real sense, to all of us. That can be for good or ill. But when it is good, it is very good. It is sunlight and gold on vast African mountains, it is the shining splendor of the Wakandan warriors poised and ready to fight, it is a collective soul as timeless and indestructible as vibranium. And with this love we seek to make the future ours, by making the present ours. We seek to make a place where we belong.

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Home — Essay Samples — Entertainment — Movie Review — Black Panther: An Analysis of its Historical and Cultural Context

Black Panther: an Analysis of Its Historical and Cultural Context

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Published: Jan 29, 2024

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Table of contents

Introduction, the historical and cultural context of "black panther", analysis of themes and symbolism, character analysis, social and political commentary.

• Coates, T. (2018). "The Black Panther Chronicles: A True History of Wakanda". Black Panther (2018).
• Larsen, P. (2018). "Black Panther". Marvel Comics.
• Palmer, C. (2019). "The Inclusive Filmmaking Revolution Keeps Growing in Hollywood". Vanity Fair.
• Paterra, S. (2019). "The Historical Significance of Wakanda". Time.
• Phinney, M. (2019). "History and Representations of the Black Panther Party". Journal of Pan African Studies.

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17 Home, Belonging, and Africanity in the Film Black Panther

Ragi Bashonga is Congolese born and South African raised. Negotiating her identity in a context riddled by racism and Afrophobia is what sparks her interest in diaspora studies. Her ongoing PhD study is an exploration of the notions of home, belonging, and the politics of identity. The study explores the applicability of theories of the diaspora to African migrants in Africa. Bashonga is a lecturer at the University of Johannesburg, South Africa. She holds a master’s degree in industrial sociology and labour studies from the University of Pretoria and is an alumnus of the Thabo Mbeki African Leadership Institute. Her research interests are in the areas of identity politics, youth, gender, and critical race studies. She contributes to this publication as a young African woman interested in the intersection of identity theories and popular culture.

• Published: 15 December 2020
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This essay uses the film Black Panther to explore notions of home, identity, and belonging as these relate to race and being African. Black Panther added a more positive representation of Black identity and culture which is generally lacking in popular culture. Building on this achievement, the essay engages with the tensions between racial and national identities for the African diaspora, as Africanity and notions of belonging are disrupted by migration. While race is the identity of primary importance for Black Americans due to its role in marking difference, subordination, and oppression, for Wakandans in Black Panther national identity is more significant and a source of pride. When considered in relation to the diaspora, history, and cultural connectedness, ideas about Africanity need to hold real forms of oppression alongside change and difference, acknowledging that certain bodies have been repeatedly oppressed, without assuming that local histories are universal.

Introduction

This article uses the Marvel Studios produced film Black Panther (Coogler, Cole, & Feige, 2018 ) to explore notions of home, identity, and belonging, as these relate to race and what it means to be African. Popular culture has been integral to youth studies in the Global North, with elements of it seen as both representing the desires, needs, and fears of youth, and those of society more broadly. The appeal of Black Panther to young people is evidenced by its box office success (Dockterman, 2018 ). The film was launched in the context of enduring global forms of racism, racial exclusion, violence, and discrimination. Growing expressions of dissent, on social media and through the Black Lives Matter movement, point to a yearning for representations of identity and culture that celebrate blackness and are associated with Africa (Omanga & Mainya, 2019 ).

Through the depiction of a fictional place, Wakanda, Marvel allowed audiences to imagine the advancement of a country in the heart of Africa, free from the implications of colonialism—a nation technologically advanced, not engaging in foreign trade, and not a recipient of aid. These attributes are important when thinking through and imagining what is desired in relation to the concepts of Africanity and Afrofuturism (Tucker, 2018 ). Providing a vision for African independence and breaking with images of backwardness and dependency are at the heart of the overwhelming box office success of the film. One of the film’s most notable achievements is bringing to the fore, highlighting, and disrupting the misrepresentation and under-representation of Black people and of Africa in popular culture. The film is largely a celebration of Africanness, something which is all too rare.

Taking this achievement as important, significant, and a given, this article engages with what Black Panther elucidates in terms of Africanity, identity, and the ways in which these concepts provoke notions of home. Home can be thought of as a physical and tangible place, a place of familiarity—where patterns are learned and roles grown into, a place of intimacy that dictates and contrasts insiders from outsiders and a place where one finds protection (Lawrence-Lightfoot, 2012 ). For protection to exist, we undoubtedly imagine a need for security and restricted access. Conceptually, home raises questions of where one comes from, who can stay, who can easily come and go. Who can portray that home, authentically, is important for demarcating and expressing belonging. In diaspora and transnational studies, home is also a place of longing and loss (Nehl, 2016 ). This sense of longing involves the desire to identify with the home of one’s family and people, but also to belong in the place where one physically resides.

All these elements of home, as they relate to Africa, are at the heart of Black Panther . The fictional Wakanda gives the audience the initial impression that the film is primarily about representations of Africa. However, later it becomes clear that it is predominantly an exploration of the Black American experience and conversations on race from that social location. The emotional and political relevance of race, Africa, and by association, belonging, as these pertain to Black Americans, are unpacked throughout the film. For the African diaspora, tensions are produced between racial and national identities, as Africanity and notions of belonging are disrupted by forced and/or voluntary migration. While race is the identity of primary importance for Black Americans due to its role in marking difference, subordination, and oppression, for Wakandans in Black Panther national identity was more significant and a source of great pride. Divided emotional attachments formed in relation to race, nation, and migration, as these play out over time, create complex stories about Africa and the precarious politics of belonging.

The Fluctuating Politics of Belonging

In The Politics of Belonging , Nira Yuval-Davis ( 2006 ) uses three analytical levels to unpack belonging, distinct elements which she calls social locations, identifications/emotional attachments, and ethical and political values. Social locations refer to social and economic positions people occupy at any particular historical moment, in relation to the power structures of the time. Intersectionality is central to Yuval-Davis’s ( 2006 ) theory, with social locations existing around multiple axes and persons occupying a number of social locations simultaneously. Despite the multiple elements of identity depicted in Black Panther , its focus—and that of this article—is the intersection of race and national identity and the social locations these imply for the African diaspora.

Identifications and emotional attachments are embedded in the processes of meaning making that lead to narratives that people invest in, reproduce, and recreate, about home among other things, and stories that are passed down intergenerationally. These narratives carry hopes for who we are and who we want to become, meaning that they evolve. Feelings of threat intensify the need for protection, increasing the importance of stories about identity, belonging, and home. Black Panther is a story that shows how social and historical contexts impact the stories about identity that are passed on, and how these stories affect experiences of belonging and of imaginations of home.

Finally, ethical and political values are the ways in which social locations, identifications, and emotional attachments relate to power, through ideologies that determine exclusions and permeability. Ethical and political values shape who is included and excluded in the ‘us,’ ‘them,’ and ‘the nation’ (Yuval-Davis, 2006 ). The politics of belonging emerges at the juncture of ethical and political values, as boundaries are maintained through social locations and associated narratives, forming the substance for contestations around who belongs. This process is integral to group identity formation and, importantly, the determinants used for exclusion. Who is included and excluded in Wakanda and what Wakanda is and becomes are at the heart of Black Panther .

All three of these analytical levels indicate that the politics of belonging—comprising social locations, narratives about identities, and political power—should be thought of as in flux rather than set in stone. The idea that belonging involves processes that fluctuate is underlined by Stuart Hall ( 1990 ) writing about ‘Cultural identity and diaspora.’ Hall ( 1990 ) asserts that identity is a process that is always under production. Although everyday language causes us to imagine certain aspects of our identities as fixed (i.e., our cultural identities) Hall asks us to question the authority and fixity we imagine for cultural identity. To this end, he offers two ways of thinking through cultural identity. The first is shared culture, referring to aspects of cultural identity that have to do with commonality—shared history, common ancestry, and mutual cultural codes. It is what we think of as our authentic and true selves. The second, cultural identity as difference, refers to aspects of our being that are in constant flux, undergoing transformation as the outcome of history and power. Black Panther provokes a range of imagined and shared histories about Africa that change over time. These paradoxical commonalities and differences are a result of intersectional rather than unilateral social locations, the variety of narratives about home and belonging, and the politics inherent in who is part of and separate from nations, including imagined ones. All these elements are integral to the concept of Africanity.

Africanity is a contested concept with a contested history, but is thought of here as referring to a sensibility that identifies with African origins and the continent of Africa, is invested in the socioeconomic and political well-being of Africans, and utilizes ways of being and thinking intimately connected to African contexts (Landman & Yates, 2017 ). In this sense, Black Panther is primarily about African Americans grappling with their Africanity or African personhood, constituted in relation to history, culture, language, gender, ethnicity, and philosophy. Africanity manifests through past, present, and imagined futures that relate to both emotional investments and political visions in and for the continent and the people associated with it.

Migration and diasporic activities complicate and contribute to notions of race, culture, belonging, and Africanity (Prah, 2007 ). While human history has been marked by various kinds of migration, in the case of Africa this has disproportionately included involuntary migration through slavery, colonization, and due to political and economic instabilities. More recently, there has been a significant increase in voluntary migration. The African diaspora, as such, constitutes a wide array of persons who trace their origin, history, and lineage to the African continent. It includes the African diaspora that has existed for centuries, as well as more recent migrants. Mafeje ( 2001 ) stresses that history impacts on who we are, and how we are perceived and received by others. The history of Africa, of the migration of Africans, as well as legacies of colonization and racism expressed through the structural degradation and denial of humanity of Africans, stimulates the pursuit of authentic representations of Africanity, raising questions about who is an African and who belongs in and to the continent.

Africanity is therefore not only conferred on those based on the continent, or associated with those who have strong, enduring ties to the continent, but on all peoples with historical and cultural heritages associated with Africa (Mafeje, 2001 ; Prah, 2007 ). Following Hall ( 1990 ), being African is a historical and cultural phenomenon and process that is not fixed in the past. Africans on the continent and abroad “are contemporary people who are historically and culturally rooted in Africa” (Prah, 2007 , p. 17). This means that Africa has complex intersections with race, which has historically been used as a marker of identity and of difference. Being Black and being African are commonly conflated. Over the years, there has been a greater problematization of this conflation (Mbembe, 2017 ), expressed through a recognition not only of race as a social construct rather than a biological reality, but also by taking into account social and historical factors that affect identity.

Africanity, Mafeje ( 2001 ) argues, is political and ideological rather than racial. These politics have led to the diaspora being included in the conceptualization of Africa. The diaspora is officially declared to be the sixth zone of the African Union and thus the idea of ‘belonging in Africa’ or the transnationality of Africa(ns) is made official in policy (Kamei, 2013 ). These complicated relationships between continental space, identity, and the diaspora, unfolding over time, challenge the idea of Africanity as stagnant, raising a set of questions about African unity, Africanity, and racial consciousness or solidarity that are unpacked in Black Panther .

Diasporic Identity, Race, and Nation in Black Panther

A bit more detail on the plot of the film helps to situate some of these debates. Set in the fictional country of Wakanda, the movie transcends the typical superhero genre, reeling in the complexities of the Black experience and Africanity into the broader storyline. Wakanda, an African nation hidden by a rainforest from the rest of the world, is secretly the most technologically advanced and prosperous nation on the planet. Wakanda poses as a Third World country to isolate itself from the world. The meteorite containing the metal vibranium is the substance fuelling the power of the nation and its technological advancement.

The story follows T’Challa’s (who is the Black Panther) battle toward the ascension of the throne after his father’s sudden death. N’Jobu, son of then Wakandan King T’Chaka and father of Killmonger, is deployed to the USA in the early 1990s as a Wakandan spy. His stay rouses a passion for race politics and the liberation of Black people of African descent, motivating him to steal vibranium to achieve this goal. His plan is revealed by a partner, who is also a Wakandan spy, and ends in N’Jobu’s death. N’Jobu’s son is left behind in the US. This son later grows to become an American black operations soldier known as Killmonger. Having assumed his father’s political position of Black liberation across the globe, Killmonger pursues the Wakandan throne in order to access vibranium and the technology of Wakanda. He is brought before the tribal elders, revealing his identity to be the son of N’Jobu and claim to the throne. Killmonger challenges T’Challa to ritual combat where he defeats T’Challa and hurls him over a waterfall to his presumed death.

Wakanda should not simply be thought of as a country in Africa (Edoro & Shringapure, 8). It is intended to symbolize Africa as a country by representing a complex accumulation of the continent’s cultures, histories, politics, and aesthetics. This purview of Africa as complex and multifaceted is perhaps an improvement to the erstwhile homogenous conceptions of the continent, such as those articulated in, for instance, Negritudist thought, which, one could say, framed Africanity in highly essentialized ways. Africanity and African culture in the film is far more complex, varied, and layered.

Through this rich cultural tapestry, the film raises questions about Africanity and who is authentically African, with the Black American case in point. The opening scene begins with a narration of the story of home. The story told is one that depicts Wakanda as the place of rootedness, emphasizing the role of ancestry, and the importance of history. Soon after the opening scene, a knock on the door reveals a demonstration of this internalization of identity. N’Jobu is visited by two female warriors. When asked who he is, N’Jobu responds by stating his name and declaring his father’s name. This is followed by the warriors’ command translated to “show who you are,” (Coogler, Cole, & Feige, 2018, 00:03:31). to which he responds by displaying a line of vibranium hidden in his lower lip. We come to learn that this process of asserting identity through the display of an embodied physical marking is important in demarcating identity and belonging for Wakandans, as it is for Black Americans.

However, in Black Panther , lineage is a more performative and varied task than showing bodily markings. It is related to Hall’s ( 1990 ) use of the concept of enunciation —the positions from which one speaks, involving context, histories, and locations that influence the production of identity. In the scene above, N’Jobu is assertively portrayed as Wakandan. Using Yuval-Davis ( 2006 ) to analyze his particular enunciation, N’Jobu’s social location is inscribed through lineage that pronounces his belonging to this cultural and national identity. Furthermore, through his telling of the story of Wakanda, we witness a clear assertion of identification and emotional attachment, with identity as shared culture historicized from one generation to the next. Considering that the story is told in the context of the migrant N’Jobu, we may think of it as a process of enunciating and historicizing identity through portrayals of home. Wakandan identity is produced through a social location, a narrative, and a set of values, rather than a geographical place. Narratives told or enunciated about identity solidify the process of identification and emotional attachment.

Migration and diasporic identity bring to the fore the politics not only of personhood and nationality but, equally, also of race. The salience of race in the context of America has implications that would not exist to the same degree in Wakanda. Being Black in America is not the same as being Black in Africa. In fact, many migrants say that they only realized that they were Black when they arrived in America (Foner, 2001 ).

The politics and problematics of race and nation emerge through Killmonger, N’Jobu’s son, who is both hero and villain, African American and Wakandan. Killmonger has internalized his father’s radical racial politics and he carries on his father’s vision of the liberation of Black people across the world. He seeks revenge and power by desiring to take charge of Wakanda and use its vibranium as a weapon for Black liberation. At the same time, Killmonger is stifled by tensions in his personal and cultural identity and feelings of non-belonging as he seeks to return to an imagined home that both is, and is not, what he presumed.

For Killmonger, race and racial liberation are more important than national identity. Speaking to the Wakandan council he vehemently states “Y’all sitting here looking comfortable, must be good. But there are 2 billion people all over the world who look like us but their lives are much harder” (Coogler, Cole, & Feige, 2018 , 01:14:24). The response he receives to this statement reiterates the viewpoint of Wakanda established earlier: The sovereignty and exclusivity of Wakandans, as separate from the rest of the world, is of primary importance to the people of this nation. To this Killmonger responds, “Not your own?! But didn’t all life start on this continent? So aren’t all people your people?” (Coogler, Cole, & Feige, 2018 , 01:14:53).

The politics of race and nation are complicated through this interaction. For Killmonger, Wakanda belonged to the bigger continent of Africa, and Africa itself is considered to be the origin of Black people as a race. This is the principal tenet of Pan-Africanism, an ideology developed by the African diaspora in the Americas. Pan-Africanism is centered on the unity of people of African descent. It emerged among the African diaspora in the United States and later spread to and held resonance in Africa, which was depicted as the place of belonging for violently displaced immigrants. Early iterations of Pan-Africanism associated being of African descent and being Black with integral features of Africanity. This kind of racial essentialism has been refuted. As suggested in the film, there is something greater to be said of one’s historical, social, and cultural connections to Africa than bodily markings, which remain important. Contrasting with Killmonger’s politics of belonging, it is made clear in the film that for Wakandans, the nation state rather than race was the most important symbol of identity and it was worth protecting from others and from contamination.

Killmonger’s politics, especially when he returns to Africa, therefore need to be interpreted through the lens of the histories of the Black Panthers and #BlackLivesMatter (Coetzee, 2019 ). Even though the setting of the film is a fictional Africa, the heart of the film is Black lives in America, their meaning and value (see Coetzee, 2019 ). Central to the film is the feeling of nonbelonging, a consequence of racism interpreted against the backdrop of #BlackLivesMatter. The film draws on American notions of race, which seem fairly oblivious to the complexities of race, place, and belonging elsewhere in the world. Killmonger’s positioning as an immigrant affords him a more transnational perspective; he imagines race as the shared and most important form of identity for Black people across the globe.

Home, Rootedness, and Belonging

Themes of diasporic identity and race lead to the question of home and belonging, which, in diaspora studies, is more often than not a question of rootedness. Ikeazor ( 2016 ) states that home for the diaspora is typically two places—where they live, and where their parents and forefathers were born. The latter is typically the site of identification and rootedness, the place of custom and tradition. Wakanda is exactly that for both Killmonger and his father.

This sense of rootedness and custom can be both a source of affection and affliction. While working as a spy in America, N’Jobu teaches his son to identify with Wakanda as his own home. Wakandan identity is solidified through giving his son the marking of home. However, N’Jobu is unable to remain indifferent to the suffering of Black lives in America, leading to him also teaching his son to take on the politics of Black liberation, he himself doing so by attempting to obtain vibranium for this goal. Later in the film we learn his justification: He saw all Black people as forming part of Africa.

This precarious relationship with a real and imagined home is a source of great anxiety. When Killmonger speaks to his father in the land of the spirits, his father talks directly to this point of rupture by saying “But I fear you will not be welcome…They will say you are lost…I should have taken you back long ago” (Coogler, Cole, & Feige, 2018 , 01:27:21). Killmonger responds “or maybe home’s the one that’s lost, that’s why they can’t find us” (Coogler, Cole, & Feige, 2018 , 01:28:00). This dislocation points to a ruptured relationship with home, one that creates confusion and anxiety. The idea of home being lost raises the fear of not belonging anywhere. Hall ( 1990 ) indicates that contextual differences, history, and axes of power do not leave our identities unaffected. The experiences of N’Jobu as a migrant in America and the values he subsequently instilled in Killmonger, as a child, create new social locations, split politics, and bifurcated forms of belonging, leading to narratives about Wakanda that differ from those of people who never left.

These issues highlight Mafeje’s question around the tension between Africanity and Black solidarity. Using Black Americans as an example, Mafeje ( 2001 ) notes that the historical and cultural contributions of Black Americans to the making of America is grossly understated. In fact, it is more reasonable to conceive of this group as primarily American rather than African, yet their relationship with this new home has always been conflicted. At the same time, it is far-fetched, according to Mafeje ( 2001 ), to assume Black Americans can re-appropriate Africa, despite their longing and reaching for the past. Black Americans’ longing for home is a theme that has been strongly contested; questioning the continued reference to Africa as homeland as though history, time, space, and interactions with a new world has had no effect on the identity of the group (Mafeje, 2001 ). Similarly, Killmonger’s return to Wakanda and his struggle to relate to the culture and traditions of those assumed to be his people remind the audience of this tension.

What then is the relationship between diasporic identity, race, and nation for Killmonger in the film Black Panther ? The significance of his Africanity lies in this tension between racial and national identities and the notions of belonging which it produces. In the movie, N’Jobu migrates to pursue political activity on behalf of Wakanda. He lived in America for a few years and had a child with a Black American woman, catalyzing notable shifts in his social location. Upon his arrival, his national identity as a Wakandan prince took prominence. This shifted as he became more engaged with questions of racial oppression, positioning himself in another social location as Black and marginalized, because of the new sociohistorical context in which he was placed.

Migration, forced or unforced, meant that race took on new meanings in the context of the United States, where race is a marker of difference, subordination, and oppression. In Wakanda, national identity is a source of pride in the knowledge that its people live not only in a thriving and ethical community, but that they did so while deceiving the rest of the world.

For the immigrant, emotional attachments are bifurcated, formed in relation both to Blackness and African heritage, shaped by shared history, as well as narratives of slavery, continued racism, and structural oppression. In his telling of identity stories to his son, N’Jobu instilled both a national identity as Wakandan and a racial identity. Killmonger identified, to different extents, as both Wakandan and as an African American. However, the diasporic identity is a social location through which race is prioritized due to the denigration and suffering associated with it. He was therefore caught between pride in narratives of origins and ambitions to liberate all of ‘our’ people deemed to be suffering from oppression. For Killmonger, recognizing himself as African American and simultaneously as Wakandan seemed to be fundamentally at odds, to the extent that it formed the core of his portrayal as villain. His internal and external conflict played out through the politics of belonging. The relationship between social location and narrative led to a politics of belonging that called for struggle and action toward emancipation, because so many of ‘us’ are still oppressed by ‘them,’ while retaining an identity as Wakandan, based on common ancestry.

Yet Wakanda does not make room for such duality. For the Wakandans, a different social location and set of intersecting identities produce a more settled and satisfied outlook on the status quo, leading to narratives about nation building and social cohesion underpinned by self-confidence and pride. Central to their story is an acceptance that Wakanda—its well-being, people, and resources—needs to be the center of the narrative in order to maintain its prosperity. The relationship between migration, race and nation, and politics therefore mirrors social location, narratives/emotional attachments, and the kinds of politics that emerge from these different positionings. These identity dynamics and the politics they produce cannot be understood without accepting Hall’s ( 1990 ) theoretical contribution, which asserts that elements of identity are in a state of flux, related to interpretations of history and our imagined futures.

How then to interpret the end of the film when Wakanda, a country in the heart of Africa, launches a knowledge center in the United States? Perhaps this is the African American solution: to remain in the United States and export Wakanda, exerting agency and intellectual prowess in the process. The concluding speech at the knowledge center assumes that there is suddenly no longer a place for identity politics, no longer a space for us and them . This raises the question of whether knowledge can be shared and bridges built before acknowledging important historical forms of oppression and exploitation, which may be re-enacted if they are not explicitly named and better understood. Perhaps there is still a need for a period of both barriers and bridges in the creation of socially just forms of collaboration, legitimizing Killmonger’s actions and attitudes.

Concluding Remarks

The relationships between movement (forced or voluntary), difference, nation, and belonging change in complex ways over time. These changes in culture and identity, alluded to by Stuart Hall, are brought to life in the film Black Panther . The magic of Wakanda lies in the Black American imaginary, with the purity of culture and tradition supplemented by incredible technological advancement. Typically, African countries are portrayed as deeply connected to culture and tradition, but wrecked by poverty, war, and a lack of technological and economic advancement. Wakanda acts as a metaphor for Africa in the absence of the Western encounter, an opportunity to consider what African unity and identity might look like in a context where colonialism had not interfered with African history and development. In Prah’s ( 2007 ) thought, the formation and identification of Africanity hinges in part on considering the meaning of Africa—its languages, cultures, and history beyond the Western encounter. Through the medium of the film, race, geography, and culture emerge as important considerations for identity and belonging.

The problem is that migration, forced or voluntary, creates new social locations, with new narratives about home and fresh politics of belonging. It creates difference, which cannot easily be collapsed into forms of African unity imagined by the diaspora from social locations beyond the continent. Racial solidarity is not assumed on the continent. For example, despite South Africa’s history of apartheid and enduring racism, ideologies of Black solidarity and Black consciousness paradoxically exist alongside widespread xenophobia (Maserumule, 2015 ). In South Africa, a sense of Black consciousness does not necessarily translate, in practical or ideological terms, to solidarity with Black people in the rest of the continent. Xenophobic sentiment as well as xenophobic violence against African migrants in South Africa raises interesting contradictions in relation to the desire to belong and attain security; complexities beyond the borders of Wakanda.

The quest to understand Africanity and African identities is important in light of the continent’s history, which includes slavery, colonialism, and postcolonial forms of migration. (Coogler, Cole, & Feige, 2018, 01:14:24). This, of course, cannot be separated from the influence of racism in the past and present. In many senses, African and racial identities are an invention, an imagination of difference. But these differences have very real consequences for people’s ongoing material realities and forms of belonging that are desired. When considered in relation to the diaspora, history, and cultural connectedness, ideas about Africanity need to hold these very real forms of oppression alongside notions of change and difference, acknowledging how certain bodies have been repeatedly oppressed and exploited, without assuming that local histories are somehow universal.

Acknowledgment

The support of the DST-NRF Centre of Excellence in Human Development at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa, toward this research is hereby acknowledged. Opinions expressed and conclusions arrived at, are those of the author and are not to be attributed to the Centre of Excellence in Human Development. A special thanks to Thabang Monoa for sharing insights and giving extensive input to this work.

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How ‘black panther’ taps into 500 years of history.

Johns Hopkins historian Nathan Connolly explains how Ryan Coogler's film draws on centuries of black dreams of independence to create Wakanda.

By N.D.B. Connolly

N.D.B. Connolly

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I’m a historian. And regardless of how you think a historian is supposed to behave, I’m not going to pretend to be some detached observer, not when when it comes to the movie Black Panther . On the contrary, history serves as the source of my excitement for the film and for much of the positive attention it’s enjoyed worldwide.

Black Panther , as a film, is quite good. Sure, it struggles to shake good vs. evil storytelling, and it could safely be accused of boasting too few practical effects. Such shortcomings, however, should surprise no one. They come with the territory for comic flicks, at least for now.

I maintain that we should consider Black Panther historic for reasons altogether different than the nuts and bolts of movie-making. It’s a breakthrough in black cultural representation. It’s a powerful fictional analogy for real-life struggles. And Black Panther owes its very existence to centuries of political and artistic activity, always occurring in real places and under the mortal (but still super-) powers of real people. In Coogler’s vision and as a point of fact, in other words, Wakanda and its inhabitants stand both fictional and historical. It’s history is, quite literally, our history — everyone’s.

Relative, first, to the culture business, one might consider Black Panthe r our generation’s A Raisin in the Sun . It has desegregated the Hollywood blockbuster, as a genre, and, like Lorraine Hansberry’s 1959 classic, rendered universal themes through pointedly black subject matter. With a mostly black cast, black writers and black director, the film has managed to achieve unprecedented financial success and critical acclaim. In the history of cinema, its seat has been reserved.

In still deeper ways, Black Panther and its kingdom of Wakanda serve as a glittering, cinematic maroon colony to which, for a few hours at least, we can all escape. And this is where we go down history’s rabbit hole. You think Stan Lee and Jack Kirby were the first people to imagine an unconquered black nation in the shadow of a white world? When the creative team behind “the Sensational Black Panther” thought up a never-colonized, isolated and futuristic Africa in Fantastic Four  No. 52 (1966), it’s because it seemed appropriately fantastical, like a high school kid with spider powers or an intergalactic surfer traveling the cosmos faster than light. 

But dreams of a place like Wakanda began sometime around 1512 in the Caribbean mountains and forested hills above the mines and fields of Spain’s colony, Santo Domingo. Then and there, Africans in the Americas first broke away from slavery to form their own societies with indigenous island people. They did it again in the maroon enclaves of Dutch Surinam and British Jamaica. In villages, town and cities, too, beyond the reach of slave-catchers in the eventual United States, black people carved out spaces and hoped-for futures of their own. Slavery and variations of colonialism, in the U.S. and abroad, forced linguistically and culturally disparate people, again and again, to understand themselves as “black,” as a race.  And, for just as long, African-descended people have imagined and endeavored to build places free from the brutalities and indignities of those systems. From Colombia to Canada to, later, coastal Liberia, a black homeland became the stuff of dreams.

Black utopias are nothing new. Neither are the ways people endeavored to bring them about. Before a massive 1791 slave uprising in Saint-Domingue, black folk in North America, Latin America and the Caribbean hoped for and swapped rumors about some possible end to slavery. In hushed tones over the mistress’ laundry, men and women in bondage spoke the stuff of planters’ nightmares. They whispered freedom’s name by lamplight in slave cabins. They called out to it from the decks and holds of war and merchant ships. Rumor and talk of freedom swirled up into revolution and served as what the historian Julius Scott famously called “the common wind.” And when Saint-Domingue, through force of arms, finally became Haiti in 1804, news spread quickly. A free black nation, it seemed, had already been what enslaved people were waiting for. 

Wakanda might not be Haiti, it’s true. But it’s what Haiti was before such a place even existed. It’s a dream and a wish spoken into the wind.

Ryan Coogler’s Black Panther taps a 500-year history of African-descended people imagining freedom, land and national autonomy. Wakanda conjures this past, even as it professes to stand outside it. It’s a land, again like Haiti and much of actual Africa, about which everyone has a notion, even if they’ve never been there. Worlds must be dreamed, after all, before they can be made.

And they do, sometimes, get made, and remade. For the two centuries that followed the Haitian Revolution, artists and authors have drawn from Haiti, Ethiopia and visions of free African nations to dream in paintings, sculptures, books, songs, plays, films and, yes, even comic books. With the rumblings of decolonization coursing through Africa and the Caribbean, the painter Jacob Lawrence completed 41 separate works capturing the establishment of a free Haiti, his Toussaint L’Overture series (1937-38). The very same year, the historian C. L. R. James released Black Jacobins , a book almost cinematic in its detail, and which still stands, for many, as the definitive account of the Haitian Revolution. 

James’ book fell out of print after a decade, only to go back into production at the urging of black American readers and in response to the cresting black activism of the 1960s. In short order, Black Jacobins provided the foundation for the first-ever comic book treatment of Toussaint’s life and Haiti’s founding, Golden Legacy  No. 1.  That book came in 1966, the very year two white New Yorkers first decided to imagine “the King of the Wakandas.” Though Jewish and no doubt attuned to the value of homelands, neither Stan Lee nor Jack Kirby had even been to Africa (and it showed). But neither had Lawrence nor James, in their respective landmark achievements, ever been to Haiti.  Dreams to art to life, and back again.

As African-descended people and their artistic allies continued to rewrite what the imagined black person or place could be in the last third of the 20th century, they revised — both directly and indirectly — Wakanda’s first quirky imagining at Marvel.  In time, a jungle of metal trees and over-compensating, two-dimensional men gave way to a more sumptuous, grounded world in which black interior lives glitter as richly as Wakanda itself. The most recent takes by Ta-Nehisi Coates, Roxane Gay and other creative teams have peppered Marvel’s pages with black feminist character development and Easter eggs to scholarly books about slavery, Haiti and Reconstruction. And almost as if writing social history, they’ve made King T’Challa and those around him question whether we, living beyond the fourth wall, should want a black king at all. 

Seeing the Wakanda of comics brought to life, audiences will rightfully swoon at Black Panther ’s costumes, “authentic” accents and visual effects. Still, we’d do well to remember there’s nothing “African” about the movie, as least not in any historical sense. It’s a mashup of African isms . Thus, we ought not to let it stand in for the people and countries of Africa. The film’s glorification of an isolated black kingdom — mono-crop economy and all — decouple it, too, from Haiti, for what that’s worth. They tried that there, after all — a beleaguered response to more than a half-century of blockades and denied diplomatic recognition following independence. 

What is historical about Black Panther , in perhaps the deepest respect, is how smartly it invokes the history of anti-colonial struggle and age-old visions of black self-determination. It grapples, as well, with an ambivalence, just as old, about the collectivist aspirations of black people, on the one hand, and the symbolic value of black monarchs, on the other. 

From opening scene to credits, Black Panther does its best work, as commentary, via treating Wakanda as a paradox. Should singular black excellence — in this case a singular black utopia — be responsible for the liberation of African-descended people worldwide? What’s the obligation of the free to the unfree? Spoilers abound in answering these questions. Thus we’ll avoid them here. Suffice it to say, one cannot appreciate Coogler’s cinematic tone or the legions of anticipated Black Panther viewers who’ve never cared to crack a comic book without seeing and recognizing history’s outlines in the fictional African kingdom of Wakanda.

Indeed, what’s most real about Black Panther are its literary and historical sinews tying us back into the black past, or better, to black past dreams . Its slick, blockbuster look aside, Black Panther , by and large, doesn’t feel like a movie thought up around some conference table in Hollywood because its characters and setting benefit from the dreams — in print and across history — that made Coogler’s complex cinematic world-building possible. In this way, Black Panther doesn’t offer a submerged history lesson so much as a trip — a pilgrimage, really — to a place we should all see at least once. “I have been to Wakanda,” one enthusiastic, early reviewer explained, “and I may never recover.”

But recover we must. Yes, let us dream of a land high-tech without a history of environmental degradation. Let’s, all of us, be “black” without the crucible of colonialism. And let’s, if only for a time, be the richest nation on Earth, without the existential pain of cultural genocide or the elevation of white aesthetics to the exclusion of all else. Then, buoyed by dreams of Wakanda, let’s return home and face the world that actually needs remaking.

N. D. B. Connolly is co-host of the American history podcast, BackStory , and the Herbert Baxter Adams Associate Professor of History at the Johns Hopkins University.

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The Tragedy of Erik Killmonger

The revolutionary ideals of Black Panther ’s profound and complex villain have been twisted into a desire for hegemony.

The following article contains major spoilers.

Black Panther is a love letter to people of African descent all over the world. Its actors, its costume design, its music, and countless other facets of the film are drawn from all over the continent and its diaspora, in a science-fiction celebration of the imaginary country of Wakanda, a high-tech utopia that is a fictive manifestation of African potential unfettered by slavery and colonialism.

But it is first and foremost an African American love letter, and as such it is consumed with The Void, the psychic and cultural wound caused by the Trans-Atlantic slave trade, the loss of life, culture, language, and history that could never be restored. It is the attempt to penetrate The Void that brought us Alex Haley’s Roots , that draws thousands of African Americans across the ocean to visit West Africa every year, that left me crumpled on the rocks outside the Door of No Return at Gorée Island’s slave house as I stared out over a horizon that my ancestors might have traversed once and forever. Because all they have was lost to The Void, I can never know who they were, and neither can anyone else.

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It is also The Void that creates Michael B. Jordan’s Erik Killmonger, the antagonist of Black Panther , cousin to Chadwick Boseman’s protagonist King T’Challa and a comic-book villain so transcendent that he is almost out of place in a film about a superhero who dresses as a cat. Black Panther is about a highly advanced African kingdom, yes, but its core theme is Pan-Africanism, a belief that no matter how seemingly distant black people’s lives and struggles are from each other, we are in a sense “cousins” who bear a responsibility to help one another escape oppression. And so the director Ryan Coogler asks, if an African superpower like Wakanda existed, with all its power, its monopoly on the invaluable sci-fi metal vibranium, and its advanced technology, how could it have remained silent, remained still, as millions of Africans were devoured by The Void?

“Two billion people all over the world who look like us whose lives are much harder, and Wakanda has the tools to liberate them all,” Killmonger scolds the Wakandan court. “Where was Wakanda?”

Killmonger has come to Wakanda as a conqueror. His father N’Jobu facilitated the theft of vibranium in an attempt to arm black people all over the world against their oppressors; N’Jobu is killed by T’Challa’s father T’Chaka for his insubordinate attempt to end the centuries of isolation that have kept Wakanda safe. T’Chaka abandons Killmonger in Oakland, California (the birthplace of the Black Panther Party), leaving Killmonger literally and figuratively an orphan, who sees in his lost homeland a chance to avenge the millions of black people extinguished in The Void, and those who still suffer in its wake.

Killmonger’s stated purpose, to liberate black people all over the world, has sparked a lively discussion over whether he is a bad guy to begin with. What could be so bad about black liberation? “I fist-pumped in the silent, dark theater when he was laying out his plans,” writes Brooke Obie at Shadow and Act . “IT’S A GOOD IDEA!” That Coogler’s villain has even inspired this debate is a testament to how profound and complex the character is.

“In the end, all comes down to a contest between T’Challa and Killmonger that can only be read one way,” writes Christopher Lebron in a well-argued piece in Boston Review , “in a world marked by racism, a man of African nobility must fight his own blood relative whose goal is the global liberation of blacks.”

This is not actually what happens in the film. Killmonger’s goal is, in his eyes, the global liberation of black people. But that is not truly his goal, as Coogler makes clear in the text of the script and in Killmonger’s interactions with other characters. Like Magneto, another comic-book character who is a creation of historical trauma—the Holocaust instead of the Middle Passage—Killmonger’s goal is world domination. “The sun will never set on the Wakandan empire,” Killmonger declares, echoing an old saying about the British Empire, to drive the point home as clearly as possible. He sees no future beyond his own reign; he burns the magic herbs Wakandan monarchs use to gain their powers because he does not even intend to have an heir.

It is remarkable that many viewers seem to have taken the “liberation” part at face value, and ignored the “empire” part, which Jordan delivers perfectly. They are equally important. Killmonger’s plan for “black liberation,” arming insurgencies all over the world, is an American policy that has backfired and led to unforeseen disasters perhaps every single time it has been deployed; it is somewhat bizarre to see people endorse a comic-book version of George W. Bush’s foreign policy and sign up for the Project for the New Wakandan Century as long as the words “black liberation” are used instead of “democracy promotion.” Killmonger’s assault begins in London, New York, and Hong Kong ; China is not typically known as a particularly good example of white Western hegemony in need of overthrow.

There are other Wakandan characters who wish to end the kingdom’s isolation for reasons of their own. Lupita Nyong’o’s Nakia is seen at the beginning of the film rescuing people from a Boko Haram–type militia, and later urges T’Challa to take in refugees; T’Challa refuses, citing Wakanda’s tradition of isolationism. Killmonger seeks more than aid or revolution—he seeks hegemony. Here, there are echoes of the breakdown of the original Black Panther Party in its later years, as radicalized chapters sought a direct armed struggle to overthrow the U.S. government—a plan that most of the Party’s established leadership saw as folly. In so doing, the film’s conflict symbolizes, as my colleague Vann Newkirk writes , an old argument over “the nature of power and the rightness of its use” that has long “dominated black thought in the United States,” and even beyond.

“You want to see us become just like the people you hate so much,” T’Challa tells Killmonger during their climactic battle. “I learn from my enemies,” Killmonger retorts. “You have become them,” T’Challa responds. That the climactic battle in Black Panther is a bloodbath between Wakandan factions is no accident; it is Killmonger putting the never-colonized Wakanda through a taste of colonialism in microcosm. In one of many sly references to the Black Panther Party, it is Wakanda’s women—Nakia, Danai Gurira’s General Okoye, Letitia Wright’s Princess Shuri, Angela Bassett’s Queen-Mother Ramonda—who sustain Wakanda through its darkest moments. Where T’Challa cannot survive or triumph without Okoye, Shuri, or Ramonda, Killmonger is alone. His African American mother is absent from the story; Killmonger kills his own lover the moment her body stands between him and his ideological ambitions.

The following distinction is crucial: Black Panther does not render a verdict that violence is an unacceptable tool of black liberation—to the contrary, that is precisely how Wakanda is liberated. It renders a verdict on imperialism as a tool of black liberation, to say that the master’s tools cannot dismantle the master’s house.

Yet because Killmonger’s plans are rooted in a recognizable idealism and a wounded soul, the audience is supposed to empathize with him, even care for him. Viewers are meant to mourn him as T’Challa does when he dies, invoking his ancestors who chose to be consumed by The Void rather than toil in bondage. When T’Challa goes to the spirit world, he sees his ancestors. When Killmonger goes, in one of the most moving scenes in the film, he sees only his father; the rest of his ancestors have been lost to The Void. He is alone in a way T’Challa can never comprehend. So like his father N’Jobu, Killmonger is radicalized. “We can rule over them all the right way,” N’Jobu says during a flashback.

Killmonger himself is a kind of avatar of the BPP’s deterioration in its latter years, when rebelling against white supremacy gave way to internecine bloodshed. He embodies the Black Panther Party’s revolutionary possibility and noble intentions, but also its degeneration into fratricidal violence, and a sexism that persisted despite party doctrine. The film’s title thus has a double meaning, an indication of the gravity of Killmonger’s character—a Black Panther against the Black Panther. In one of the many subtle touches Coogler adds to a film in a genre not known for them, Black Panther ambiguously refers to either of them.

It is also a mistake, to, as Lebron does, view Killmonger as “as a receptacle for tropes of inner-city gangsterism.” Killmonger is not a product of the ghetto, so much as he is a product of the American military-industrial complex. Here too, the script is explicit. Noting Killmonger’s technical background (he studied at MIT) and his war record (tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, even in Africa where, he acknowledges, “ I killed my own brothers and sisters on this continent”). The CIA agent Everett Ross says of Killmonger, “he’s not Wakandan, he’s one of ours,” later observing that Killmonger’s coup is what the U.S. government “trained him to do.” The part of Killmonger that makes him a supervillain is not the part of him that is African.

Ross’s inclusion is perhaps the weakest part of the storyline—the history of the CIA in Africa is a history of the suppression of democratic movements like the African National Congress , the backing of brutal dictators, and opposition to racial equality in the name of anti-communism. Shuri hints at this history when she derisively calls Ross a “colonizer.” Nevertheless, Ross’s heroism in the film, even in a fantasy, feels like a kind of propaganda.

In spite of his ambitions for global domination, Killmonger does something remarkable and perhaps unprecedented for the superhero genre—he wins the argument. When T’Challa learns that his father killed N’Jobu and abandoned N’Jadaka (Killmonger), he is horrified: The truth shatters his faith in his father and in his father’s infallibility. On the spirit plane, T’Challa declares to the manifestations of his ancestors, the previous Black Panthers, “You were wrong. All of you, you were wrong.”

Where was Wakanda? Wakanda failed. Killmonger was right. He is blinded by his pain to the evil of his own methods, but he is correct that Wakanda abandoned its responsibility to use its unmatched power to protect black people around the world. They could have stopped the endless march of souls into The Void. They did not.

After defeating Killmonger, T’Challa ends Wakanda’s isolationism and, beginning in Oakland, starts to deploy Wakandan capital toward an international social-service project focused on impoverished black neighborhoods—again echoing the legacy of the Black Panther Party. Killmonger is dead, but he has changed Wakanda forever, ended the isolationism that defined its existence for all time, and unleashed a powerful new ally to oppressed black people all over the world. Is this inadequate? Too little, too late? Maybe. But it is folly to think that Killmonger’s preferred plan of Wakandan world hegemony through massive bloodshed, using a method that has never once worked as intended, is a preferable outcome.

Lebron laments that “Killmonger ... will not appear in another movie. He does not get a second chance. His black life did not matter even in a world of flying cars and miracle medicine.” On the contrary, Killmonger’s ascension and death is the event that catalyzes Wakanda’s redemption from its greatest failure, and his death ensures that unlike Loki, Thanos, the Red Skull, or any other of Marvel’s endless stable of world-conquering despots, the pathos of his tragic end cannot be infinitely repeated as farce. His death not only matters, it is also why he matters more than all the rest of them.

Shortly after he is crowned King, during his vision on the spirit plane, Killmonger sees N’Jobu and recalls a moment from his childhood, when N’Jobu expressed the fear that should Killmonger return to Wakanda, they would not accept him, but instead see him as lost. “Maybe your home’s the ones that’s lost,” a young Erik tells N’Jobu.

And thanks to Killmonger, now they are found.

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Black Panther, Whitewashing: Colonialism and Neocolonialism Ideals in Marvel’s Black Panther

By matthew dickinson.

LAS 410: Disney-Fication

Matthew wrote this paper for LAS 410 A (The Disney-fication of Identities, Representations and Development). The assignment was to write a critical analysis paper analyzing a Disney artifact (film, TV show, theme park etc.) based on a theme from the course that makes an argument about why studying these images/environments are important. Matthew’s analysis of Black Panther makes a strong argument for how the film, despite being celebrated for its representation of people who are Black both behind and in front of the camera, nevertheless perpetuates colonialist and neocolonialist values. Matthew includes in-depth analysis of specific examples from the film, and also demonstrates implications of whitewashing this particular film. His understanding and use of organizing terms such as colonial and neocolonial is impressive, and the timeliness of this film makes his analysis especially interesting and important for his peers to read.

-Shelley Bradfield

The movie was especially significant since it was the first Marvel film to feature a Black lead and predominantly Black cast. Additionally, the movie featured an African setting and a soundtrack featuring traditional African-style music with contributions from contemporary music stars such as Kendrick Lamar, Travis Scott, and The Weeknd. Black Panther proved successful commercially and critically, grossing over a billion dollars and winning numerous awards- -including three Academy Awards and a Best Film nomination, the first for a superhero film at the Awards.

While the movie generally shows a commitment to representing Black American and African culture, some plot elements endorse colonial and neocolonial values. According to Buescher & Ono (1996), colonialism happens when one country takes over another territory and steals resources, land, and culture from the conquered place with little to no regard for its residents or sovereignty. While colonialism still happens today, its roots are often based in historical contexts such as the British Empire and the exploits of Alexander the Great. In contrast, neocolonialism works to “cover up” unsavory parts of colonial histories and present a new interpretation of events that reinforces colonialist ideals of superiority and inferiority. These narratives are especially harmful when they become part of the mainstream media and reinforce negative ideals in popular culture.

The Walt Disney Company acquired Marvel in 2009, and thus Black Panther was produced under the gaze of the media giant, even if it did not have an outsized impact on production. Disney has had issues with fairly portraying cultures outside of the white hegemonic lifestyles that many of their top producers come from. These shortcomings perpetuate and justify the physical and cultural devastation that ravaged many different indigenous countries and cultures in the name of securing land and resources for European and United States powers, who were led by predominantly wealthy white men. This literal and figurative whitewashing makes truly acknowledging historical events nearly impossible, or, even worse, repackages them in a way that justifies the bloodshed, rape, and cultural degradation of once-thriving countries and communities.

Black Panther is not immune to the problematic elements that can be found in more “traditional” Disney classics, and, in fact, promotes colonialist and neocolonialist values. Colonialism proves to be a major plot device throughout the movie, as many of the plot points include direct or indirect references to the pain and suffering caused by hundreds of years of oppression for Black Americans and Africans. However, neocolonialist values seep into the film through the characters M’Baku, leader of a rival tribe who challenges the main character T’Challa for the title of Black Panther, and the larger role for Agent Ross, a white male CIA operative. Through its mostly ineffectual attempts to highlight the problems with colonialism, endorsement of neocolonial ideals, and inability to allow a Black colonizer to be shown in a positive light, Black Panther espouses many of the problematic ideologies shown in Disney films, while also adding a few colonial twists specific to the film.

Colonialism Through Portrayals of Wakanda

Sarahi Ledesma, glass

From the beginning of the film, the main setting of Wakanda deals with the effects of colonialism through isolationism. In a storybook- type opening, the origin of the mysterious African nation is told, with stories of tribal wars, a powerful element named Vibranium, and an ancient warrior consuming the Heart Shaped Herb, which gave him supernatural abilities and made him the first king and Black Panther, “the protector of Wakanda” (Black Panther, 2018). Later on in the introduction, the audience learns that the nation chose to “hide in plain sight” amidst the chaos happening in the outside world (Black Panther, 2018). Although colonialism is not explicitly mentioned, images of slave ships, tanks, and planes suggest that the Wakandans were aware of the dangers that surrounded them. As a result, the residents chose isolationism, or not being involved in world affairs, “to keep Vibranium safe” (Black Panther, 2018). Since the Wakandans knew that the element was a resource that gave them a great technological edge over other nations, they decided to avoid the colonialists that would doubtlessly come to pillage their greatest asset and overthrow their carefully preserved way of life. In just a few minutes of screentime, the colonialist themes of the film are on full display.

In the film itself, the general conception of Wakanda by the outside world shows the nation as a primitive third-world country that needs help from more developed countries. Collste (2019) notes that “enduring social relations of the superior and subordinate has a tendency to create images of the Other and of oneself, and these images are shared by both the superior and the subordinate” (2). This phenomenon, known as epistemic injustice, causes ideas of superiority and inferiority in both affected cultures, which often comes as a result of a colonialist history. While Wakanda itself has not been colonized by the traditional European or Western powers, the ideals of how they relate to the outside world, in comparison to other African countries, remain.

The most harrowing example of epistemic injustice happens during the capture and questioning of Ulysses Klaue, a lowlife weapons dealer and secondary antagonist. After T’Challa tracks him down and removes the villain’s prosthetic arm that doubles as a cannon and exposes its Vibranium contents, he angrily asks him where the weapon came from. In response, Klaue retorts, “you savages [the Wakandans] didn’t deserve it” (Black Panther, 2018). Even though the pejorative word “savage” has ties to Native Americans for most audiences, Africans have also been subjected to the term that implies they are less than human and in need of salvation and reform (Asante, 2013; Stam & Spence, 1983). This defiant and racist response to a powerful ruler who has the powers of his elders coursing through his veins and technological advancements that are greater than any in the world shows the feelings of superiority that define epistemic injustice, even though the villain knows the Wakandans’ power better than any outsider.

In the interrogation itself, Klaue asserts to Agent Ross, a White male CIA operative, that he “shouldn’t trust the Wakandans” and that he “is much more [Ross’s] speed” (Black Panther, 2018). When he is speaking to a fellow White male, the villain uses a more coded approach to justifying colonial ideals by suggesting that he is more trustworthy than the Black Africans Ross is currently with. After this move fails, Klaue asks the agent what he truly knows about Wakanda. After Ross replies “Shepards, textiles, cool outfits,” referencing the third world status the Wakandans show to the outside world, the villain fills him in on how powerful Vibranium truly is. Klaue likens the country to the fabled El Dorado, a magical place chock full of gold that Spanish conquistadors searched for in the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries (Cartwright, 2014). By connecting this colonialist tale to the real nation of Wakanda, Klaue again attempts to capitalize on white superiority to convince the agent that he should side with him and steal the ultra powerful Vibranium from the inferior Wakandans. Ross dismisses this argument out of hand, leaving Klaue alone and rejoining T’Challa and Okoye.

Gorillas and Guns: Neocolonialist Values in the Film

While Klaue’s overtly colonialist rhetoric gets lambasted, portrayals of Wakanda elsewhere in the film betray neocolonialist ideologies. Historically, media representations of Africa and African life have “othered” this continent and its culture (Asante, 2013; Bonsu, 2009; Stam & Spence, 1983). As a result, a great deal of regressive views about what Africa looks like today have seeped into the minds of audiences across the world, especially in so- called first world countries such as the United States. While these representations may be misguided, ideologies such as neocolonialism can have a dangerous influence on how historical events are remembered. Buescher & Ono (1996) note that “neocolonialism is contemporary culture’s willful blindness to the historical legacy of colonialism enacted in the present’’ (130). While Wakanda itself does not suffer under colonialism in the film, certain aspects of colonialist actions are swept under the rug or are barely mentioned. Although Black Panther makes great strides in presenting African culture in a positive light, the film still leans on stereotypical ideals of tribalism and “othering” to show why the advanced Wakandan culture needs colonialism to reach their full potential.

The mysterious Jabari tribe and Agent Ross are the main ways that neocolonialism inserts itself into the film. In the aforementioned opening story, the Jabari are described as a secret fifth tribe that “isolated themselves in the mountain” and refused to follow the original king’s rule. Although this mention occurs early in the film, audiences do not see any indication of the group until the ritual combat that will determine which warrior will be crowned the next king and Black Panther. While none of the four monarchical tribes put forth a challenger, the Jabari emerge from the rocks with a tribal chant and put forth their leader, M’Baku.

In the comic source material, this character is named Man-Ape and serves as a villain to T’Challa. This portrayal of Africans as apes, even if the connection is in the fantastical world of Marvel, makes them seem less than human, which has been a historical comparison to justify the enslavement of Black people for hundreds of years. Over time, these overtly racist representations have been toned down, but many individuals in recent times still give social meaning to the notion of these racial groups as apes (Ratten & Eberhardt, 2010). Instead of shying away from this character or acknowledging the colonial undertones of this portrayal, the film attributes the gorilla image to the only Wakandan tribe that is “othered” and does not follow the implied acceptance of T’Challa as rightful ruler. However, when M’Baku attempts to take the throne and gain sovereignty over Wakanda, he is defeated despite being much larger and stronger than the incumbent king. While this outcome may be chalked up to a plot point that helps set up the rest of the film, the fact that a stereotyped “ape-man” cannot even defeat his own black kin implies that he is not worthy of success and status.

Agent Ross serves as a neocolonial whitewashing of CIA operations in African countries. In the film, he first appears as the anonymous American buyer for a shady Vibranium deal with Klaue in South Korea. After he meets T’Challa and has a terse interaction with the Wakandan ruler, he radios his backups and informs them that they cannot let the Black Panther take the criminal hostage. Although the plot never reveals what Ross planned to do with the Vibranium “on behalf of the United States government,” his decision to prevent Klaue from being taken into custody is curious. After the deal blows up, figuratively and literally, Ross saves Nakia from dying when Killmonger rescues his fellow antagonist from interrogation. After this heroic act, he becomes a permanent member of the team and is a rare outsider that the Wakandans bring into their home turf. Despite the cagey introduction, Ross reveals himself as an innocuous and caring individual that is subject to taunts such as “colonizer” by Shuri, T’Challa’s younger sister. M’Baku jokingly threatens to “feed [Ross] to [his] children” (Black Panther, 2018). In the climactic battle, the CIA agent uses his aerial expertise to virtually pilot a fighter plane to wipe out opposing forces while risking his life yet again in the process.

While Ross may serve a key role in helping the Wakandans restore peace to their kingdom, the historical connections between the CIA and Africa are far more pernicious. While the secretive nature of the organization and its declassified documentation makes evidence of direct meddling almost impossible to find, evidence suggests that the CIA had vested interests in East Africa during the War on Terror and in political instability in the Congo during the 1960s, among other issues (Hajdarmataj, 2020; Robarge, 2014). With this suspicious history and the ethical and moral gray area that comes from international surveillance, caution should be employed when taking the portrayal of Ross at face value.

Another complicating factor is the noticeable softening of the CIA’s image in recent films such as Argo and Zero Dark Thirty. The agency’s image has improved from one deserving mockery for its incompetence to an entirely benevolent force that spreads neocolonial values by “saving” foreign cultures. This shift has a direct correlation with the organization having more creative control over projects that depict them, and therefore the agency can control its image in the public eye (Schou, 2016). With this obvious conflict of interest, Ross becomes less of a benevolent (White) savior just performing his duty, and more of a neocolonial whitewashing of the negative effects that the United States has had on surveillance in foreign countries.

I Just Can’t be King: The Killmonger Colonial Complex

Perhaps the most compelling colonialist storyline in the film comes through the main antagonist, Erik Killmonger. Instead of shying away from the colonial narratives that the film contains or using them as a cheap punchline, Killmonger has a radical ideology that will enforce an uprising that will help “around two billion” historically oppressed Black people across the world come into power and erase hundreds of years of unfair treatment based solely on the color of their skin (Black Panther, 2018). However, instead of rewarding a man who survived the harsh conditions of urban life as a Black American, the plot instead refuses to allow this aspiring colonialist to “beat [white colonialists] at their own game” in his bid to rule Wakanda (Black Panther, 2018).

While a reading of this refusal to allow the antagonist to “fight fire with fire” through colonial rule may seem logical, the company payrolling the film has a checkered history with portraying colonialism. Disney has historically struggled with telling the stories of minorities and historically oppressed people fairly in classic films such as Pocahantas and Mulan, as well as more contemporary works such as Moana (Anjirbag, 2018; Buescher & Ono, 1996). The themes in these films mainly portray colonialism as positive and necessary to help indigenous “others” become more “sophisticated” through (white) colonial interference, as well as coloniality, which upholds the structures of privilege that have survived traditional colonial practices and continue in a neocolonial age. While Black Panther received deserved praise for its sensitivity in portraying traditional African customs and mannerisms in a mostly positive light, the film nonetheless displaces white colonialist desires onto Killmonger, a Black American character who is then vilified for these aspirations.

Audiences first get a taste of Killmonger’s fiery rhetoric and no-holds-barred approach to gaining power from an early scene set in a quasi-British Museum in London, United Kingdom. While he enters an African exhibit, a white female museum curator instantly approaches him and asks if he needs help. Killmonger obliges, asking the whereabouts of a number of artifacts. When he reaches the one containing Vibranium, he disagrees with her account of where the axe comes from, saying, “it was taken by British soldiers in Benin, but it’s from Wakanda” (Black Panther, 2018). He then goes on to say that he will “take it off [her] hands,” which she responds by saying the artifact, “is not for sale” (Black Panther, 2018). Killmonger is incensed by this reply, moving towards her and sneering while saying, “How do you think your ancestors got these? You think they paid a fair price? Or did they take it, like they took everything else?” This powerful exchange shows the deep rooted hatred the villain has pent up over the years at those with colonialist backgrounds who fail to acknowledge the ill-gotten gains of colonialist rule in countries like England, who take important artifacts and resources and peddle them like they are their own. Immediately after the curator asks him to leave, Killmonger makes a point about racial profiling before revealing that he poisoned her, setting up his path to steal the axe and escape with Klaue.

Killmonger also employs colonialist rhetoric when he unceremoniously enters Wakanda after ruthlessly killing his significant other and Klaue, presenting the body of the wanted criminal as a path to entry. After explaining that he did something that T’Challa could not deliver on, one of the elders asks what he desires, to which he retorts, “I want the throne” (Black Panther, 2018). Killmonger points out that while the Wakandans live a fairly sheltered and privileged life, the aforementioned two billion Black people are suffering. However, he believes that, “Wakanda has the tools to liberate ‘em all,” through the use of Vibranium and advanced weaponry. After T’Challa explains that, “It is not [the Wakandans’] way to be judge, jury, and executioner,” for outsiders, Killmonger rhetorically asks, “Didn’t life start right here on this continent? So ain’t all people your people?” (Black Panther, 2018). By bringing up the fact that Africa is the first known site of human existence, the revolutionary flips the argument on its head, showing that he believes Wakanda is responsible for every Black person around the globe. Killmonger ends this terse encounter by shouting out his royal lineage and setting up the first duel with T’Challa for the role of king and Black Panther.

This revolutionary dialogue continues after Killmonger defeats T’Challa and takes the throne. He begins his upheaval of Wakandan tradition, culminating in the burning of the sacred Garden of the Heart Shaped Herb. In a meeting with top ranking officials, he laments the fact that previous uprisings in America did not have the firepower that could have been provided by Wakanda. This reference alludes to failed revolutions from historical leaders like Nat Turner, an enslaved man who organized an armed assault on slave owners in 1831, and John Brown, a white abolitionist who undertook a similar conflict a few decades later. Killmonger then notes the distinct strategic advantages that Wakanda has to incite a widespread uprising. He says that “[he] know[s] how colonizers think” and that Wakanda is “gonna use their own strategy against ‘em.” He explains more semantics of the plan, which will help “oppressed people . . . finally rise up and kill those in power. And their children. And anyone else who takes their side” (Black Panther, 2018).

This extreme approach harkens back to traditional colonialist methods of taking over nations, as toppling leaders and murdering family members and sympathizers makes establishing a new order much easier for the conquering country. Killmonger seethes that “the world’s gonna start over, and this time, we’re [Wakandans and Black people] on top. The sun will never set on the Wakandan empire” (Black Panther, 2018). These lines clearly outline the colonialist nature of his plan, since he aims to assume power and keep a tight command on those who have systematically done the same to Black people all over the world for centuries. The last line also brings up the famous phrase “the empire on which the sun never sets,” which refers to one country having outsized colonial control. Most commonly used to refer to the historical British Empire, the sentiment behind the phrase is that the country it describes has gained so much land that their influence can be felt on all corners of the earth, even when the sun moves away from the main country. By incorporating overtly colonialist rhetoric and connecting it to Killmonger, Disney makes sure that audiences are fearful of a Black colonialist who poses a threat to both a utopian African society and to the white hegemonic systems that have ruled countries for centuries.

Although Killmonger may be written off as a deranged Nat Turner wannabe, his psyche has been formed through the harsh conditions of Oakland, California and the rigors of military training. In the very first live action scene, audiences witness his father being murdered by T’Challa’s father, T’Chaka, when he was a young boy. As if losing a paternal figure was not enough misery to endure, Killmonger is abandoned by the Wakandans because he “was the truth [T’Chaka] chose to omit,” a fact only posthumously revealed by the late king to his son in a spirit world visit (Black Panther, 2018).. When the skilled assassin shows up in Wakanda after killing Klaue, Ross reveals that his birth name is Erik Stevens, and he “joined the [Navy] SEALs” after quickly graduating undergraduate school from Navy college and graduate school at MIT. After he joined the elite secret force, he shipped out to Afghanistan and “wrapped up confirmed kills, like it was a video game” (Black Panther, 2018). Thus, he earned the nickname “Killmonger” and continued on to an even more elite JSOC ghost unit, who “will drop off the grid, so they can commit assassinations and take down governments” (Black Panther, 2018). In this rapid debriefing, audiences gather that he has received elite training from the best the United States has to offer, all while dealing with unresolved trauma from his father’s assassination at the hands of his uncle.

On top of a laundry list of trauma for Killmonger, his failure to acknowledge his own mental problems is systematic of his upbringing. Adewale et al. (2016) found that Black Americans tended to be more cognizant of injustices stemming from issues such as colonialism and imperialism than their Nigerian-American counterparts. Additionally, Black Americans were less likely to seek mental health treatment and held more stigmatized views on mental illness in the same study. These findings demonstrate how a combination of viewing social injustice issues and a refusal to acknowledge mental health issues can create a devastating cocktail of problems that are almost impossible to overcome. For Killmonger, his inability to recognize issues stemming from a troubled childhood in Oakland compounded with his affiliation with the United States military. Together, these forces turned him from a sympathetic child into a killing machine with no compassion and a single- minded approach to gaining and maintaining power. The end result is a powerful Black colonialist who challenges the norms of Wakanda while also providing a threat to dominant (white) societies around the world that still give its citizens advantages from the ill gotten gains of their own imperialist actions over the years.

Black Panther has proven to be one of the most successful commercial and critical superhero movies of all time. This widespread popularity and acclaim are a testament to its dedication to portraying historically oppressed populations and cultures fairly, which has helped create positive role models and images for Black Americans and Africans. However, the film does not do enough to dispel colonialist ideals, which are often referred to but often not overtly refuted. However, they are challenged by Killmonger, who correctly identifies the problematic elements of colonialist ideals and attempts to reverse-colonize the world through Wakanda with Black people in power this time. However, Disney refuses to allow a minority be the “good” colonizer–a la John Smith in Pocahontas– and instead vilifies Killmonger as a Ratcliffe figure since his ideas are too radical for a white audience. Neocolonialism also presents itself in some truly problematic ways throughout the film. M’Baku may be a traditional comic book character, but his connection to apes and his tribe’s outsider status engender and fail to rebuke ugly stereotypes that have made Black people, especially men, seem less than human in the public eye and also show them as an Others who must be controlled and eliminated for the safety of whites. Additionally, the promotion of Agent Ross from a bumbling sidekick in the comics to a trustworthy helper for the Wakandans ignores a checkered history of CIA interference in Africa, while also creating a sympathetic alternative to the seemingly dangerous Killmonger. Additionally, this movie serves as a major “seeing,” or representative, moment in comic book cinema for minority audiences, particularly young Black Americans. If some of the problematic elements of the film translate to how these groups see the world, they may believe they are inferior or should believe in the whitewashing of the colonial legacy. While Black Panther has made great strides in promoting diversity and inclusion in superhero movies, the insidious colonialist and neocolonialist values that Disney has made mainstream over the years and propagated in the film must be accounted for.

Limitations

While this study covers colonial and neocolonial themes in Black Panther well, there are some limitations to the analysis. Although Marvel produced the film as a subsidiary to Disney, research could not find a link that determined how much creative or productive influence the parent company had while it was being made. As a result, this lack of scholarship lessens the impact of discussing colonial and neocolonial themes that can be more viscerally found in Disney-produced films such as Pocahantas and Moana (Anjirbag, 2018; Buescher & Ono, 1996). The possible influence (or lack thereof) of the Disney Company on Black Panther and other Marvel movies that may potentially have these themes could be examined more thoroughly using a production analysis that examines how media texts are constructed and for what purpose. Another limitation with the study has to do with the lack of information on the extent that these narratives have on audiences, especially for children. Since many impressions on the world are formed from an early age, this population is especially important to look at when determining the long-term impact of a media text. As a result, an audience analysis would be useful to see if Black Panther causes viewers to take in colonial or neocolonial ideals, and how these ideals may have negative effects if they are assumed. Overall, a colonial lens brings into focus vague allusions to a sordid African colonial history and neocolonial themes in some important characters, as well as raises important questions about how Disney portrays minority colonialists in the film. These concepts should be taken into consideration as the company looks to expand its representation of different cultures into media subsidiaries such as Marvel.

Works Cited

Adewale, V., Ritchie, D., & Skeels, S. E. (2016). African-American and African Perspectives on Mental Health: A Pilot Study of the Pre and Post Colonial and Slavery Influences and their Implications on Mental Health. Journal of Communication in Healthcare, 9(2), 78-89. doi:10.1080/17538068.2016.1170316

Anjirbag, M. A. (2018). Mulan and Moana: Embedded coloniality and the search for authenticity in Disney animated film. Social Sciences, 7(11). DOI:10.3390/socsci7110230

Asante, M. (2013). The Western Media and the Falsification of Africa: Complications of Value and Evaluation. China Media Research, 9(2), 64-70.

Black Panther. Directed by Ryan Coogler, performances by Chadwick Boseman, Michael B. Jordan, and Lupita Nyong’o, Walt Disney Studios, 2018.

Bonsu, S. K. (2009). Colonial images in global times: Consumer interpretations of Africa and Africans in advertising. Consumption Markets & Culture, 12(1), 1-25. doi:10.1080/10253860802560789

Buescher, D. T., & Ono, K. A. (1996). Civilized Colonialism: Pocahontas as Neocolonial Rhetoric. Women’s Studies in Communication, 19(2), 127-153. doi:10.1080/07491409.1996.11089810

Cartwright, M. (2014). El Dorado. Retrieved November 16, 2020, from https://www.ancient.eu/El_Dorado/

Collste, G. (2019). Cultural Pluralism and Epistemic Injustice. Journal of Nationalism, Memory & Language Politics, 13(2), 152-163. doi:10.2478/jnmlp-2019-0008

Hajdarmataj, F. (2020). America’s Covert War in East Africa: Surveillance, Rendition, Assassination. Insight Turkey, 22(3), 271+.

Rattan, A., & Eberhardt, J. L. (2010). The role of social meaning in inattentional blindness: When the gorillas in our midst do not go unseen. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 46(6), 1085-1088. doi:10.1016/j.jesp.2010.06.010

Robarge, D. (2014). CIA’s Covert Operations in the Congo, 1960–1968: Insights from Newly Declassified Documents. Studies in Intelligence, 58(3), 1-9.

Schou, N. (2016, July 14). How the CIA Hoodwinked Hollywood. Retrieved November 16, 2020, from https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2016/07/ operation-tinseltown-how-the-cia-manipulates-hollywood/491138/

Stam, R., & Spence, L. (1983). Colonialism, Racism and Representation. Screen, 24(2), 2-20. doi:10.1093/screen/24.2.2

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Black Panther (film)

By ryan coogler, black panther (film) literary elements.

Ryan Coogler

Leading Actors/Actresses

Chadwick Boseman, Michael B. Jordan, Lupita Nyong'o

Supporting Actors/Actresses

Angela Bassett, Forrest Whitaker, Danai Gurira, Letitia Wright, Winston Duke, Martin Freeman, Andy Serkis

Superhero Action Movie

English ( some dialogue in Xhosa and Korean)

No awards as of time of writing

Date of Release

February 16, 2018

Kevin Feige

Setting and Context

Fictional kingdom of Wakanda, in Africa, present day

Narrator and Point of View

The film primarily follows T’Challa and Killmonger, with a few scenes following supporting characters.

Tone and Mood

Varies between exciting and light-hearted, with some moments of heavy drama and melancholy.

Protagonist and Antagonist

T'Challa is the protagonist, Klaue the antagonist

Major Conflict

T’Challa and Killmonger fight over the throne of Wakanda and over what role Wakanda should play on the world stage.

T’Challa returns after his apparent death to defeat Killmonger in combat.

Foreshadowing

T’Challa’s multiple near failures, as well as other characters' admonishments of him, foreshadow his eventual defeat by Killmonger.

Understatement

The oppression of black people, while often discussed in abstract terms, is not really seen in any form in the film. It is instead a specter that hangs over the whole film, something the viewer thinks about but is never forced to confront directly.

Innovations in Filming or Lighting or Camera Techniques

The original brightly colored comics were honored in the set design and also in the lighting, and in the general look of the film. The urban environment of Wakanda was created digitally and inspired by African culture and symbology.

There are continual allusions to the original comic books in the form of settings and characters. There are also allusions to the history of African colonialism and of oppression of diasporic Africans.

The fundamental paradox at the heart of the film is Killmonger’s status as a villain in contrast with his righteous point of view on the oppression faced by black people around the world. The film reconciles this paradox by presenting an alternate path to uplifting black people with peaceful methods at the end of the film.

Parallelism

There is a parallel between T’Challa and Killmonger dealing with the deaths of their fathers and trying to live up to their legacies and expectations. However, T’Challa eventually grows to move on and build his own legacy as king.

Black Panther (film) Questions and Answers

The Question and Answer section for Black Panther (film) is a great resource to ask questions, find answers, and discuss the novel.

What did Wakanda do to keep Vibranium safe and the county thriving?

Wakanda isolated itself from outside influences.

What is your question here?

Marcus Garvey black Panther

Study Guide for Black Panther (film)

Black Panther (film) study guide contains a biography of Randa Abdel-Fattah, literature essays, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis.

• About Black Panther (film)
• Black Panther (film) Summary
• Character List
• Director's Influence

Essays for Black Panther (film)

Black Panther (film) essays are academic essays for citation. These papers were written primarily by students and provide critical analysis of Black Panther (film) by Randa Abdel-Fattah.

• Erik Killmonger: Constructing the Perfect Antagonist
• Black Panther: T’Challa is More than a Superhero

“Black Panther” from the Sociological Perspective Essay

Details and context of the chosen media artifact, course concepts, application of the concepts, limitations of the media artifact and ways of addressing them.

The media artifact selected for this assignment is Black Panther , a film that was recently shown in movie theaters all around the globe. This media artifact received a loud social response as it was one of the most expected films of the year and because it contained a powerful message. From the sociological perspective, Black Panther is an interesting work to explore in terms of its meaning for the modern society and its various groups. It is the case because the film presents a fictional story where one of the countries of Africa, known as Wakanda, becomes a proud owner of a precious resource. Consequently, the movie explores an alternative reality where an African nation grows into the most technologically developed state on the entire planet. The film emphasizes the uniqueness of African culture, its appreciation of heritage, the value of familial and social ties, and the strong sense of togetherness. Practically, using the fictional land of Wakanda and its culture as an example of a wise structure of the society and the established social equality, creators of this movie attempted to point out the contrast between the film and reality.

Multiple course concepts can be applied to the selected media artifact and its details and context in terms of sociological influence and meaning. For example, the first-course concept that is necessary to discuss in this paper is that of media functions in general and socialization and social control in particular (Lyon, 2018). These concepts stand for the social impact that the media can achieve. Specifically, by sending messages incorporated into their content, media can control social perceptions and enable socialization of certain population groups as opposed to their marginalization.

The next applicable course concept is media advertising. When it comes to this concept, critical thinking is rather crucial because the advertisement can be viewed as one of many forms messages can take (Lyon, 2018). Also, advertising can be perceived as a “softer” version of the argument (Lyon, 2018). Moreover, this concept can be connected to the idea of flak as one of the effects produced by mass media. Specifically, its ability to stimulate and promote anti-ideologies is important. Such a situation becomes possible due to the capacity of the media to broadcast and popularize beliefs (Lyon, 2018). By disseminating negative images of certain social groups, media shape the social perception of these groups as evil or dangerous outsiders, thus contributing to their marginalization.

The underrepresentation of African Americans in the media has long served as a serious reason for criticism. The film industry has been accused of the exclusion of African Americans from the casts of popular movies and TV shows for decades (Cuby, 2015). Today, the gap in quantity has been addressed in many cases, but the quality of images of Black people continues to be a problem (Meyerhoffer, 2015; Punyanunt-Carter, 2008). As a result, due to negative media portrayal boosting harmful stereotypes, the lives of people of African descent all around the world have been unfairly and unnecessarily complicated (Donaldson, 2015). This fact is known by all population groups, and this is why films that focus on Black history, experiences, outstanding persons, and other achievements are often warmly welcomed.

Black Panther is one of such films. Its uniqueness is in the diversity of images of Black people that it has to offer. This movie addresses the problems of anti-ideology by mentioning the fragmentation of people of color as their weakness. Moreover, the creators of the film attempted to go deeper and produce an alternative version of Black history presenting an African nation whose image differs significantly from the traditional stereotypes. For instance, Wakanda is a rich and resourceful country, with an exceptionally unified collective culture, social equality between men and women, and a fair vision of the purpose of political power. This message can be viewed as a social advertisement and a softer version of the argument supporting the equality of all people regardless of their color and pointing to the current marginalization faced by Black people. In other words, a milder form of social control is carried out via a popular film that includes many African characters as representations of pride, rich cultural heritage, nobility, and self-sacrificial dedication to a good cause.

One of the major drawbacks of this media artifact is its fictional nature. Practically, for biased individuals, the message included in the film can be distorted by the idea that a prosperous, generous, and peaceful African country can only exist in the form of an optimistic legend or a fairy tale that has nothing to do with reality. Moreover, the nobility of Wakanda and its emphasized togetherness have an ironic limitation right within the movie content as this incredibly rich and developed country has been hiding its prosperity and ignoring its impoverished, starving neighbors for centuries. This way, it is possible to see Wakanda as a selfish capitalist nation instead of a peaceful and benevolent culture. In turn, a conclusion can be made that the image of uncorrupt power is utopic and difficult to sustain even in fictional stories.

Since the major limitation is concerned with viewers’ biases, the most relevant way of addressing this issue is the promotion of positive information about African countries and people living in them. As Haile (2018) points out, the movie serves as a great opportunity for everyone to analyze their relationships with others. The world must know that there is not so much negative about Black people and that there certainly is much positive about them. Another adaptation to address the film’s limitations may be the increased possibilities for Black cinema to enter the movie industry. The more popularized the facts about African people’s lives are, the easier it will be for non-Africans to recognize that everyone is equal and deserves fair treatment.

Cuby, M. (2015). How to enjoy pop culture when you’re Black. Vice . Web.

Donaldson, L. (2015). When the media misrepresents black men, the effects are felt in the real world. The Guardian . Web.

Haile, R. (2018). How Back Panther asks us to examine who we are to one another. Longreads . Web.

Lyon, K. (2018). The mass media [lecture].

Meyerhoffer, C. A. (2015). “I have more in common with Americans than I do with illegal aliens”: Culture, perceived threat, and neighborhood preferences. Sociology of Race and Ethnicity, 1 (3), 387-393.

Punyanunt-Carter, N. M. (2008). The perceived realism of African American portrayals on television. The Howard Journal of Communications, 19 , 241-257.

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On Killmonger, the American Villain of “Black Panther”

By Doreen St. Félix

An early sequence in Ryan Coogler’s “ Black Panther ” mimics the naturalistic mode of an indie. It is nighttime in Oakland, in 1992, and a troupe of young boys are passing around a basketball. Police have beaten a taxi driver to a bloody pulp a few counties over, and coverage of the ensuing riot is lighting up a television in a house upstairs. A fleet of gigantic green, glowing discs moving among the clouds breaks the urban vérité. Black boys crane their necks, dazed. One is especially moved. The trope of the awed child—our surrogate explorer—is science fiction’s way of letting us know that the story is entering another world; moments later, we are swept away to the stunning Wakanda, a fictional black kingdom on the African continent. The child is left behind—but only for a time.

Coogler’s film, inspired by the 1966 Marvel creation by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, is a stylish study in boundaries—the ones that divide preservation and insurrection, family and exile, politics and feeling. Also, art work and real life: think of the young comic-heads cosplaying as the Dora Milaje women warriors. We have been encouraged to let the imperial image of Wakanda leak into real timelines, to audacious political effect. On the cover of the British edition of this month’s GQ , Michael B. Jordan, who plays the villain Erik Killmonger, appears as a couture Huey Newton.

Wakanda is an Eden in chrome overdrive, undefiled by the original colonial sin, and the pleasure the film takes in its Afrofuturist aesthetic makes clear to us that we, the viewers, are being asked to support the cause of Wakandan peace, the upholding of its borders. The heir apparent, T’Challa, played by the ageless Chadwick Boseman, is a staunch isolationist who leaves his kingdom only to neutralize threats to the country’s secrecy and security. At U.N. summits, the tribal empire masquerades as a third-world nation, while its happy subjects secretly wallow in techie pleasures derived from the metal vibranium—the true Wakanda and its natural resource are hidden behind a fortified perimeter. The most sensible character in the film is a woman, naturally: the humanitarian spy Nakia (Lupita Nyong’o). When Nakia asks T’Challa to consider letting neighboring refugees in on Wakandan wealth, he scowls, grumbling about the inevitability of war.

The movie is a joyride, but the superhero tale is also the site of identity construction: Whom would you be in this daydream? (As Ava DuVernay, speaking to Carvell Wallace, recently mused , “What if they didn’t come? . . . And what if they didn’t take us? What would that have been?”) “Black Panther” shoulders an outsized assumption that it will function as feel-good propaganda as well as art—an exercise in providing confirmation to black people of their essential beauty, their lost and abstracted lineage of nobility. But Coogler, a chronicler of the American city, knows that for the fantasy to take hold, he must create an outlet for the enraged and jaded black id. Killmonger’s pursuit of the Wakandan throne brings a thrilling ambiguity to the film’s politics. In the comics, the villain Erik Killmonger lives in Harlem; Coogler introduces a slip of reality by placing the young boy Killmonger, and the origin of the film’s power struggle, in his own home town, which also birthed the Black Panther Party. (In “ Fruitvale Station ,” Coogler’s telling of the last day in the life of Oscar Grant, who was killed by police in 2009, Jordan played Grant, and it is impossible not to read a resurrection of that anguished, dying figure in the villain’s angry gaze.)

With this insurgent, the tragic element of African-Americanness spills over into Wakanda, and its presence slowly erodes the viewer’s automatic identification with the conservative fantasy king, revealing what my colleague Jelani Cobb has described as the “fundamental dissonance in the term ‘African-American,’ two feuding ancestries conjoined by a hyphen.” While T’Challa’s presence is usually accompanied by maximalist, statesmanlike percussion (Ludwig Göransson’s soundtrack was inspired by a trip to Senegal), it is the Fula flute, strange and intrusive, that announces Killmonger’s entrances. Nineties-esque bass from a more vital world plays in Killmonger’s Oakland scenes, and, in his globe-trotting sequences, we hear the voice of Kendrick Lamar —an artist who once called himself the impossible hybrid of a sovereign enslaved, “King Kunta.” Next to Boseman’s Mandela-like lilt, Jordan’s American accent is a jolt of familiarity. So is his biography: as a child, Killmonger wept over his father’s corpse; and he brags that, as a U.S. Special Forces soldier, he fought in Afghanistan and Iraq. He satisfies our simultaneous taste and revulsion for broken men: he is a love object who murders his plaything and nearly strangles a Wakandan female elder to death, a scorned son who would gladly kill his own family to get what he wants. Hiding as a civilian, wearing faddish eyeglasses to make deals on stolen African art in a British gallery, he looks like a charming blipster.

An antagonist hell-bent on arming all the black people in the world, Killmonger’s rage and rashness are more coherent than T’Challa’s rote Edenic promises. Playing the fly in the fantasy’s ointment, Killmonger, our vector for unfettered bitterness, shows us the limits of the Wakandan project—the people it leaves behind. Far from an archetypal nuisance, Killmonger is queasy and immature and beguiling, an Invisible Man living in a Marvel syntax. Wearing gold grills, he speaks in Biblical vagaries about “bondage.” His observations about how white supremacy has brutalized black people in Africa, America, and beyond are inspired by radical discourse; in one daring tableau, he talks to T’Challa about the need to eliminate not only the oppressor class but its children, like some sexified second coming of the extremist Nat Turner. Killmonger recalls that the other American kids in Oakland thought he was delusional for believing that a black utopia existed, and that he was connected to it. As viewers, we have been soothed by the golden vision of uncolonized black society; still, it’s easy to understand, considering his vantage point, why the mere idea of Wakanda has driven Killmonger completely insane.

“I feel most colored when I am thrown against a sharp white background,” Zora Neale Hurston wrote, in her essay “How It Feels to Be Colored Me,” from 1928. By contrast, it is the black background of a fantastical ethnic nowhere that leaves Killmonger unhinged. The villain of “Black Panther” could have been white; for a good portion of the film, we’re led to believe that he will be. The spectacle of black adversaries, connected by continent and by blood, takes the film’s struggle to a deeper register. Killmonger is wrong about many things, but he, like Nakia, is right that there is suffering around Wakanda. (There may even be suffering within it; there is, we learn, a history of Wakandans defecting, and, as the film hardly ever leaves its monarchical perch, who knows how ordinary Wakandans live?) A more censorious film—ruled by the politics of respectability, the impulse for narrative tidiness—would have shied away from such a fiendishly appealing villain, but Coogler knows that escapism is rarely so pure.

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Black Panther - Free Essay Examples And Topic Ideas

Black Panther can refer to the superhero character from Marvel Comics or the political movement Black Panther Party. If discussing the superhero, essays might delve into the character’s history, his significance as one of the first black superheroes, or the impact of the 2018 film “Black Panther” on popular culture and discussions around representation. Alternatively, if discussing the Black Panther Party, essays might explore the party’s formation, its goals and methods for combating racial injustice, or the government’s response to its activities. Analyzing the legacy and impact of the Black Panther Party on subsequent social justice movements or discussing the portrayal and perception of the party in media and popular culture could also be of interest. Both topics offer a rich exploration of the themes of justice, representation, and the fight against oppression. A substantial compilation of free essay instances related to Black Panther you can find in Papersowl database. You can use our samples for inspiration to write your own essay, research paper, or just to explore a new topic for yourself.

The Genre of “Black Panther” is Fantasy

Every epic hero has certain heroic characteristics, and have been challenged and pushed to the extremes. "Black Panther" is a superhero movie that broke box office sales. It tells a story of the challenges of T'Challa trying to take his rightful place as king. T'Challa, who is the Black Panther faces many challenges throughout the movie. When he returns to Wakanda, he is still battling the loss of his father. Before he becomes king he must face a powerful enemy […]

Film Review Black Panther

Marvel Studios has brought to us many excellent films but, "Black Panther" has touched base on something that marvel hasn't seemed to do before. Hollywood films have created many movies that often have similar plots and exhausted endings. This hollywood film, directed by Ryan Coogler, offers the viewer something deeper than what's been seen in a marvel movie. Coogler offers myth. It allows the viewer to learn the traditional story of Wakanda and the early story of its people. Black […]

The Panthers Created One of the Social Programs

Few revolutionary movements of the sixties have distilled as much underground glamor as the Black Panther Party, however, their trajectory is far from a fashion show. The Panthers created one of the social programs of regeneration of the poor neighborhoods of the most ambitious large American cities of their time and were the nucleus of a coalition of revolutionary movements with a strong ethnic and social implantation that came to have a certain weight in life American public, if only […]

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Black Panther Film Review Essay

For my review essay, I chose to critique the movie Black Panther. This film was released on February 16, 2018, in Pinewood Studios, that is located in Atlanta, Georgia. The writer/director of this film goes by the name Ryan Coogler. He has co-written and directed the film Creed (2015) and Fruitvale Station (2013). The co-scriptwriter of this film goes by the name Joe Robert Cole, and the cinematographer, Rachel Morrison. A couple main characters of the cast are: Martin Freeman […]

Topic about Movie Black Panther

My topic will be about the technology in the movie. Wakandians were very well aware about the type of technology they had and how it helped out its country a lot. Wakanda was pretty much getting powered by there special metal called vibranium. Vibranium was a very strong and rare metal that only Wakandians had. The world had thought that Wakanda was a third world country basically saying that they didn't have much and they needed help with their economy. […]

We Think about the Declaration of Independence

When we think about the Declaration of Independence, we associate it with life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness and unalienable rights but completely disregard important statements like this on "But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security" (Declaration of Independence 1776) Reading this […]

Black Panther is an Action Packed Marvel Movie

Black Panther is an action packed Marvel Movie about how a new king, T'Challa, must learn how to take care of his people of Wakanda without his father by his side. In a twist of fate T'challa's long lost cousin, Erik Killmonger, appears and takes the throne from him after taking part in the ritual of fighting for the kingdom. The movie is then based around T'challa trying to win back his rightful place as king in Wakanda. Upon watching […]

The Black Panther Became the Black Panther

The Black Panther became the black panther because he's very Strong,Speedy,Agility, Stamina( A lot of energy),Reflexes, and Superhuman Senses and his claws can rip through most likely anything .If the Black panther uses to much energy he would get much slower and also a lot weaker which makes it easier for enemies to attack or get away from him. The suit is the main thing that helps him when it comes to fighting and defeating his enemies.A lot of the […]

The Treatments of Blacks after Slavery

The treatment of blacks after slavery was beyond harsh even though they were free. Blacks had to face Jim Crow laws, police brutality, bloodthirsty KKK members, and so much more. Society viewed blacks as inferior and the progression of blacks in America was slow. It was not until 1964 when Congress approved the Civil Rights Act that forever changed history and the lives of people of color. The Civil Rights Act is a law that responded to demands of the […]

Black Panther Reflection Ryan Coogler

Although this wasn't the first time I went out to watch a superhero flick, the Ryan Coogler directed hit "Black Panther" was definitely the movie I had been waiting for and wasn't going to miss it. I had already watched this movie before on the its release day but had the opportunity to watch it again hosted at the university. It was a little different this time to watch with an disproportionate order of people of different race which brings […]

Black Feminism Black Panther Party

The Face of African American movements became increasingly Pro Black after the 1960s. Black youth throughout the country started to question the methods of the "Old Guard"; middle class Civil Rights leaders of the previous decade. The peoples desire for a new group led to the rise of the Black Power Movement. The Mobilization of the Black Power Movement rested on the fact that Black students around the country wanted to see change on and outside of their campuses. The […]

T’Challa, the New King and T’chaka

In the film, black panther, many elements were inspired by and brought directly from a variety of African communities. From design, to architecture, the film displays a plethora of details showcasing the richness and diversity behind Africa. What is really quite unique is that the film chooses to display all these elements within one area in Africa. A hidden gem, separated from the outside, these elements reside in Wakanda. Although Wakanda does not truly exist geographically, a lot of its […]

“Black Panther” is One of the Unique Movies

"Black Panther" is one of the unique movies by MCU in 2018. The movie itself is a masterpiece, which includes things, that have not been accepted for ages and have not been showed as norms for audience. The main character of the film is a symbol of a superhero and his role underlines, that not all of the heroes in films should not necessarily be white and hence, there is a massive power in black world and in black people, […]

The Rise and Fall of the Black Panther Party

When your hear the words "Black Panther Party" what's the first thing that comes to mind? Is it "a group of violent black people fighting for equal rights", or "a bunch of black people who had afros and wore all black" or does the famous line of "WAKANDA FOREVER!" come across your mind.Truth is...they were none of those things, they were so much more. If you were lucky, you might have touched on them during your history class, but can […]

From Liberia to Black Panther

In 1785, Thomas Jefferson, governor of Virginia, wrote "Notes on the State of Virginia" in response to the twenty-two queries asked by French diplomat François Barbé-Marbois. Barbé-Marbois asked these questions of Jefferson in order to understand how America's now free states were being governed. In Query XVI, Barbé-Marbois inquired about the administration of justice in Virginia, specifically concerning the issue of slavery. In regards to the possibility of emancipation, Jefferson suggested that all black people emigrate from the United States […]

The Cinematic Roar of “Panther”: an Exploration of Narrative and Nuance

When we think of influential movies that have left an indelible mark on both the cinematic landscape and the broader cultural zeitgeist, "Panther" is undeniably one such title. Nestled within the overarching umbrella of films tackling the Civil Rights Movement and the struggles faced by the African American community, "Panther" charts its own unique territory, focusing on the meteoric rise and societal impact of the Black Panther Party. This movie is more than just a cinematic endeavor; it's an immersive […]

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How to Write an Essay About Movie Black Panther

Understanding the cultural significance of 'black panther'.

Before writing an essay about the movie 'Black Panther,' it is crucial to comprehend its cultural and cinematic significance. Released in 2018, 'Black Panther' is a groundbreaking film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, notable for its predominantly Black cast and its blend of African culture with superhero tropes. Directed by Ryan Coogler, the film explores themes of power, identity, and heritage, set in the fictional African nation of Wakanda. Start your essay by discussing the plot of 'Black Panther,' the main characters, and the fictional world of Wakanda. Explain how the film diverges from typical superhero narratives and delve into its representation of African cultures and Afrofuturism. The film's impact on discussions about race, representation in Hollywood, and its role in the broader context of Black cinema is also essential to explore.

Developing a Thesis Statement

A strong essay on 'Black Panther' should be centered around a clear, concise thesis statement. This statement should present a specific viewpoint or argument about the film. For instance, you might analyze the portrayal of African cultures and its significance, discuss the social and political themes presented in the movie, or evaluate its impact on the superhero genre and popular culture. Your thesis will guide the direction of your essay and provide a structured approach to your analysis.

Gathering Supporting Evidence

To support your thesis, gather evidence from the film itself, including key scenes, dialogue, and character development. Also, consider including reviews, critical essays, and audience reactions to provide a broader understanding of the film's impact. If discussing the film’s cultural significance, reference specific elements of African culture depicted in the movie and feedback from cultural experts. Use this evidence to support your thesis and build a persuasive argument, ensuring to address different perspectives and interpretations of the film.

Analyzing Key Themes and Elements

Dedicate a section of your essay to analyzing the key themes and cinematic elements of 'Black Panther.' Discuss how the film addresses issues such as leadership, responsibility, and the dichotomy between tradition and modernity. Explore the character development of T’Challa and Killmonger and their differing viewpoints on power and heritage. Also, examine the film’s visual style, use of music, costume design, and how these contribute to its storytelling and thematic expression.

Concluding the Essay

Conclude your essay by summarizing the main points of your discussion and restating your thesis in light of the evidence provided. Your conclusion should tie together your analysis and emphasize the significance of 'Black Panther' in both the cinematic landscape and its broader cultural context. You might also want to reflect on the film's legacy and its potential influence on future filmmaking and cultural representation.

Reviewing and Refining Your Essay

After completing your essay, review and refine it for clarity and coherence. Ensure that your arguments are well-structured and supported by evidence from the film and external sources. Check for grammatical accuracy and ensure that your essay flows logically from one point to the next. Consider seeking feedback from peers, educators, or film studies experts to further improve your essay. A well-crafted essay on 'Black Panther' will not only demonstrate your understanding of the film but also your ability to engage critically with its themes and cultural impact.

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Black Panther Is Not the Movie We Deserve

The movie, unique for its Black star power, depends on a shocking devaluation of Black American men.

Christopher Lebron

• February 17, 2018

Black Panther , the most recent entry into the Marvel cinematic universe, has been greeted with the breathless anticipation that its arrival will Change Things. The movie features the leader of a fictional African country who has enough wealth to make Warren Buffet feel like a financial piker and enough technological capacity to rival advanced alien races. Such Black empowerment was supposed to change things by effectively challenging racist narratives. This is a tall order, especially in the age of Donald Trump, who insists that Blacks live in hell and wishes that (Black) sons of bitches would get fired for protesting police violence. And it makes it a real shame that Black Panther , a movie unique for its Black star power and its many thoughtful portrayals of strong Black women, depends on a shocking devaluation of Black American men.

To explain my complaint, I need to reveal some key plot turns: spoiler alert.

Wakanda is a fictional nation in Africa, a marvel beyond all marvels. Its stupendous wealth and technological advancement reach beyond anything the folks in MIT’s labs could dream of. The source of all this wonder is vibranium, a substance miraculous in ways that the movie does not bother to explain. But so far as we understand, it is a potent energy source as well as an unmatched raw material. A meteor rich in vibranium crashed long ago into the land that would become Wakanda, making the country so powerful that the terrors of colonialism and imperialism passed it by. Using technology to hide its good fortune, the country plays the part of a poor, third-world African nation. In reality, it thrives, and its isolationist policies protect it from anti-Black racism. The Wakandans understand events in the outside world and know that they are spared. This triumphant lore—the vibranium and the Wakandans’ secret history and superiority—are more than imaginative window-dressing. They go to the heart of the mistaken perception that Black Panther is a movie about Black liberation.

In Black Panther , T’Challa (Chadwick Boseman) has risen to the throne of Wakanda. We know that his father, T’Chaka, the previous king, died in a bomb attack. T’Challa worships his father for being wise and good and wants to walk in his footsteps. But a heartbreaking revelation will sorely challenge T’Challa’s idealized image of his father.

The movie’s initial action sequences focus on a criminal partnership between arms dealer Ulysses Klaue (Andy Serkis) and Eric Killmonger (Michael B. Jordan). They both seek vibranium but for different reasons: Klaue is trying to profit from Wakanda’s wonder-material; Killmonger is trying to make his way to Wakanda to make a bid for the throne. He believes he is the rightful king.

Killmonger, it turns out, is T’Challa’s cousin, orphaned by T’Chaka’s murder of Killmonger’s father and T’Chaka’s younger brother, N’Jobu (Sterling Brown). Why did T’Chaka kill his brother? N’Jobu was found with stolen vibranium. The motive for the theft is where the tale begins—and where the story of Black wonderment starts to degrade.

We learn that N’Jobu was sent to the United States as one of Wakanda’s War Dogs, a division of spies that the reclusive nation dispatches to keep tabs on a world it refuses to engage. This is precisely N’Jobu’s problem. In the United States, he learns of the racism Black Americans face, including mass incarceration and police brutality. He soon understands that his people have the power to help all Black people, and he plots to develop weapons using vibranium to even the odds for Black Americans. This is radical stuff; the Black Panthers (the political party, that is) taken to a level of potentially revolutionary efficacy. T’Chaka, however, insists N’Jobu has betrayed the people of Wakanda. He has no intention of helping any Black people anywhere; for him and most Wakandans, it is Wakanda First. N’Jobu threatens an aide to T’Chaka, who then kills N’Jobu. The murder leaves Killmonger orphaned. Living in poverty in Oakland, he grows up to become a deadly soldier and wants to make good on his father’s vision to use Wakanda’s power to liberate Black people everywhere, by force if necessary.

By now viewers have two radical imaginings in front of them: an immensely rich and flourishing advanced African nation that is sealed off from white colonialism and supremacy; and a few Black Wakandans with a vision of global Black solidarity who are determined to use Wakanda’s privilege to emancipate all Black people.

These imaginings could be made to reconcile, but the movie’s director and writer (with Joe Cole), Ryan Coogler, makes viewers choose. Killmonger makes his way to Wakanda and challenges T’Challa’s claim to the throne through traditional rites of combat. Killmonger decisively defeats T’Challa and moves to start the revolution by shipping vibranium weapons to Black communities around the world. In the course of Killmonger’s swift rise to power, however, Coogler muddies his motivation. Killmonger is the revolutionary willing to take what he wants by any means necessary, but he lacks any coherent political philosophy. Rather than the enlightened radical, he comes across as the Black thug from Oakland hell bent on killing for killing’s sake—indeed, his body is marked with a scar for every kill he has made. The abundant evidence of his efficacy does not establish Killmonger as a hero or villain so much as a receptacle for tropes of inner-city gangsterism.

In the end, all comes down to a contest between T’Challa and Killmonger that can only be read one way: in a world marked by racism, a man of African nobility must fight his own blood relative whose goal is the global liberation of Blacks. The fight takes a shocking turn: T’Challa lands a fatal blow to Killmonger, lodging a spear in his chest. As the movie uplifts the African noble at the expense of the Black American man, every crass principle of modern Black respectability politics is upheld.

In 2018—in a world home to both the Movement for Black Lives and a president who identifies white supremacists as fine people—we are given a movie about Black empowerment where the only redeemed Blacks are African nobles. They safeguard virtue and goodness against the threat not of white Americans or Europeans, but a Black American man, the most dangerous person in the world.

Even in a comic-book movie, Black American men are relegated to the lowest rung of political regard. So low that the sole white leading character in the movie, the CIA operative Everett Ross (Martin Freeman), gets to be a hero who helps save Wakanda. A white man who trades in secrets and deception is given a better turn than a Black man whose father was murdered by his own family and who is left by family and nation to languish in poverty. That’s racist.

Black Panther is not the first prominent attempt to diversify the cinematic white superheroics and thus not the first to disappoint. After Netflix’s Daredevil affirmed the strong television market for heroes, the media company moved to develop shows for other characters that populate the comic. Jessica Jones , about a white heroine, was a critical success. It handled its tough female protagonist intelligently. That show introduced the character of Luke Cage (Michael Colter), an indestructible Black man. When Netflix announced that Cage would have his own show, the anticipation was intense: a bulletproof Black man in the age of Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown? And he would wear a hoodie and fight police? Instead we got a tepid depiction of Harlem poverty, partly the consequence of institutional racism but more closely tied to the greed expressed by two of its big bad Black baddies, Black Mariah (Alfre Woodard) and Cottonmouth (Mahershala Ali). But that was not the worst of it. The ultimate evil in the show’s first and only season is Willis Stryker (Eric Laray Harvey), another Black man whom Luke Cage must defeat. Stryker is not only a Black villain, but Cage’s adopted brother. Cage must beat his brother to a pulp, just as Panther must kill his cousin.

The offenses don’t end, though. If one surveys the Marvel cinematic universe, one finds that the main villains—even those far more destructive than Killmonger—die infrequently. They are formidable enemies who live to challenge the hero again and again. A particularly poignant example is Loki, brother to Thor, the God of Thunder. Across the Thor and Avengers movies that feature him, Loki is single-handedly responsible for incalculable misery and damage; his power play leads to an alien invasion that nearly levels all of Manhattan. Yet Thor cannot seem to manage any more violence against Loki than slapping him around a bit and allowing other heroes to do the same—even as Loki tries to kill Thor. Loki even gets his turn to be a good guy in the recent Thor: Ragnarok . Loki gets multiple, unearned chances to redeem himself no matter what damage he has done. Killmonger, however, will not appear in another movie. He does not get a second chance. His Black life did not matter even in a world of flying cars and miracle medicine. Why? Perhaps Killmonger’s main dream to free Black people everywhere decisively earns him the fate of death. We know from previous Marvel movies that Killmonger’s desire for revenge is not the necessary condition to eliminate him; Loki’s seeming permanence is proof.

My claim that Killmonger’s Black life does not matter is not hyperbole. In a macabre scene meant to be touching, Black Panther carries Killmonger to a plateau so that he might see the sun set on Wakanda before dying. With a spear stuck in his chest, he fulfills his wish to appreciate the splendor his father described, when Wakanda seemed a fairy tale. T’Challa offers Wakanda’s technology to save Killmonger’s life—it has saved the white CIA agent earlier in the film. But Killmonger recalls his slave heritage and tells Panther he’d rather die than live in bondage. He knows the score. He knows that Panther will incarcerate him (as is disproportionately common for Black American men). The silence that follows seems to last an eternity. Here is the chance for the movie to undo its racist sins: T’Challa can be the good person he desires to be. He can understand that Killmonger is in part the product of American racism and T’Chaka’s cruelty. T’Challa can realize that Wakanda has been hoarding resources and come to an understanding with Killmonger that justice may require violence, if as a last resort. After all, what else do comic-book heroes do but dispense justice with their armored fists and laser rifles? Black Panther does not flinch. There is no reconciliation. Killmonger yanks the spear out of his chest and dies. The sun sets on his body as it did on Michael Brown’s.

It is fair to wonder whether the movie merely reflects the racial politics of the comic books that serve as its inspiration. Yes and no. In the movie, Killmonger’s relationship to T’Challa is as the comic-book canon portrays it. Killmonger is a deadly killer in the comics as in the movie, but he is also extremely intelligent, studying at MIT to understand the technology he goes on to deploy. In the movie, Killmonger’s only skill is killing; if Coogler intended to make Killmonger a hood-born genius, he has failed badly.

In the comics, Killmonger also dies at Black Panther’s hands. But Killmonger dies long after he has come to live in Wakanda, albeit under a veil of deceit, before attempting a coup. The comic thus opens (but ultimately rejects) an opportunity to save Killmonger to fight for another day, just as Loki is repeatedly saved. The movie completely forecloses this possibility, which is odd since we can all be fairly certain that there will be a sequel.

What alternative story-lines might have satisfied?

I couldn’t help but think of Ulysses Klaue, a mainline villain in the comics who lives a long, infamous life. He would have been a perfectly good villain to motivate the movie’s attempt at wokeness. In the comics, there is bad blood between the Klaue clan and Wakanda’s royal lineage (Klaue’s Nazi grandfather died by the hands of Chanda, an earlier Wakandan king and Panther). In Klaue, we had a white villain whose bloodline is imbued with the sins of racism. Ramonda, played by the ever-regal Angela Bassett, is temporally misplaced in the movie. In the comics canon, T’Challa takes the mantle of the Panther while Ramonda, T’Challa’s stepmother, is being held captive by a white magistrate in apartheid South Africa. If Coogler had at all been interested in making Panther a symbol of racial reparation he could have easily placed Klaue in South Africa, even post-apartheid, and the rescue of Ramonda—with Klaue in the way—could have driven the narrative. Ramonda is prominent in the movie, but she does not animate the movie’s central drama. Instead, Black Panther is set on a course to kill off his cousin in his first outing, suggesting yet another racist trope, the fractured Black family as a microcosm of the Black community’s inability to get it together.

You will have noticed I have not said much about the movie’s women. They are the film’s brightest spot: the Black women of Wakandan descent are uniformly independent, strong, courageous, brilliant, inventive, resourceful, and ethically determined. I take it that a good deal of this is owed to Ta-Nehisi Coates’s success at elevating the series’ women to central characters with influence and power that turns more on their minds and integrity than their bodies. T’Challa’s sister, Shuri (Letitia Wright), is sufficiently brilliant to make the Q character from James Bond films seem a clever child with some interesting ideas, while Nakia (Lupita N’yongo) is the ethical center of the film, thoughtful and lacking any stereotypical hysterics or emotional cloudiness that so many movies use to savage the intellect of leading women. Thus, the movie deserves praise for its gender politics—save in relation to the only Black American woman. The character, Tilda Johnson, a.k.a. the villain Nightshade, has, by my count, less than fifteen words to say in the movie and is unceremoniously murdered by Killmonger because Klaue is using her as a shield and Killmonger just ain’t got time for that. The lone American Black woman is disposed of by Black-on-Black violence. She is also invisible and nearly silent. In the comic books her character is both a genius and alive and well.

Black Panther presents itself as the most radical Black experience of the year. We are meant to feel emboldened by the images of T’Challa, a Black man clad in a powerful combat suit tearing up the bad guys that threaten good people. But the lessons I learned were these: the bad guy is the Black American who has rightly identified white supremacy as the reigning threat to Black well-being; the bad guy is the one who thinks Wakanda is being selfish in its secret liberation; the bad guy is the one who will no longer stand for patience and moderation—he thinks liberation is many, many decades overdue. And the Black hero snuffs him out.

When T’Challa makes his way to Oakland at the movie’s end, he gestures at all the buildings he has bought and promises to bring to the distressed youths the preferred solution of mega-rich neoliberals: educational programming. Don’t get me wrong, education is a powerful and liberating tool, as Paulo Freire taught us, but is that the best we can do? Why not take the case to the United Nations and charge the United States with crimes against humanity, as some nations tried to do in the early moments of the Movement for Black Lives?

Black Panther is not the movie we deserve. My president already despises me. Why should I accept the idea of Black American disposability from a man in a suit, whose name is synonymous with radical uplift but whose actions question the very notion that Black lives matter?

Boston Review is nonprofit and relies on reader funding. To support work like this, please donate here .

Chris Lebron is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Johns Hopkins University and author of The Making Of Black Lives Matter: A Brief History of an Idea .

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Disney Board Hopeful Criticizes Marvel About Inclusion, Takes Aim At Black Panther And More

T he Marvel Cinematic Universe features countless characters and, in more recent years, the superhero franchise has opted to freshen up its roster of major players. Younger and more diverse MCU heroes have particularly been entering the fray amongst the Multiverse Saga. A number of these characters have seemingly started to strike a chord with audiences since their respective introductions. Now, an investor – who’s hoping to become a board member of Marvel Studios’ parent company, Disney – is sharing his critiques of the creatives’ efforts to be inclusive. And he specifically took aim at Black Panther and other titles while discussing them. 

Nelson Peltz is the individual who’s apparently not too a big fan of the diversity that’s become present within the MCU in recent years. The 81-year-old investor made his thoughts known while chatting with the Financial Times about his efforts to join Disney’s board of directors. During the interview, Peltz questioned the need for a Marvel movie that only features African American stars or a film that only highlights women:

Why do I have to have a Marvel [movie] that’s all women? Not that I have anything against women, but why do I have to do that? Why can’t I have Marvels that are both? Why do I need an all-Black cast?

To be clear, Marvel Studios has not produced a film that falls under any of those categories. 2018’s Black Panther and its 2022 sequel, Wakanda Forever , both feature predominantly (and not solely) Black casts. Likewise, the 2019 film Captain Marvel nor its 2023 follow-up, The Marvels , has a cast that’s solely made up of female performers. In short, the films do highlight characters of color and put women at the forefront, but they don’t exclude talent that falls outside of those particular demographics.

It’s honestly a bit interesting that Nelson Peltz would choose to chastise these titles specifically, especially considering some are amongst the highest grossing MCU offerings. Black Panther consistently shattered box office records years ago and finished its theatrical run with an impressive $1.3 billion worldwide cume. Wakanda Forever didn’t hit those financial heights but still managed to rake in $856 million globally. Captain Marvel ’s haul at the BO was also strong , as it earned $1.1 billion. The Marvels brought in only $206 million last year, though one could argue that external factors like the ongoing Hollywood strikes and lack of promotion played into that. 

Some trolls have called out Marvel Studios for its diversity efforts, which coincide with a period of time that many have viewed as a creative slump for the company. It doesn’t seem that the superhero entertainment  house is planning to pull back on that front, though. Shang-Chi, Kamala Khan (Ms. Marvel) and Maya Lopez (Echo) are just a few of the characters who’ve played large roles in the MCU as of late. And even more diverse characters seem to be on the way under the guidance of studio president Kevin Feige. As for whether Feige should be removed from his post, Nelson Peltz also said:

I’m not ready to say that, but I question his record.

That professional “record” would include birthing a massive multimedia franchise that now spans both movies and TV shows. And cumulatively, the MCU’s 33 films have grossed $29.8 billion globally. With that in mind, it would be quite surprising if Disney cut ties with Kevin Feige, who’s also the CCO of Marvel Entertainment. On top of that, I’d be even more shocked if the successful exec and his colleagues steer away from their efforts to diversify their franchise. 

You can stream Black Panther, Captain Marvel and the rest of the Marvel movies in order using a Disney+ subscription .