Black Panther: a movie about race and Hollywood
HA Hellyer
It took Marvels critically acclaimed Black Panther movie just 26 days to cross the $1 billion box office mark worldwide and become the 33rd movie to ever gross that amount. Its certainly a milestone in cinema, but for reasons that have much to do with popular Western culture at a time when populism has never been stronger.
That populism isnt positive, rather it has been punctuated with underlying tinges of white supremacy. If that sounds stark, that is because it is. In the United States, the Trump presidency came about and is sustained by precisely that kind of bigoted phenomenon. In Europe, far-right populism has become mainstreamed. In high politics, that has led to the likes of Marine Le Pen coming second in Frances presidential competition, and anti-Muslim bigotry and Islamophobia making constant appearances in our popular culture. Just this past weekend, leaflets advertising punish a Muslim day were distributed across the UK. Many more such examples of this xenophobic and intolerant phenomenon are documented every day.
It is against that background that the success of Black Panther ought to be seen. Its not simply a film, in that regard. Instead, it raises pertinent questions around the portrayal of black Americans and Africans in film. Indeed, such portrayals have by and large been minimal, often negative, and have rarely placed people of colour in such prominent and positive roles.
There have been two sets of worthy analysis of the film one positive, and one negative. The negative ought to be addressed, and placed into its appropriate context. Thats a lot to pack into what some will likely expect to be a carefree superhero blockbuster, but it works precisely because Coogler and his collaborators are able to deliver so deftly on the big superhero beats. The fight sequences with Wakandas women warriors are breathtaking; a car chase featuring TChalla and his sister (remotely controlling the car from her Wakanda headquarters, no less) is thrilling. The film isnt perfect: in some action scenes, Black Panthers suit looks more computer-generated than realistic, and the hand-to-hand combat sequences can come off more chaotic than compelling. (Christopher Nolans work in the Dark Knight trilogy comes to mind at times.) But as a whole, the movie plays with tremendous energy and awe.
Every new Marvel movie is an opportunity for a new direction, a chance for the studio to refresh its formula and bring in new elements. For the last few years, those elements have mostly been comedic or satirical. With Black Panther, Coogler doesnt try to distinguish himself by making a sillier movie than his predecessors did. He clearly aspired to make something better, something deeper and more meaningful. Given what a glorious, inspiring film it is, its easy to wonder why Marvel waited so damn long.
A common theme in that regard has been the critique of the black American protagonist, Killmonger. In the film, he is the sole black American. He is a villain, the son of Wakandan royalty, who is born to a black American mother in the United States and raised as such. He is a desperado. And yet it is he who notes some crucial elements of the black American experience and is someone who goes through oppression, as do so many black Americans in modern America. He is someone who raises the issue of slavery, which defines the historical reality and narrative of black Americans and descendants of African migrants beyond Africa and their exploitation, which he seeks to redress. The rogue nature in which he tries to do that, however, using the full might of the mythical Wakandan kingdom, is what places Killmonger among the ranks of the wretched.
Many commentators questioned this and did so with disdain: why was it down to Killmonger to address these obviously scandalous treatments of Africans beyond Africa? Was this not an unfair characterisation of black Americans, so the argument goes?
Its an argument worth noting and the questions people ask about Killmonger are worth asking, but it does miss a crucial aspect of the film, which is that it wasnt meant to address the black American experience per se. If it was, then Ryan Coogler, the director, would have been well-placed to make a movie doing just that. Coogler is, after all, a black American from Oakland and the entire movie was led by black American talent. Rather, this was a movie about Africa and Africans, a mythical kingdom that is light years ahead of the rest of the world in terms of technology and progress. Demanding that the black American experience be centred in the portrayal of Africans en masse may be understandable for some black Americans, but it isnt a crucial flaw of the film if it chooses to do otherwise.
And certainly, the international film-going audience seems to have expressed their approval. Here, we might consider how the film fared not only among black American audiences, where it did phenomenally well, but in Africa. And there, the reception was astounding. For the first time in my own memory, and probably that of most people, a film was produced to high quality that showcased Africans not as villains, but as heroes; as advanced, not as backwards; as symbols for higher accomplishments, not as struggling.
Is that mythical, rather than realistic, considering the history of colonisation in Africa and the less than fortunate state of post-colonial regimes on the continent? Well, yes, but it is a comic book movie. And the ultimate arbiter of how that was received is in the movie theatres up and down the continent, as well as among the vast majority of black American audiences.
It is perhaps difficult for people who are not of African extraction to fully comprehend how incredibly empowering it is to see African faces in a Hollywood blockbuster in such overwhelmingly positive roles.
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