Movies-Meaning-Material benefit
The movie bears witness to the old axiom that our greatest strength is our greatest weakness. The authenticity of the movies cultural elements, including cultural garb, African language, african art and aesthetics and even nods to inside cultural communications, makes it a powerful affirmation of the humanity of African people. The fact that this has resulted in drumming at the theater and dancing in the streets is testimony to the depth of the dehumanization of the African personality in the European imagination. The movie provides an acknowledgement of the beauty, power and validity of the African experience as part of the human experience. This is one of the movies great strengths. But it is only a movie. That is its great weakness. Our brother and teacher, Amilcar Cabral, reminds us that we don't struggle for ideas or thoughts in people's heads. We struggle for material benefits and a higher level of human existence for ourselves, our children and our grandchildren, So while positive images and emotional upliftment are necessary, they are insufficient by themselves.
When you control a man's thinking (Carter G. Woodson)
As a commercial entertainment project the movie succeeded on many levels. It has action, the actors are beautiful. Wakanda is the land where are the men are handsome and all the women are beautiful. With the addition of the all-female Royal Guard the women are also powerful and, with the scientist princess, intelligent too. The idea that there could be an area on the African continent with resources that can power a modern (the cultural content of the concept of 'modernity' is another, though not different, discussion) society is not far fetched. (Check out this recent speech: https://youtu.be/zMmh9N3lpVg ) The idea that the concept of the Wakanda kingdom is futuristic is revisionistic in that African history has architectural, engineering and social accomplishments that remain unparalleled even today. So we are really watching the Europeans providing an imitation of us imitating them imitating us. The european asthetic ideal of sterile glass and steel is projected onto the image of an African future devoid of life and living things.
Culture as a weapon
It is easy for me to get lost meandering through my mind. So, we must not forget that the movie is just that, i.e., a commercial creation designed for mass consumption and commercial gain.It is in the capitalist tradition of a pat on the back while they pick your pocket. Many people are jubilant about this because our history teaches us that it is usually a kick in the pants while they pick your pocket. This movie is an imagined step up. There are many explicit cultural elements that can be, and should be, celebrated. But there are also implicit, subliminal messages that we need to identify, unpack and analyze.
Continental African/American African Divide
There was a not so subtle cultural conflict cooked up in the movie between Africans in the Diaspora and Africans on the continent. The villain is hip-hop in his demeanor and his delivery. Hip-hop is presented as a less legitimate expression of African culture and even antagonistic between and towards what is contrasted as "authentic" continental culture. I think this is a character plot development designed to increase the tension in the narrative arc but it also subliminally plays on misperceptions and misinformation that is other there and therefore easy to tap into (for cultural fun and commercial profit).
Trivialization of anti-racist/anti-colonial/anti-imperialist aspirations
My friend, Ari Merretazon, had his life story used as the basis for the movie, Dead Presidents (1995). In the movie a Viet Nam vet returns from the war and can't get a job so he robs a Brinks truck out of desperation. Ari has stated that the robbery was conceived by him as a political act with the intent to make a political statement rather than an attempt to meet his personal needs. Hollywood stripped the political content. Our sister, who started the Montgomery Bus Boycott has been described as so tired after work that she either wasn't able or wasn't willing to give up her seat on the bus. She has stated many times that the only thing she was tired of was the injustice heaped upon African people. Her refusal to give up her seat was conceived by her as a political act with the intent to make a political statement rather than an attempt to meet her personal needs. The movie casts the aspirations of the villain and his father to address the injustice of white supremacy, racism and capitalism and the yearnings of African people worldwide to be free as illegitimate. It is a, possibly not so subtle and possibly not so subliminal, swipe at Pan-Africanism and the shared interest of African people worldwide. Our brother and teacher, Maualana Karenga, reminds us there is no separate freedom and dignity for African people.
"If you are not careful, you will end up hating your friends and loving your enemies (Malcolm X)
The guiding moral and philosophical principles of Wakanda are "we got ours, you got to get yours." In fact, in many ways the people and country of Wakanda are "honorary white people" (I know of which I speak having held that status for many years as a college administrator). The king and his son, T'Challa hang out at the U.N., are buddy buddy with the CIA and are afforded all the rights and privileges of international house negroes as long as they maintain a relationship that is complicit with the forces of oppression and exploitation that hold the field negroes in check. The aspirations of the villain and his father are presented as the ravings or mad men, unlawful and illegitimate. The fundamental beef in the movie that was tearing the family apart with social violence of lies and the physical violence of death was one side trying to protect the existing white supremacist, capitalist, imperialist order and the other side hoping not only for a big wind but attempting to set the fire that would burn down the master's house.
Mississippi Burning in Wakanda
Imagine my surprise to see the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) cast as a friend to African people.
Need I say anymore about this point?
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It was a fun movie but we need to intone deeply and repeatedly, it is only a movie, it is only a movie.
One challenge of capitalism is that it requires a consumer society. So you go to the supermarket and get eggs in a container that have been washed, sized and packaged for consumption. The greens have been picked, the roots cut-off and rinsed. Most of us who have not had a farm experience have no sense of what it takes to get the chicken wings in the shrink wrapped package. It conditions us to want the harvest without plowing up the field, to desire the rain without the thunder and lightening. We want to "be like that" without understanding we need to "become" like that. This issue is not unique to the Black Panther movie or movies in general. It is part of the cultural context and social milieu that we swim in daily. We are conditioned in a consumer society to look for the finished product rather than inquire concerning or engage in the process.
But I enjoyed the movie for what it is worth and recognize it for what it is not.
