This is all spoilers. Random reactions to Black Panther. Primary reaction: the African parts were generally good, certainly more absorbing, than the utterly ordinary Marvel cartoon movie to which they were attached. The African stuff, though, was way too close to the Lion King for comfort, down to the female lionesses and the bad uncle. More specifically:
1. Wakande is presented as what people like to imagine Trump’s utopia would be: a wealthy society which doesn’t give a bleep about anyone else. An exact quote is in response to why they don’t help refugees: refugees bring their problems with them. The intro scenes are of the caring love interest somewhere in Nigeria in a truckload of apparently kidnapped women who be sold being guarded in part by men and boys who may themselves have been kidnapped (at least one was, the one the heroes don’t kill). No one else in Wakande cares.
2. The opposite perspective is presented for most of the movie as ‘kill’ everyone and force rule over all others. At the end, there’s an ‘outreach’ in which the wealthy, super-advanced Wakandans make a small start of sharing what they have – not their wealth but their technology – and it doesn’t seem likely Wakande will be taking in refugees because the movie is extremely conservative politically about the preservation of culture and thus is against the dilution of native culture – and each tribe’s specific culture – by letting in outsiders. Not exactly a pro-diversity movie. If made with white people, this would be considered …
3. I was floored by the irony of the bad guy saying that he’d rather die like people who jumped off slave ships because they preferred death to bondage, when the entire purpose of his life has been to kill people so he could put larger numbers of them into bondage. The only difference is that he’d be master. He even destroys the ability to have a future transfer of power within Wakande and spouts Hitlerian stuff like Wakande’s new rule will never fall. He’s portrayed with incredibly mixed moral messages, sometimes as a vengeance-seeking cartoon villain like any other arch-enemy, sometimes as a vengeful voice of the oppressed, and sometimes as a murderous thug. That to me is typical cartoon. I did like the scenes where the hero king realizes that the way Wakande has been run is bad. It doesn’t seem to really be the message the movie sells.
4. Marvel often isolates its heroes. Wonder Woman and the Amazons is the obvious comparison, except that made some moral sense because they are women in a world of men. In this case, the Wakandans isolated themselves from Africans. I don’t see anything moral in that. In fact, when the bad guy becomes king, most of them abandon any moral sense and willingly send weapons to cause mass death all over the world. I guess the excuse ‘I was only following orders’ still works unless you’re put on trial in a glass booth. Compare the plot point of Wonder Woman: her goal is to stop WWI by killing the cartoon figure of evil (put into General Ludendorff). The Wakandans, by contrast, choose to export mass death because they’re ordered. Moral? If you believe the moral answer is ‘I was just following orders’, then yes. And maybe then you belong in a glass booth. I had no sympathy for the warrior who stood by the throne knowing he was ordering mass death until the old king shows up alive. She chose to serve evil.
5. As to the cartoon aspect, it was pretty fucking dumb. They rob a museum. There’s a coffee cart girl on duty who is part of the robbery and she walks away holding some tablet on which you can see it says something like museum camera bypass. They don’t bother to explain how that happens; it’s just stuck in, like the way she has this job and how long it took for her to get that job at that time is just ignored. Why is she in the museum? Why do they poison coffee when they then show up and shoot everyone and block the cameras? Why does she need to be there? How does any of this make sense, let alone actually work? There is no plot to that. And that cartoon villain is completely like every other cartoon villain. The action sequences were nothing to remember. Martial arts cartoons use knives and swords. There wasn’t anything interesting beyond the sudden appearance of Harry Potterish animated rhinos. But then there hasn’t been anything interesting in action sequences since the first Matrix movie.
6. So a guy who has access to this magic metal that is not only the strongest thing in existence but magically grows flowers, heals people and provides energy is planning some sort of insurrectional heist in Oakland? In 1982, like it’s still the 1960’s or early 70’s, like that’s in any way rational in any sort of human way when you have this magic metal. You could reveal Wakande’s secret and then argue with your brother the King about how best to teach the rest of the world without endangering your country and heritage. Not a hint of anything that smart in the character. Again, his response is to mount some sort of murderous attack that won’t do anything good at all rather than use access to this magic material to change the world for the better. What a horrible person.
7. Since it’s a Marvel super hero movie, there is some humor. This humor is pretty good. Very Disney to me, as opposed to the smarminess of Iron Man’s humor. As an aside in an aside, the love interest is the only one interested in human beings outside Wakande. She rubs off on the king but as I’ve said I don’t see her in the other Wakandans; they’re content to keep what they have. The point I keep trying to make is they have wealth but they also have knowledge. One can understand wanting to keep wealth, if only because it’s in better hands with you than with others, but what excuse is there for not sharing knowledge? And there is zero sexuality. None. One kiss at the very end. Felt like that was dumbed down for kids.
8. When the sister came on, I wondered out loud if they were going to call her Q and her lab Q Branch. I doubt you have to pay 007 films for using their device. Of course Q Branch used to be somewhat realistic, though the connection of Bond films to the real world is long gone. This was absurdity. I have trouble with things that violate the laws of physics haphazardly. To me, the challenge is inventing a world in which certain things function differently, not one where you can make up whatever you want as you go. Oddly, the super hero powers weren’t much. The movie actually operates on the loss of powers, which is a bit lifted from Superman after exposure to one of the gazillion forms of Kryptonite they’d invent as needed to make Superman weak, temporarily evil, temporarily dead, whatever. I think they could have made more of the losing of power and regaining of it than they did. It really was just a plot device. In the cartoon universe, that should to me become a moral issue about what powers really are. Example: why not bring the dude back to life and talk to him about how his powers are weakened, maybe because there is a usurper king, and then it becomes about regaining his powers through conflict with his cousin and the legacy of kingship that he now questions. I saw none of that questioning in this movie.
9. I decided to label this post ‘is it the ultimate Republican movie’ because the people of Wakande are anti-immigrant, anti-diversity and prone to violence amongst themselves (which they contain in ritual combat). Their attitude is literally I got mine but they take it to the furthest extent: we not only won’t help you but we won’t even try to make money off helping you because we got ours and screw the rest of you. The movie argues for tribal purity. One telling moment is when the revived king is told he’s the first to visit that tribe in centuries. Really? In centuries, their king didn’t bleeping bother with them though it clearly isn’t that far away? Each tribe has a specific look and apparently specific customs and it doesn’t seem like they mix outside of maybe the central city and ritual occasions. Now, yes the movie makes fun of the white character but it’s for not belonging there. I get the point: black people have often been told they don’t belong so it’s funny when it happens in the movie. I didn’t mind it but if you really think that’s great then you need to reread what I’ve just written. The moral world of this movie is so confused I can see it as an anti-African movie: the Wakandans did nothing about the slave trade, do nothing about the modern slave trade (the first scene is Nigeria, so presumably Boko Harem kidnapping women for sex slavery), and they blindly follow king author while placing loyalty to tribe above even sharing medical knowledge with the world, all while they have ‘spies’ all over the world so they know exactly how bad things are for most people.
jomi: playing with perception 