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Watched Black Panther last week. Frankly, I don't normally gravitate towards Marvel type movies. In addition, I expected BP would be somewhat cheesy. I was amazed and entertained from start to finish. My favorite character was Okoye (Danai Gurira), one of the female generals who protected King T'Challa.
I would like to know how Wakanda is the most wealthiest country in the Marvel world when A- it doesn't trade or deal with other countries and B-it's main resource, vibranium, they keep under lock and key and do not sell it or share it's secrets.
In the comics it is precisely the sale of vibranium to other governments that is the source of Wakanda's wealth.
At $897mil worldwide - and in China, where advanced ticket sales are mirroring that of Spiderman Homecoming - Black Panther is taking a shot at Iron Man 3 ($1.215billion).
Well, at $501 million dollars and beating it on a daily basis at the box office for the past 14 days(click here), it looks like Black Panther is poised to displace the current domestic Marvel movie that sits on top of the throne, The Avengers.
Can you think of a time when a comic book movie engaged in this level of conversation about politics, identity and economic growth?
Well, not a comic book movie, but I saw this last week and I thought that it was really good(with my favorite part of the movie being the Killmonger story arc...also, I thought that Michael B. Jordan stole the show ), but the Black Panther's phenomenal and ubiquitous success made me think about the 1977 ABC television miniseries, Roots. And perhaps the reasons for Roots' success are similar to the reasons for the Black Panther's success:
Quote:
The astonishing success of the show became apparent over the eight nights the series aired. Americans began canceling events and staying home to watch each installment. Restaurants and bars reportedly kept their television sets tuned to ABC so that patrons wouldn’t miss a moment of the action. And when the finale aired on January 30, 1977, an estimated 80 million viewers tuned in to watch, making it what was then the most viewed program in American television history. All told, over 130 million people– nearly half of the population of the United States at the time– saw least one episode of Roots in 1977. The series would go on to air in countries around the world.
[. . .]
It was no coincidence that Roots resonated with American audiences in the late 1970s in particular. Coming on the heels of the 1976 bicentennial celebration as well as the civil rights and black power movements, Roots offered a historical narrative in keeping with an ascendant pluralist interpretation of the American past. As scholars decentered Puritan New England in favor of a conception of national identity that embraced regional, racial, and ethnic diversity, Roots served as the popular manifestation of this trend, inviting audiences to see black people and the black freedom struggle as central to the American experience. Roots, in other words, was the vehicle that first introduced masses of Americans to the perspectives of the enslaved and their descendants.
By placing black people at the heart of American history, Roots also challenged longstanding interpretations of the meaning of slavery, freedom, and the Civil War. Unlike other popular cinematic representations of the antebellum South and the Civil War, such as perennial favorite Gone with the Wind, the black characters in Roots were not portrayed simply as cheerful, one-dimensional “servants” of white masters. Rather, slaves were complex individuals; they were mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, children, and friends who survived under the most repressive and violent circumstances. In Roots, black characters (played primarily by popular Broadway and television stars) affirmed and protected their families and communities to the best of their abilities and never abandoned their quest for freedom.
These representations struck a chord with a wide range of viewers, who wrote to their local ABC affiliates to confess just how much they loved (and in some cases hated) and learned from the story. For many white viewers especially, Roots was their first introduction to African American history. And for black audiences, as Jet magazine put it in 1977, Roots was “our story at last.”
The multigenerational family drama at the heart of the narrative, and Haley’s own claims to have authenticated this history through painstaking genealogical research and travel to the Gambia, heightened the program’s appeal for black and white Americans alike. Black Americans received Haley’s assertion that he traced his family history past the veil of slavery all the way back to an ancestor in eighteenth-century Africa as a collective victory. For these viewers, Kunta Kinte became a symbolic forefather, a shared ancestral figure standing in for family members who even the most determined and careful black genealogists would likely never be able to identify.
And the comparison that I was making with Roots to the Black Panther was that the Black Panther deals with the subject of race, power, and African history along with African-American history. But all in a kind of a 'what if' fictionalized kind of way. Also, I wasn't expecting the Black Panther to take on these subjects, but I thought that it was fascinating that they did.
Frankly, I do not see any connection between Roots and Black Panther. Roots was a mostly true story about a family that emerged out of dark chapter in American history. Roots was pretty serious stuff.
Black Panther is a comic book. The references to Colonialism were a product of its time. The character was created in 1966 when Decolonization was in full force with African nationalism understandably flourishing. Many African-Americans looked at the place with hope. Some even tried to live there.
It is now 2018. The Europeans are long gone. Africa has bigger problems.
A well-made action/comic book movie, no doubt. It's messages were palatable, universally acceptable, non-offensive, and rather simplistic. Nothing wrong with that. It's a comic book.
Frankly, I do not see any connection between Roots and Black Panther. Roots was a mostly true story about a family that emerged out of dark chapter in American history. Roots was pretty serious stuff.
Black Panther is a comic book. The references to Colonialism were a product of its time. The character was created in 1966 when Decolonization was in full force with African nationalism understandably flourishing. Many African-Americans looked at the place with hope. Some even tried to live there.
It is now 2018. The Europeans are long gone. Africa has bigger problems.
A well-made action/comic book movie, no doubt. It's messages were palatable, universally acceptable, non-offensive, and rather simplistic. Nothing wrong with that. It's a comic book.
Having been on the scene when the Black Panther comic, Shaft, Roots and such first came out, I have deja vu with regard to the hype and hope surrounding the Black Panther movie. "We've been here before."
And in that hype, I see a lot of "Archie Bunker paradox" among black people.
But--and I'll give credit to Ryan Coogler for this--the movie's themes are multi-faceted enough to be worth discussion.
For sure, Killmonger is a bad guy, despite having had lines that made people cheer. But as he states those lines, we also need to see the danger of not heeding the person who says them. Killmonger is the same as many of the brutal dictators who have used anti-colonial rhetoric to gain power. Killmonger is in this way more African than African-American (or if we keep him American, he's more Louis Farrakhan than Malcolm X...Nakia is more like Malcolm X)
And we have to look at Wakanda as representing not only resistance to colonialism (it's African facet), but also as a metaphoric symbol of any nation or group that hoards its own abundance of resources from others with great need. No place is fully self-sufficient, so clearly more must have been going into Wakanda all those generations than was coming out. So Wakanda is also a repudiation of US policy.
There is also the question of, "Am I responsible to correct the sins of my fathers?" Although this is a question placed upon T'Challa, it also reflects upon US policy today.
Having been on the scene when the Black Panther comic, Shaft, Roots and such first came out, I have deja vu with regard to the hype and hope surrounding the Black Panther movie. "We've been here before."
And in that hype, I see a lot of "Archie Bunker paradox" among black people.
But--and I'll give credit to Ryan Coogler for this--the movie's themes are multi-faceted enough to be worth discussion.
For sure, Killmonger is a bad guy, despite having had lines that made people cheer. But as he states those lines, we also need to see the danger of not heeding the person who says them. Killmonger is the same as many of the brutal dictators who have used anti-colonial rhetoric to gain power. Killmonger is in this way more African than African-American (or if we keep him American, he's more Louis Farrakhan than Malcolm X...Nakia is more like Malcolm X)
And we have to look at Wakanda as representing not only resistance to colonialism (it's African facet), but also as a metaphoric symbol of any nation or group that hoards its own abundance of resources from others with great need. No place is fully self-sufficient, so clearly more must have been going into Wakanda all those generations than was coming out. So Wakanda is also a repudiation of US policy.
There is also the question of, "Am I responsible to correct the sins of my fathers?" Although this is a question placed upon T'Challa, it also reflects upon US policy today.
Methinks that is reading a bit too much into it. It's a comic book.
And Huckleberry Finn and To Kill a Mockingbird are just novels.
Novels traditionally have more substance than comic books.
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), but the Black Panther's phenomenal and ubiquitous success made me think about the 1977 ABC television miniseries, Roots. And perhaps the reasons for Roots' success are similar to the reasons for the Black Panther's success:
