Black Panther, the solo starring vehicle for the Marvel Comics'
African superhero, invented in 1966 by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby (also the year
the Black Panther Party was founded by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale, perhaps
not-so-coincidentally), had already received much pre-release attention due to
its rare status as a major studio tent-pole blockbuster with a predominantly
black cast. Once it was released in
February 2018, the film decimated box office, earning more than 412.9 million
dollars domestically and reaching the total figure of appx. 704 million dollars
worldwide total (as of February 28), with the United Kingdom, South Korea
(yay!), Brazil, Australia and, not surprisingly, African nations leading the
fray (for some reason, it is not playing as strong in Germany and Italy). Most industry analysts agree that the film
will eventually surpass 600 million dollar mark domestically to become one of
the five or six biggest hits of all time, possibly outgrossing all Marvel superhero
films in the process.
All this is pretty staggering in itself, but Black Panther is also provoking
discussions all over the world for its dazzling portrayal of the fictional
African nation, Wakanda, and its powerful characterizations and themes that
draw upon the real-life histories of colonialism, imperialism, systematic
racism and transnational exploitation of resources. For instance, many reviewers and critics have
noted that how the film's central villain Erik Killmonger (Stevens) is so much
more than just a comic book bad guy. Erik
explicitly criticizes Wakanda's stance of isolationism and seeks to usurp the
throne from T'Challa, the film's hero, so that he could turn the superior technological
power of the African kingdom to "liberate" the black races throughout
the world against their white oppressors.
I have sat down with Associate Professor Corrie
Decker, my wonderful colleague from History Department at University of
California, Davis, to inquire about Black
Panther's "African connection," and how the film could help us understand
history and politics of the continent.
Professor Decker, a Ph.D. from UC Berkeley History program, is the
author of Mobilizing Zanzibari Women: The
Struggle for Respectability and Self-Reliance in Colonial East Africa
(Palgrave Macmillan, 2014). In addition to histories of African regions, she
also teaches courses on sexuality, gender, youth and education. I learned so much from her knowledgeable
commentaries on various aspects of Black
Panther's portrayal of Wakanda and other elements. Needless to say all this
education further increased my appreciation of the film. I am sharing our discussion below, slightly
edited for flow and clarity: I hope you find it as enlightening as I did.
The interview was conducted at Berkeley, CA, on
February 23, 2018. The content of the interview is copyrighted to Corrie
Decker, 2018.
Kyu Hyun Kim (hereafter Q): Let's begin with the geographical
location of Wakanda. In the movie's prologue they actually show the map of the
African continent and to my surprise Wakanda's location is sort of specified.
It looks like somewhere near Uganda.
Corrie Decker (hereafter D): I got the sense from the
map shown briefly in the film that it would be located somewhere around the border
between Eastern Congo and Uganda. The map and geographic features imply that
Wakanda could be in Central or Eastern/Southern Africa, but other elements of
Wakanda point to other regions in West or West/Central Africa, and of course the
language used (isiXhosa) is South African.
Q: And the filmmakers show the landscape of
Wakanda. The city looks futuristic, of
course, but the plains, the waterfalls… do they remind you of specific places
in Africa?
D: They did not look like specific places in my view. There
are the very large Victoria Falls on the border between Zimbabwe and Zambia,
and there are certainly other places with large waterfalls and lakes in the
Great Lakes region. Plains and savannahs seem to invoke Eastern Africa--
Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania… the mountainous region on the other hand…
Q: The Jabari territory.
D: Right, that was more of a fictional landscape, at
least in terms of what really exists in Central/East Africa.
Q: I am impressed nonetheless that they tried to show
a diversity of climates, including snow-covered, presumably very cold
places. Many North Americans might not
immediately associate "Africa" with snow (Laughter).
D: It does snow in the tops of Mounts Kenya and
Kilimanjaro, for example.
Q: Vibranium is of course not a real resource. The
idea that a country becomes dependent on a particular mineral actually dates
from the original comics. What do you think about this set-up involving
vibranium?
D: You know, I kept thinking about coltan and cobalt.
They are metals/minerals mined in Africa and are used in almost all high-end
electronic products, such as cell phones and laptops. The scramble for coltan has
contributed to some serious conflicts in Eastern Congo. It does make me think about the alternative
history-- not likely, but still-- in which Congo had actually controlled the
mining and selling of coltan, what might have happened then? Congo had been subject to external mining,
beginning with copper, for the past one hundred plus years, of course, under Belgian
colonialism.
Professor Jim Smith in the UC
Davis Anthropology Department has done fieldwork on this issue, and it is an
extraordinarily complicated situation.
There are dozens of militia groups in conflict with one another and with
various governments, and also refugees from Uganda and other countries, a lot
of border crossing, upheavals, based on the exploitation of resources that goes
all the way back to rubber.
Q: The main villain is Erik Killmonger, an American,
and his career trajectory seems to openly indicate that the US has played a
colonizing, politically destabilizing role.
And T'Challa's sister Shuri uses the term "colonizer" as a
generic term for white people. The
filmmakers don't dwell on it, but still I find the choice very
interesting.
I think Lupita Nyong'o's father stated in an interview
that Wakanda shows the third alternative between Africans sticking to
traditions at the expense of keeping up with the rest of the world, and, conversely,
embracing the Western modernity and abandoning their traditions.
D: That is very interesting. In some ways, though, I feel that statement
is a bit of an oversimplification. The dichotomy between African traditions and
Western modernity has never been clear-cut.
Q: There have been African forms of modernity that
this dichotomy tends to ignore.
D: Absolutely.
This idea makes more sense in terms of political discourse, as much of
the political struggles in Africa have been about negotiating the impact of
Western colonization, but to describe this in terms of tradition vs. modernity
does not take into account the ways in which both change over time. Also, the
notion that African tradition has been under threat by Western modernity has led
to highly problematic ideas and arguments, such as, for instance, the concept
that homosexuality is a "disease" brought by the colonizers to
Africa. This kind of idea completely disregards the multitudes of sexual
orientations that had existed in Africa prior to colonialism.
Scholars such as Ugandan legal studies
professor Sylvia Tamale (editor of African
Sexualities: A Reader [2011]), really challenges this dichotomy through her
work.
Q: This is fascinating, because some of the criticisms
levelled at Black Panther's portrayal of Wakanda have been about its
"unevenness," for example, how can a country still be a monarchy and
also be so technologically and scientifically advanced? But listening to you, it appears that this
"unevenness" is actually much closer to the African reality. Co-existence of traditions and modernity is a
norm, not an exception, for Africans.
D: Exactly. In the Western notion of linear historical
progress, democracy is always conflated with industrialization, for example,
but that kind of view flattens our ability to comprehend histories of the other
parts of the world. I don't find any
serious contradiction in the idea that there could be a human society ruled by
a monarchy but with extremely advanced technology.
Q: Or, for that matter, a monarchy supported by very
strong women.
D: Yes, although we can debate that part. Historian Robyn
Spencer at Lehman College (author of The
Revolution Has Come: Black Power, Gender and Black Panther Party in Oakland [Duke
University Press, 2016]) has written a terrific critical reflection on feminism and the women of Wakanda.
Q: Yes! A great observation she makes in the article
is that men are regarded as thinkers but women are actors. So this means that
having very physically powerful, kick-ass women may not necessarily be the final
answer. Although I think someone like
Shuri can perhaps be both a thinker and an actor.
D: Yeah!
Q: Let's talk about generational conflict. What I found so moving about T'Challa's
character arc is the way he recognizes the hypocrisies of his father's
generation. Chadwick Boseman gives an
almost Shakespearian performance here, expressing the agony of the younger
generation who painfully finds out the part of the narrative that constitutes
his identity has been false, a series of lies.
I think this kind of depiction is really resonant to the young people. On the one hand they need role models. But in the back of their minds they are aware
that the actions and ideas of their elders have been flawed.
D: Totally.
Q: It's okay to challenge your fathers, even if you
carry on their dreams.
D: Right!
Q: How does Black
Panther impact North American viewers, and not just Americans of African
descent, to change their perceptions of Africa?
Or what would be the ways to improve the relationships between North
Americans and Africans? Does the movie provide clear, positive messages
regarding that question?
D: I think this is where the movie was perhaps a bit
disappointing to me.
Q: You mean the ending?
D: In the sense that the gesture of generosity toward
Oakland could signal the new beginning, it was fine, I got that. But I think it
could have addressed… could have made explicit a few more issues. This topic is
perhaps a bit sensitive, but I felt that Killmonger was calling to the African
diaspora to rise up, but he is in a sense directing the criticism not just to
the US but also to African nations.
There is a big debate about the responsibility of
African nations in the trans-Atlantic slave trade, for instance. A large number
of slaves sold into the coastal slave trade came from the interior and had been
captured by other Africans. So there is a nod, perhaps not explicitly intended
by the filmmakers, to the abandonment of Africans in the diaspora by African
nations going back to the era of the slave trade.
Q: I totally see that now that you have explained it
to me. But I think that's where having a fictional nation like Wakanda works so
much better. If Black Panther were an
African-American hero, he would be a lot like Erik Killmonger and he would go
to Africa to violently "help" "poor Africans" against the
colonizers. And in such a format there
would be no room to address these complex and difficult real historical issues.
D: I am so glad that's not the movie they actually
made (Laughter). What happens to the people who had left the continent against
their will? Erik's messages are conflicted:
on the one hand, "let's join forces against our oppressors." On the
other, "you have abandoned us."
It is a bit problematic that Erik's mother, an
American, is never seen, too. But what Erik's father was trying to do, before
he was stopped by his own brother, T'Chaka, in the context of black liberation
movement in the US, carried much resonance with African independence movements,
which, historically, led to the new wave of Pan-Africanism in the mid-twentieth
century. And yet some African Americans engaged
in these global movements against racism expressed a sense of abandonment by Africans
once African nations gained independence in the 1960s, and the connection between
the movements faded.
African American Studies Professor Jemima Pierre at
UCLA has conducted fascinating research on this and related topics centered on
the African diaspora experience and global racial formation. This disjuncture is, for instance, mirrored in
the divisions between the academic fields of "African Studies" and
"Black Studies" since the 1960s.
Having said this, I do think it is remarkable that Black Panther emphasizes the deep connections- past, present, and future, between the continent and the diaspora. The fact that we have a blockbuster movie centered entirely on Africans and African Americans is something to celebrate!
Having said this, I do think it is remarkable that Black Panther emphasizes the deep connections- past, present, and future, between the continent and the diaspora. The fact that we have a blockbuster movie centered entirely on Africans and African Americans is something to celebrate!
Q: Incredible. So many new things to learn! Thank you so much for your time, Professor
Decker.
D: My pleasure!
