Black Panther: The King For Our Time

Lessons for America on the Consequences of Isolationism and Burying your Violent History

Like much of the country, I queued up at the theater Thursday for the premiere of Marvel’s Black Panther directed by the inimitable Ryan Coogler, where the packed house crowd at Regal Union Square NYC was a show unto itself. Alongside the usual cosplaying millennial Marvel fanboys were families with young children, older couples, and groups of excited women, including many, many people of color that showed up to enjoy and support Marvel’s first film directed by an African-American and one of the first major superhero films with a predominantly African-American cast.

The crowd in the room echoed sentiments I read in the lead-up to the release: “Representation Matters” and “Marvel finally made a movie, for us!”

As I walked out to the street 2.5 exhilarating hours later, I couldn’t help but think that Marvel, and more specifically Coogler, wasn’t just making a movie for underrepresented audiences, but in fact was holding up a mirror to all of America of 2018 — asking some very pointed questions about its perspective on the future, present, and past.

While there are certainly gripes I have with the film’s plot, pacing, and unfortunate by-products of the “Marvel Formula”, as I think on the film’s many-layered commentary about the dangers of isolation and burying the past, the more I love the true revelation, that is Ryan Coogler’s Black Panther.

Revisiting The Central Conflict (Ye been warned, there be Spoilers)

The film opens by explaining the origins of Wakanda, a fictional African nation built on a mountain of Vibranium (a very precious, unspecifically magical, and fiercely guarded metal element) and its warrior-king that united four of five warring tribes under the ruling mantle of Black Panther. The kingdom, for fear of being exploited for resources like their neighbors, hides behind the guise of being a third-world country while war, colonization, famine, and chattel slavery tear the rest of the continent apart.

Fast forward to Oakland, CA in 1992 where Prince N’Jobu (played by the incomparable Sterling K. Brown), brother of the King T’Chaka is fed up with his home’s isolationist policies, instead choosing to enlist psychotic rogue arms dealer Klaue to smuggle Vibranium to the US which he will use to arm oppressed African-Americans against “the oppressors”. The King confronts his brother intending to arrest him but in the ensuing scuffle (we learn at the climax), kills him, and leaves behind his young son to maintain the lie of his brother’s “disappearance”. By putting all of this before the title credits, the film anchors the expectations very early — this is not going to be some idyllic tale set in a fairy-tale utopia. Black Panther plans to bring the audience face to face with raw themes of diaspora, betrayal, violence, and later — revenge.

The son grows up to be Michael B. Jordan, I mean, Erik Stevens AKA Killmonger, who orchestrates a complicated Shakespearean plan to get into Wakanda, reveal his heritage, and challenge T’Challa for the throne by defeating him in ritual combat. Then, in his father’s footsteps, use Wakanda’s technologically advanced weaponry to take on the plight of black oppression around the world, violently. T’Challa for his part is still dealing with the death of his father T’Chaka in Captain America: Civil War and has been reticent to take the responsibilities of the throne — a concern best captured in the trailer quote:

“You are a good man, with a good heart. It’s hard for a good man to be a king.”

T’Challa can be his father’s son and keep Wakanda hidden or he can lead Wakanda towards globalization and all the challenges that entails. Isolation or integration.

This is the central conflict of the movie and of the dueling arcs and ideologies of T’Challa’s and Killmonger that drive the film. Everything else, though intriguing and spectacular, is distraction. At first, I think we are obviously supposed to support the reluctant monarch who is following in his forebearer’s footsteps keeping Wakanda hidden and safe, but Killmonger’s appearance challenges that notion — and amazingly, the film actually runs with it! By the end of the film, T’Challa ends Wakanda’s isolationism, planning to share their technology with the world — perhaps not as militantly as his rival wanted, but spurred to action nonetheless.

The Consequences of Isolation

Think about this. When was the last time a movie acknowledged that the villain, was in fact, right. Sure, he’s an asshole — but he’s not wrong.

Killmonger’s story parallels well to his affluent cousin’s and his motivations are really well explored. In fact, Marvel’s traditional pre-title crawl,typically reserved to introduce the hero’s origin, is instead used here to introduce the primary antagonist.

T’Challa is offered counsel many times in the film by his inner circle on opening Wakandan borders to offer aid and accept refugees, but each time he refuses on the principle that “Refugees will bring with them their problems”. It is his duty to keep his people safe, even at the cost of the world’s suffering. But the thing is, the film doesn’t agree with its protagonist.

When it comes to isolationism, Black Panther makes it clear that choosing not to interfere is a choice — and not the right one. It echos Spider-Man’s sentiment about needing to be a hero in Civil War.

“When you can do what I can do, and the bad things happen, they happen because of you”.

Wakanda is the superhero here — a powerful entity with the ability to affect great change, but one that chooses self-preservation over a higher calling. Say what you want about that sentiment, but Marvel is pretty on-brand about the role of its heroes around the world. Thus Killmonger rightly shames Wakanda’s decades of inaction:

“Two billion people around the world that look like us, and you’ve abandoned them”

The undertone is more personal. Erik, himself, is one of those abandoned by Wakanda, perhaps most literally of all. His painful upbringing and trauma caused at the claws of the last Black Panther, growing up a poor orphan caught between two worlds, is also a story of the cost of personal isolation. He is a victim of his abandonment and loneliness, a prisoner of his own hatred for the successful country that ruined his life, and is driven to find acceptance, even at violent costs. Killmonger becomes a terrorist because of isolationism.

In “Creating Character Arcs, ”Author K.M. Weiland writes about creating a compelling story arc by first articulating “the lie your main character believes” and challenging this notion bit by bit over the course of the hero’s journey. By the end, T’Challa challenges his own bias about isolationism, offers to create programs to open Wakanda and its gifts to the world, and steps in front of the UN to make these wishes known. Sure, the political commentary about “building bridges not walls” can feel a bit on the nose but the point is well made early on by Daniel Kaluya’s character W’Kabi when he exclaims that:

“We are strong enough to protect our people, AND help others”

The film has many messages for 2018’s America but this stands strongest among them. Isolation is not a sign of strength, it is an indication of fear. If you as a country have the capacity to help others and choose not to, those consequences are on you. Agree with this or not, the film isn’t shy about this point of view.

I especially loved the “reveal” in the post-credits epilogue. For me, it’s a reveal on-par with the iconic last line of Marvel’s “Iron Man”. But this time, Wakanda, like its sovereign, is the superhero unwilling to sit on the sidelines any longer.

The Peril’s of Burying Your Violent History

The interesting thing about Black Panther is that it comes on the heels of Thor: Ragnarok, another Marvel movie that explores similar themes of white-washing a violent past because the truth is too ugly or painful to bear. In Black Panther, as in Ragnarok, the sins of the father come back to haunt the unknowing son. However the implications in this film are more nuanced and given how strongly the film makes this point, are worth exploring deeper.

For starters there is the literal burying of a violent past where the older generation (King T’Chaka and Priest Zuri) decide to live a lie about the disappearance of N’Jobu and abandonment of his son, than cop to the murder. They convince the entire kingdom of this lie and vilify an outsider (Klaue) for his violent transgressions against Wakanda, while offering taking no responsibility for their own actions that might have created the problem in the first place. Zuri even says that the Prince was quote “radicalized” by his time in America and by “the suffering he witnessed there”. But the King, true to his isolationist views, accepts no responsibility for that.

The second generation, embodied by T’Challa, believes the lie his father told him and puts King T’Chaka on a pedestal, hoping to one day rule as he did. But we learn, as does T’Challa, that his ancestors were in fact not as pure as he believed and he must come to grips with this glass-shattering reality. He is not only left to deal with the direct transgressions of his father but those of his ancient fore bearers who first shunned the Jabari clan, Wakanda’s religious minority (#GloryToHanuman), and the centuries long-continual practice of keeping them out of the fold. Wakanda is presented as an idyllic ‘Eden’ with a proud, progressive society, connected strongly to its ancient roots, but like many others, has an underbelly of a violent, exclusive past it would much rather forget.

Black Panther echos the collective realization that America is having about its own violent past in 2018. Whereas a subset of society wants to believe that hatred, bigotry, and (laughably) racism had been “solved”, America’s unwillingness to face and address its violent roots is no longer palatable. It is a country of refugees that now shuns refugees. It is a nation built on genocide and subjugation that prefers to teach a historical narrative of “manifest destiny” and “state’s rights”. Its a society that refuses to acknowledge the systemic injustices that created class inequity and a culture that perpetuates harmful stereotypes about the “other” instead of seeking answers inward.

Both Wakanda and America would rather their ugly past just go away, but in both cases, that past is returning more militant and hateful than ever. It’s often quoted that Germany seeks to move beyond its own shameful past by facing it head on and teaching younger generations about the dangers of fascism and hateful ideologies. America’s solution has been decidedly less progressive.

It’s impossible to view Black Panther removed from the context, time, and place where it was made or the auteur that made it. The only way T’Challa is able to reclaim his throne and heal his country is by first confronting his forebears’ shameful history and later taking actions to rectify that mistake. When challenged by Killmonger, he is unafraid to take him on and in doing so comes around to his point of view (see: Consequence of Isolation, above). T’Challa is even graceful in victory, offering mercy to his vanquished foe or at the very least, offering him the cathartic “sunset” he desired.

The filmmaker perhaps hopes there’s a lesson here that a younger generation of American viewers can take from the catharsis our country might find in confronting our collective past instead of believing the lie of paradise

Long Live The King

As I close out my thoughts on this film I come back to the full quote I shared earlier:

The world is changing. Soon there will only be the conquered and the conquerors. You are a good man, with a good heart. And it’s hard for a good man to be a king.

By the end of the film, we can strongly challenge this notion. T’Challa is a good king because he is a good man. He cares for his people, he is devoted to his family, he tries his best to avoid collateral damage, and time and time again in the film, he offers mercy to the conquered when cruelty would be just as valid. I love that the film takes its main character on a new journey of self discovery but doesn’t compromise the development he already made as a character at the end of Civil War— choosing mercy over vengeance.

This film works really well because it cares about fleshing out its characters, from the two leads I’ve focused on here, to the supporting characters throughout Black Panther. Special shout out to the three female leads — Danai Gurira, Lupita Nyong’o and Letitia Wright — for owning those roles and the great writing that gave each character purpose, importance, and agency as part of the larger story.

Whether or not you choose to accept the morals the film espouses about the world as one tribe or healing by letting yourself feel past trauma, Black Panther is a big-budget blockbuster with a strong point of view. And the sheer ambition of that vision by Coogler and team deserves massive applause.

Thanks for reading this article! If you liked it, go ahead and *clap* 👏 then share, or leave me a comment below with your thoughts on Black Panther and whether your agree with the themes I discussed above. Also, please follow my Medium site for more musings on media and entertainment — and maybe more film rants in the near future!