Wakanda Forever: Finding Black Pride in Kings and Teenage Girls
“You don’t know what you were missing, till you have it”
There’s a particular scene in Wonder Woman that often gets referenced when the film is being discussed; the “No Man’s Land” scene. I had the pleasure of watching Wonder Woman alone (yeah, come at me) and at the time of watching, I had no reason to believe that this would become an iconic scene. To me, it was just another good action set piece. Granted, one that I applauded (metaphorically, of course. I’m not trying to validate those stereotypes), but still, just a well-done sequence.
I would soon come to realise the power of subjectivity.
In various discussions since leaving that theatre, I have listened to countless women, both in my real life and online, talk about the effect that scene had on them. Their experiences of joy, pride and childlike glee, with many being brought to tears.
I am under no illusion that its star (Gal Gadot) and director (Patty Jenkins) were both aware of the importance of the scene they were constructing and the need for such a scene in this movie in today’s world. I quickly realised that this scene wasn’t (primarily) directed at me. Sure, I could appreciate it from a story or technical point-of-view, but it could never get me in my feels the way it did my female counterparts. Where I saw another hero blocking bullets, they saw a woman standing, against and for men, for what she knew was right. The largely underrepresented female, superhero-watching audience was finally seeing a woman exhibit such heroics on the big screen.
“Those who complain about representation, are the ones who’ve always been represented”.
Like most sane people, I love Will Smith. I grew up on Fresh Prince of Bel-Air reruns, then came the Men in Blacks, Hitch, Hancock, I, Robot etc. He was a movie star, he did it all: action, drama, comedy, sci-fi. To me, he was the movie star. I would go on to, harshly, learn that he wasn’t the norm, but the exception.
I was now seeing the ubiquity of white movie and TV stars, I now noticed that beyond the handful of black movie stars, people with my skin colour were criminally underrepresented. This was weird because I was living in a country (Nigeria) where everyone had my skin colour. So, to a young boy who was falling in love with the arts, the idea quickly became, only white people get that shot and maybe a handful of Black Americans, but even then, they definitely still gotta tell the white man’s story.
Which brings us to 2018. A year in which I get to see an African King and a black teenage girl save the world. An African King and a Black Teenage Girl! Many have criticised the hype for Black Panther, with some stating that the importance of the movie is being overstated by its fans. “Y’all acting like this movie gonna solve racism”.
I do not think the importance of these movies can be overstated.
Black Panther is a big budget superhero film that focuses on an African nation, its king and citizens. It features an impressive, predominantly black (and beautiful) cast. This cast not only boasts talented actors with strong African backgrounds (Lupita Nyong’o, Daniel Kaluuya and Danai Gurira) but it also includes actors based in Africa, not least of whom is the South African legend, John Kani. Twenty years ago, a convergence of all these factors would have seemed nearly impossible.
A Wrinkle in Time, in its own right, conquers its own fair share of impossibilities. In keeping with a career that continually breaks new ground while affecting change, Ava DuVernay now brings a sci-fi, Disney, epic with a brown skinned girl as its heroine. Who would have thought? Even in a world where Katniss Everdeen and Hermione Granger became household names and shot their respective actresses to bona-fide movie star status, such a movie still seemed impossible.
Ava DuVernay has not shied away from the fact that this is new ground for everyone. I’ll admit that I am not familiar with the original 1963 novel and its ensuing legacy (it wasn’t high on our literary lists in Nigeria). But boy am I excited. In creating this film that will inevitably be a sea change moment, Miss DuVernay has surrounded herself with notable producers (Catherine Hand and Tendo Nagenda), the writer and co-director of Frozen, Jennifer Lee and a cast that includes Mindy Kaling, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Michael Pena and Oprah Winfrey (playing an all-knowing being, because, duh) along with Chris Pine and Zach Galifianakis rounding out the cast.
As mentioned earlier, A Wrinkle in Time’s heroine is a brown skinned teenage girl. However, this was not always the case. In the original novel, Meg Murry is white. Here she is portrayed by newcomer Storm Reid. Miss DuVernay has continually referenced her desire to create new worlds and how, expectedly, these worlds would be different from what her white and male counterparts would envision. The effect such inclusion could possibly have cannot be overstated.
Really, is that not what we hope for? What we all want? That inclusivity. A world in which a young girl can look at a big budget Disney movie poster and see herself as the heroine. A world in which we get Angela Bassett finally playing a queen. Where young brown and black skinned girls, and maybe just as importantly young boys, can see that girls can save the world too. The same world where the great Forrest Whittaker admits to carrying out extensive research on the Yorubas in order to bring authenticity to his role. This world only has positives. It provides filmmakers with more diverse voices, from different backgrounds, the opportunity to share their visions. All sorts of stories are told in this world and everyone gets to be represented. Such inclusion can only lead to better, well-informed stories and more opportunities for people too often left in the fringes.
In their introductory scene from Captain America: Civil War, King T’Chaka (John Kani) and his son, T’Challa (Chadwick Boseman) speak “isiXhosa” (A South African language). This was not originally in the script, it was an input from John Kani. This input led to a scene in a Hollywood film in which two actors are speaking isiXhosa and neither of them is a warlord nor an internet scammer. It might not seem like much, but in the grand scheme of things, it’s huge.
It just goes to show that the inclusion of diverse voices behind and in front of the camera bleeds its benefits in such subtle and wide-ranging ways. Some of these benefits may not be visible to the lay man but they mean the world to those marginalized groups.
At the premiere of Black Panther, John Kani gushed about the “seriousness” of the movie and why he wanted to show Africa and its denizens in a different light. To deal with the myth that “if the white colonialists did not land in Africa, we’ll still be walking in skins…”. Frankly, that’s a cause we can all rally behind.
Now, no one is saying that things are automatically fixed or that change has happened, we are definitely still some ways off but it’s a hell of time to be alive. What we need to then do, is not falter but use these burgeoning changes as catalysts for a much larger attack on the status quo.
While the eventual quality of both Black Panther and A Wrinkle in Time is not the driving force of this article, I would be remiss if I did not mention that in the hands of Ryan Coogler and Ava Duvernay, I feel little reason to fret about the outcome. They are two filmmakers that made instant splashes with their unique visions in Fruitvale Station and Creed (Coogler) and Selma and 13th (DuVernay). I’m not sure I trust any two people to better understand the importance of the positions they have been placed in and the need for success. They are not only capable of delivering the goods, they are more than deserving of the opportunity. They, it seems, live their lives by that mantra that we, as minorities have stuck in our psyche.
Would it be a stretch to draw a line between the release and adoration of Wonder Woman and the rise of female empowerment (#MeToo, Time’s Up) in 2017? Probably. Could I make the argument to you after some shots of Vodka? Most likely. The point is that change starts from all sorts of weird places and all we can do is hope. Hope that the change is not stifled by its location but given the space and support to grow. So yes, I’ll be with my tickets opening weekends of Black Panther and A Wrinkle in Time hoping that this is the beginning of some form of change in Hollywood that would hopefully grow and spread to the larger world.
Bankole Imoukhuede
@banky_I
Originally published at popcornfordinner.me on 2/2/2018
