Black Panther
Ryan Coogler’s Black Panther, like all films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, is a fantasy. What’s the purpose of a fantasy? Fantasies allow us to envision a counterfactual world: they blend reality with the extraordinary and invite our minds to consider new possibilities. Superheroes, encapsulating this fantasy, possess extraordinary powers and devote themselves to protecting some universal idea of the good. We all want the power to overcome obstacles and threats, so we invest ourselves in these characters to vicariously experience their triumphs. It’s why the superhero fantasy is culturally relevant. It’s also why Black Panther isn’t just culturally relevant, but culturally important.
The film follows T’Challa/Black Panther (Chadwick Boseman) as he returns home to the fictional African nation of Wakanda to assume the throne after his father’s death. He’s coronated once he defeats a rival tribe leader, M’Baku (Winston Duke), in ritual combat. Meanwhile, however, an ex-U.S. black ops soldier, Erik “Killmonger” Stevens (Michael B. Jordan), plots to challenge for the Wakandan throne.
Wakanda itself is the movie’s most prominent fantasy. The opening narration presents the country’s origins like a mythic tale. Since Wakanda is rich in vibranium, a fictional sound-absorbing metal with incredible uses, it’s the most technologically advanced place on Earth. A forcefield marks the national borders. Viewers are treated to a splendid depiction of sleek, black Afrofuturism: disk-shaped aircrafts, twisting and pointed glass skyscrapers, and an assortment of gadgets and weapons.
This worldbuilding is all textbook in the speculative fiction genre, but, as with most things in this movie, ethnic subtext adds significance. The Wakandan people successfully used their resources to repel the European invaders carving up much of the continent. Wakanda literally and figuratively isolates itself from the rest of the world, internationally presenting itself as another Third World country. While our eyes dazzle with wonder at the shining city, we also silently wonder what an African society free of whiteness could have looked like in real life. Coogler gifts us with a blend of the imaginary with the real, of immense wealth and efficiency with the vibrance of unabashed, authentic African cultural traditions. Here, Coogler’s fantasy is a vehicle for invoking pride among a diaspora of people that have dealt with generations of political, economic, and social oppression across the globe. He shows us something that, unfortunately lacking from our actual world, is necessary for all of us to see.
To that end, the numerous strong female characters in Black Panther are also important. T’Challa and Erik Killmonger may be the story’s hero and villain, but Wakandan women loom just as large on screen. Lupita Nyong’o plays Nakia, an undercover spy called a War Dog and T’Challa’s ex-lover. Okoye (Danai Gurira) leads the Dora Milaje, Wakanda’s all-female special ops unit. The two accompany T’Challa on a covert mission to Busan, South Korea, while T’Challa’s little sister Shuri (Letitia Wright) stays back to provide reconnaissance from her laboratory. All three women enter the fray during the film’s climactic battle in the Wakandan plains. T’Challa’s mother Ramonda (Angela Bassett), while not as significant to the plot as other characters, benefits from Bassett’s strong screen presence.
We marvel at their skills, their humor, and their poise, and then attach these positive signifiers to the notion of real women in real positions of power. Representation in pop culture is important because it guides all viewers through these experiences. But the ultimate beneficiaries of this fantasy are the black girls and women. They can go beyond appreciation for these characters and identify with them, whether it be the graceful Ramonda, the mischievous and intelligent Shuri, the strong Okoye, or the self-assured Nakia.
Black Panther is not just a superhero fantasy: it is a black fantasy, and therein lies its cultural importance. Many of the world’s cultural fantasies derive from the political and moral values of the West — that’s not to say that good things haven’t come from the Western canon and tradition, but there’s a danger in such cultural hegemony. It begets a uniformity in our images of beauty, success, strength, and wealth. Black Panther delivers an alternative set of images. It flips the majority-minority relationship that’s a common framework for conceiving the white-black American relationship. White people get a story that makes them rethink the dominant narrative so often centralized on them. Black people get a cultural product, well-funded and highly-anticipated, that permits them to view themselves as protagonists. This is a movie white people (and Americans at large) need, and black people deserve.
The film’s central tension concerns this question of what black people deserve. We learn that Erik Killmonger is the son of T’Challa’s uncle, N’Jobu, and aims to fulfill his late father’s goal. As a spy, N’Jobu had been installed in the United States to surveil it, and continually witnessed the plight of African Americans. He wished to give them weapons to empower themselves, while T’Challa’s father, T’Chaka, responded that this went against Wakanda’s isolationist policies. Now there are two conceptions of black fantasy — a utopian vision of African self-determination and a radical vision of black liberation. One asks us to consider an alternative past, the other an alternative future.
It’s necessary for a world infected with anti-blackness to wrestle with the idea of pan-African empowerment and reprisal. Killmonger is clearly the villain, a skilled and ruthless killer whose foreign policy is not demanding reparations, but worldwide slaughter. T’Challa warns Killmonger that his vision of black supremacy is as violent and repressive as white supremacy. Yet we must grapple with why he became villainous. T’Chaka killed N’Jobu after the latter attacked an aide, then left a young Erik fatherless in inner-city Oakland. N’Jobu had told his son stories of Wakanda during his youth, so Erik grew up surrounded by poverty, crime, and despair knowing that an African elite existed somewhere far, hoarding incalculable wealth and resources. Do generations of violence warrant acts of retributive violence? Do national governments possess superseding transnational commitments to humanity? Do the wealthy? Fantasy provides a hypothetical space for addressing these questions.
Black Panther doesn’t solve all our problems. It’s a symbolic victory in the American and American-influenced cultural landscape. It won’t change the injustices of the past. It won’t placate the active voices who call out present-day problems. But films, or any art for that matter, don’t function to be correctives. If they’re good, they stimulate us by making both our hearts and minds race. Black Panther accomplishes both of these things. We get the fight scenes, the laser-blasting aircrafts, and the totalled SUVs. We get the anguish of marginalization, the duties to family and country, and the legacy of a bloody history. Great films and great art shape our consciences, and a fantasy stretches the bounds of what we deem worthy of thinking about. Black Panther is the biggest film yet to declare black people as worthy of thinking about. It’s through fantasy we can make things real.
