‘Black Panther’ Offers a Regressive, Neocolonial Vision of Africa
The Afrofuturism of black America, it seems, has little to offer the people of Africa
By Patrick Gathara
I finally went to see Ryan Coogler’s “Black Panther,” the latest superhero action blockbuster from Marvel Studios. It is a fantastically well-made movie, set to be one of the highest grossing movies of all time, putting it in a league with the likes of Steven Spielberg’s “Jurassic Park” and George Lucas’s “Star Wars.” Based on the Marvel Comics character of the same name from the fictional African state of Wakanda, the most technologically advanced nation in the world but which apparently prefers to hide its light under the bushel of Third World country status, it has been praised for its depiction of an Africa not defined by colonization or by its relationship with Europe. Wakanda does not pose as a backdrop for white struggles and passions. “It breaks with the spirit of derision that has always saturated Hollywood films about Africa,” gushes Brent Staples in the New York Times.
However, the truth is, the movie is little more than a marvel of marketing. Far from offering a “redemptive counter-mythology,” as Jelani Cobb writes in the New Yorker, the movie trots out many of the same destructive…
