"Black Panther" is that rarest of things to come out of Hollywood these days — an unprecedented, history-making achievement.
The magnitude of what it has accomplished needs to be understood through two paradigms: The context of what this film represents as a milestone, and its greatness as a work of popular art that speaks intelligently about both politics and history.
Let's start with what "Black Panther" represents.
It's relatively rare to see a major blockbuster superhero film starring an African-American protagonist, let alone a supporting cast that is also overwhelmingly African-American. "Black Panther" also has an African-American director, African-American writers, African-American musicians and many other African-American creative decision-makers and artists behind the scenes. That level of representation for African-American artists working on a major film is still, to the frustration of many, notable.
"The movie industry is deeply racist, structurally racist," Rashad Robinson, the executive director of Color of Change, told Salon.
The film industry has often justified under-representing African-Americans by saying that movies featuring black casts don't perform as well at the box office, but Robinson doesn't buy that argument.
"It is not about the economics. It is about a system that has been largely impenetrable for creatives of color," Robinson told Salon. "But I think that that is changing. I think that 'Black Panther' represents a real — not just a wake-up call, but for an industry that has been really struggling economically — a pathway."
He added, "The big budget Hollywood movie is one of the last places that people across class — and in some ways across race, but definitely across class — are laughing and cheering to the same thing at the same time. You know, we don’t go to the same churches. We don’t even go to the same schools anymore. In so many ways, the segregations in this country across class and race makes cinema and movies a real place where connections and common ground can be built."
Robinson and I discussed a number of blockbuster Hollywood films that have been considered landmarks for the African-American community. There was 1974's highest grossing film, the comedy "Blazing Saddles," which starred an African-American lead but was directed by a white man (Mel Brooks) and contained a lot of racist and sexist jokes that have aged rather poorly. There was also the "Shaft" franchise of the 1970s, which was a financial success but hardly at the level of "Black Panther." "The Color Purple" was a huge hit in 1985, but (again) was directed by a white man (Steven Spielberg), although one of its producers was the legendary musician Quincy Jones. There were the "Blade" films from the late 1990s and early 2000s, which also showcased an African-American superhero but were never directed by African-Americans.
As you may have noticed, each of these older examples needed to be qualified in some ways. This is because, as Robinson pointed out, a lot of the progress for African-Americans in blockbuster cinema has come with recent films, including a pair of 2017's biggest hits — the horror film "Get Out" and the comedy "Girls Trip." With 2018's "Black Panther," however, the groundwork laid in 2017 has been taken to the next level. No movie genre is nearly as popular or culturally influential in the early 21st century as superhero films. If "Black Panther" does well at the box office (which it looks poised to do) and is critically acclaimed (which it already is), the fact that it will have dominated as a superhero film will make it a cultural landmark unlike any other before it.
This makes it all the more meaningful that "Black Panther" is one of the smartest, most politically grounded superhero movies ever made.
Its closest equivalent would be 2016's "Captain America: Civil War," which used the feud between Captain America and Iron Man as a metaphor for complex political debates about issues like government regulation and foreign policy. While that movie merely created a fictional conflict that could be applied to real-world problems, however, "Black Panther" doesn't deal only in abstractions. Characters in the film directly discuss actual injustices like the over-policing and mass incarceration of racial minorities, refugee crises, systemic poverty, colonialism and post-colonial exploitation and racism in general. Nor are these merely dropped in as cute ways to show the audience that a superhero movie can be topical. Major character motivations are rooted in the reality of these problems, boldly intersecting real world battles between good-and-evil with their fantastical celluloid counterparts.
Even when "Black Panther" does have to focus on its fictional world, it does so in a way that more directly applies to the political present than any superhero movie before it. Its central conflict is how the African kingdom of Wakanda, despite possessing technology that far surpasses anything else created on the planet, chooses to isolate itself from the rest of the international community. While a lesser movie would have addressed this conflict by simply arguing that isolationism is wrong, "Black Panther" recognizes that the alternatives are not necessarily better. Erik Killmonger, the movie's chief villain (poignantly portrayed by an Oscar-worthy Michael B. Jordan), may be correct when he points out that Wakanda's isolationism has selfishly condemned oppressed people throughout the world to a terrible fate. At the same time, the movie uses Killmonger's character arc to demonstrate how those who wish to liberate the oppressed can easily become oppressors themselves if they become corrupted by their righteous anger. And Wakanda's isolationism can at least be justified as an attempt to avoid precisely that type of corruption, as well as protect its citizens from the depredations of the outside world and maintain the country's autonomy.
Indeed, "Black Panther" is particularly notable in how it locates the movie's own historic significance — a blockbuster superhero film made by overwhelmingly black creators — within the larger historical struggle for black self-determination. This point was expertly made by Johns Hopkins University historian N. D. B. Connolly in a recent essay for The Hollywood Reporter:
What is historical about Black Panther, in perhaps the deepest respect, is how smartly it invokes the history of anti-colonial struggle and age-old visions of black self-determination. It grapples, as well, with an ambivalence, just as old, about the collectivist aspirations of black people, on the one hand, and the symbolic value of black monarchs, on the other.
The danger in extolling the movie's political virtues, of course, is that it risks making it sound overly ponderous. This was one of the many failings of another superhero film that tried to traffic in intelligent themes, "Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice," and it's a pitfall that "Black Panther" deftly avoids. When it comes to creative visuals, engaging action and likable characters, "Black Panther" stands confidently next to the best fare offered up by the Marvel Cinematic Universe. This is precisely why the political subtext is so effective: If "Black Panther" hadn't been fun, it wouldn't have worked as a superhero movie at all. It is an artistic triumph precisely because it is a blast to watch — and yet manages to tell a cerebral story and break down barriers at the same time.
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