Lecture 5

1

An Analysis of Black Panther

Suantane Shepard

Course English 119

An Analysis of Black Panther

Black Panther is often hailed as one of the movies that Black Panther positively portrays African American communities. The dominant public discussions about Blacks, for example, normally contradict s their views about themselves. Additionally, their depictions in the movie world is often a representation of the American social climate. Indeed, the stereotypes that are extended to them is often apparent in early films and mainly acted as derogatory images that are exaggerated as a means way of mockery. This negative popular culture traces back to the minstrelsy and black face, which is a musical phenomenon in which whereby White actors impersonated Blacks. However, emerging contemporary films often attempt to defy these negative stereotypes by assigning Black characters superior roles. Black Panther glorifies African Americans by overcoming stereotypes and providing a positive narrative of Black male characters. Comment by Prof Waller: Stop letting the culture write your papers. YOU need to write you papers and essays from now on, even after thuis semester is over; you need to be able to write as your self for term papers and for dissertation theses in the future. “Hailed” is a euphemism from media, public relations and dumb movie posters. You are not even saying this, you are writing a topic sentence that ought to describe your topic. YOU are expressing a (questionable) sentence that the movie is positive, and a flat out false claim that the movie portrays African American communities (it does not even portray AFRICAN communities, but luckily, your topic sentence only needs to introduce a topic, which you have done here. I hope this strange claim however, does not taint your thesis. Comment by Prof Waller: This is a troubled thesis—it is not edited enough and so there is ambiguity about modification (‘discussions’ is plural, so the verb, ‘contradict’ here needs to be singular. Also, there is a coherence problem. Are you seeking to argue that the ‘discussions’ contradict ‘THEIR views about THEMSELVES? How can discussions have views, or views about THEMSELVES. That is incoherent. Comment by Prof Waller: There can be no ‘additional’ thesis sentences—you need a summary of support here or whatever your thesis was. Is this second thesis sentence your actual thesis? The form of the essay needs to now take the weight of clarification since your grammar is unclear. Comment by Prof Waller: A basic coherence problem is your use of pronouns, ‘they’, ‘their’ and ‘them’. What does these pronouns refer to? It seems you mean that they refer to your subject ‘Blacks’ from the topic and the first thesis sentence, but that is unclear grammatically—this means you did not do a careful enough third draft. Comment by Prof Waller: This is a third thesis. I’m pretty sure you paid no attention to the outline of essay form as you were writing—remember that I told you all to TAKE OUT the outline and to have it ON YOUR DESK as you write your three drafts, meaning no one should ever end up submitting a third draft that is not in essay form. That should not even be possible if you are doing the basic thing required in this class—drafting. By now you have to know the basics: that every intro paragraph may have no more than three sentences. Comment by Prof Waller: Many undergraduates overuse the article, ‘the’. Here it is not needed and in fact it implies a hierarchy (“THE end of…” or ‘THE James Woods”) as if there are several of something or one true verses other false ones. Comment by Prof Waller: None of these extra sentences should be in your intro—all of this extra information should be in your body paragraphs as part of expansion. You need a summary of support to establish this expansion. Comment by Prof Waller: This is completely out of place. This is a fourth thesis—what are you doing? Well, it’s brainstorming, really. A first draft. Never submit third drafts. You have four claims all of which are so far unsupported. Comment by Prof Waller: A fifth thesis, but no supporting details for any of them. So, this is not an essay. It reads a great deal like a speech instead of a 119 essay.

A Contextual Analysis of Black Panther Comment by Prof Waller: I have mentioned at least three times in class this semester that there should not be any subtitles in a college essay. You have not been studying the outline of essay form, nor have you studied the student paper example(s) I’ve [posted in which you will see subtitles crossed out.

Black Panther is arguably the most celebrated African American film in the 21st Century. In it, Cougler (2018) explores Wakanda, a fictional African country which has never been colonized. The territory houses the earth’s only source of vibranium, which is a precious mineral that arrived to the earth on a meteorite, and is incredibly scarce and valuable (Coogler, 2018). The film begins when Wakanda’s leader, T’Chaka, is killed, and his son, T’Challa, is required to take over the throne. However, T’Challa is challenged for the kingdom’s leadership by his cousin, Eric Killmonger (Coogler, 2018). For some time, Killmonger successfully dethrones T’Challa but is eventually overpowered by T’Challa. Comment by Prof Waller: Huh? What does this mean? ‘Celebrated’ is a euphemism just like ‘hailed’—empty language. You need to write your own papers, not have the culture write them for you. This is by the way the topic sentence of a brand-new intro paragraph. Is this your actual intro? This is not a body paragraph—this topic sentence is not taken from an essay map, you neglected to write an essay map for your intro. Comment by Prof Waller: No parenthetical citation of dates except after a title, not after the author’s name. Comment by Prof Waller: This is lacking in focus, purpose, and form—all three of the requirements for an argumentative essay (the fifth rhetorical form that we are working in—were you in last week’s class meeting taking notes? Have you closely read the posted lectures? You are required to write essays, not brainstorm. Brainstorming is for first drafts. Always submit THIRD drafts that are in correct essay form (second draft) and that are thoroughly edited for grammar, spelling, essay form, agreement, punctuation, and modification (third draft). These are the basics of the course. I cannot actually get to assessing analysis, critique, or interpretation of this writing because it is not actually an essay. You need to write essays for 119.

One of the film’s defining characteristics is that it is a modern, slick action movie. This sharply contradicts common movies that are casted in Africa, which tend to feature appalling aspects of turmoil, conflict, and social problems such as poverty. Additionally, it is a departure from popular depictions of Africa as a place where White people arrive to save the continent from themselves. The film also mixes modernism with traditionalism because it provides a global cosmopolitan feel, which includes covering exotic locations such as Busan, South Korea, which is the area in which the movie’s villain, Klaue, is supposed to buy black market vibranium, with a major scene occurring in a casino. Klaue is also depicted as a Bond-esque villain, who has a literal claw on his right hand. Thus, the film dominantly features African heroes, who are at home and in control in global settings.

The Black representation and meaning of their racial formation in the fiction films is founded on the changing tide of race relations. These trends have taken place in the country’s social system over the last century. One of the primary goals of the Black movement has been to recreate a symbolic culture by influencing the transformations that occur in African American cultures and aesthetics. As a result, Black power movements emerged to promote Black pride, civil rights, and community control (Swamipersad, 2018). Thus, the emergence of African nationalism eventually resulted in a positive shift towards the prominence of Blacks in the political and public arenas. In addition, this paradigmatic shift later became apparent in Hollywood films with the surfacing of Blaxploitation. Blaxploitation movies were cheaply produced, and featured strong, aggressive African American leads, who would sometimes confront racist White characters and institutions. These includes contents that focuses on the issues that affected Black people, such as poverty and slum life. Therefore, Black Panther provides a better opportunity for African American artists in Hollywood to showcase images of pride and exposure to institutionalized racism.

The production of Black Panthers also revels the manner in which it attempts to establish a visual tradition that particularly negotiates and counteracts a negative history of African American oppression. This form of oppression is often largely generated and enacted via a visual culture and coding (Eckhardt, 2018). For instance, many Hollywood films depict Africans Americans as criminals, homeless, drug dealers, and servants. In so doing, they provide a counter narrative to White supremacy and visual culture established via Hollywood and mass media.

Many scenes in Black Panthers awaken the idea that heroism is not defined by color. In the first scenes after the death of his father, for example, T’Challa is depicted as a hero who is returning home to save his nation. The scenes of the nation is not only African, but it is also, technologically more advanced than the rest of the world (Coogler, 2018). Other scenes that reflect the African nation as superior is its exceptionalism, which stems from its century-long invisibility. This apparent invisibility, coupled with the nation’s storage of powerful mineral, Vibranium, implies that they have wealth that other nations lack. Some of the exceptional positions that are portrayed by the characters. Nonetheless, most of the framing occurs via cinematography, which highlights specific images through mise-en-scene that stresses on Wakanda’s difference from other parts of the world.

Figure 1

An aerial depiction of Wakanda and its distinctiveness from other parts of world

African American women also play heroic roles in the movie. In as mucha s T’Challa is the heir to the throne, his success is attributed to the strategic roles that women in power are playing. Women, for example, run the military, whereas his younger sister heads the scientific laboratory that basically manufactures all forms of products and chemicals, such as Vibranium. Unlike the popular American culture that portrays Black women as inferior beings who perform roles such as nanny, the film showcases the power of women in the society. Thus, while the kingdom appears to showcase the characteristics of an intersectional, often colonized African reality, it lacks an active disruption of some of its traditional perceptions that revolve around gender and patriarchy.

In light of the above, the Wakanda kingdom provides viewers with a dimension of thinking regarding the interactions between the past and the present. In so doing, it makes the audience to struggle with the historical and modern geopolitical status and representation of Africans. In such an interrelationship between modernism and the past, the presence of Wakanda makes it permissible to picture or visualize an African nation as a truly becoming a global power. Nonetheless, the power of Wakanda comes into question when the villain Erik Killmonger, who the film later reveals to be from Wakanda and T’Challa’s first cousin, steals Vibranium from a British museum. In a brief scene he interacts with a white curator at the Museum, an expert on African artifacts, which they both examine through thick glass devices in the gallery space. From it, the viewer can learn that the prehistoric Africa must have been a mysterious place. From this scene, Killmonger’s tone and discussion distinctively makes the expert ignorant in her arrogance and places a colonial narrative of western raiding at the forefront of the fictional Marvel adaptation.

One of the most dramatic and conflicting aspects of the film are showcased in the scene in which Killmonger is presented to the council of elders. Ironically, the elders mainly come from a neighboring tribe. The seats and positioning of each elder indicates that he is an intruder. On describing himself as one of them, the mood and tone of the room changes. As a result, the issue of us versus them changes immediately at the realization that he is a Wakandan. Killmonger expresses Black superiority when he proposes that the Vibranium be used to set free more than seven million Blacks who are in bondage in different parts of the world. Comment by Prof Waller: The topic sentence of a concluding paragraph must be the restatement of your thesis—this is not even one of the five various theses from your intro, it is a brand new, sixth thesis. Comment by Prof Waller: This is supposed to be a SINGLE SENTENCE—a summary of the entire argument that you just presented for a thesis. This has no relation to an essay map and is also too many sentences. You cannot deal with this course and the requirements if you do not take the time to study the handouts, basic directives, and your class notes on my lectures, which have repeatedly defined these requirements you are neglecting

This would be a “D+’ at best, but I am not going to grade it—I want you to revise this as an essay rather than preliminary draft (no more brainstorming). Don’t do this again, this is not a speech class but advanced composition requiring you to draft and edit, to write in essay form, and finally, to use critical analysis to do interpretation. Without an essay from you to assess and to grade, I really cannot even respond to more serious elements. You have got to submit something for me to respond to and to grade.

References

Coogler, R. (Director). (2018). Black Panther [Motion Picture]. USA: Marvel Studios.

Eckhardt, G. M. (2018). Black Panther: Thrills, Postcolonial Discourse, and Blacktopia. Markets,

Globalization & Development Review, 3(2).

Swamipersad, M. S. (2018). The Contribution of Marvel Studios’ to the changing portrayal of

African Americans in Hollywood.

https://theses.ubn.ru.nl/bitstream/handle/123456789/6486/Swamipersad%2C_M.S._1.pdf

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