Black Panther
2018-Mar-17, Saturday 10:52![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dorchadas
In what might be a miracle, I went to go see a movie by myself. I don't think I've ever done that before, but no one else was free and I didn't want to just stay home. So I bought a ticket for Black Panther.
It was really good!
I've only seen a single Marvel movie previously--Captain America--but it didn't matter. People told me that I didn't need to have seen previous movies and they were right. The only thing it mattered for was the post-credits scene, and I had absorbed enough MCU knowledge over the years that I knew what was happening. There was an old couple three rows ahead of me where I saw the man lean over and ask the woman who the one-armed guy was, though.
Anyway, Black Panther.
Visually, the movie was great. The distinct look of Wakanda, street vendors mixed with everyone having a holographic mobile phone in form of a bracelet of beads, a mix of Nigerian/Ghanaian/South African-inspired clothing, and glowing blue hypertech with a flowing sand aesthetic was definitely distinctive. I loved the dragonfly-looking aircraft. I was a little disappointed on the very first approach to the Wakandan capital city because I was hoping for more plants on the buildings and then I looked behind where the transport landed and hey, the building back there had plants on every floor. It was great.
It gave me a kind of Exalted feeling, the mix of high tech and melee fighting with spears. Spears that shoot force bolts.
And Shuri's gauntlets! It all looked amazing.
The themes are harder to comment on. I have no personal stake in what means Africans and people of African descent use to resist oppression. There are arguments I've seen online about how Killmonger's character would only have to change a little bit to make him entirely sympathetic, and I think that's pretty compelling. It ties in more generally to the theme of power, and does having the ability to help lead to a moral duty to do so even if it puts oneself at risk? How much does the exercise of power require evil even if power is wielded by good people? The movie doesn't really answer these questions conclusively, though it does come down on the side of acting rather than remaining passive. That perspective isn't unknown to me:
It's that idea that Killmonger has when he wants to go to Wakanda and spread its technology. He wants to create a world where he and people who look like him can hold their heads high, where names like Okoye and M'Baku garner no comments. And if some people have to suffer to bring that world about, well, think of all the suffering that Africa went through. Isn't it justice, and won't they be free afterwards?
It's a powerful urge. We can also see it play out in modern-day Israel. Two thousand years of L'shanah haba'a b'Yerushalayim, Next Year in Jerusalem, and now that we're there, are we worthy of it? Hmm.
Captain America was a fun movie, but it didn't have any of this messaging. There's not much moral ambiguity in killing nazis. Black Panther is much better at being both fun to look at and fun to think about, and I'm glad I went.
It was really good!
I've only seen a single Marvel movie previously--Captain America--but it didn't matter. People told me that I didn't need to have seen previous movies and they were right. The only thing it mattered for was the post-credits scene, and I had absorbed enough MCU knowledge over the years that I knew what was happening. There was an old couple three rows ahead of me where I saw the man lean over and ask the woman who the one-armed guy was, though.
Anyway, Black Panther.
Visually, the movie was great. The distinct look of Wakanda, street vendors mixed with everyone having a holographic mobile phone in form of a bracelet of beads, a mix of Nigerian/Ghanaian/South African-inspired clothing, and glowing blue hypertech with a flowing sand aesthetic was definitely distinctive. I loved the dragonfly-looking aircraft. I was a little disappointed on the very first approach to the Wakandan capital city because I was hoping for more plants on the buildings and then I looked behind where the transport landed and hey, the building back there had plants on every floor. It was great.
It gave me a kind of Exalted feeling, the mix of high tech and melee fighting with spears. Spears that shoot force bolts.
And Shuri's gauntlets! It all looked amazing. The themes are harder to comment on. I have no personal stake in what means Africans and people of African descent use to resist oppression. There are arguments I've seen online about how Killmonger's character would only have to change a little bit to make him entirely sympathetic, and I think that's pretty compelling. It ties in more generally to the theme of power, and does having the ability to help lead to a moral duty to do so even if it puts oneself at risk? How much does the exercise of power require evil even if power is wielded by good people? The movie doesn't really answer these questions conclusively, though it does come down on the side of acting rather than remaining passive. That perspective isn't unknown to me:
"You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to desist from it."Which brings me to the idea of diaspora. I cannot speak to the African diaspora, but Jews also have a complicated relationship with the places where we live and with our ancestral homeland. Personally, I've never been to Israel and don't have a lot of desire to go--as it exists now, Israel is a lot more like Killmonger's Wakanda without the hypertech than T'Challa's benevolent monarchy. But the idea of Israel, of a place where we are the norm and accepted without question, a place where Starbucks employees have no trouble pronouncing "Menachem," is a powerful one.
-Pirkei Avot, 2:21
It's that idea that Killmonger has when he wants to go to Wakanda and spread its technology. He wants to create a world where he and people who look like him can hold their heads high, where names like Okoye and M'Baku garner no comments. And if some people have to suffer to bring that world about, well, think of all the suffering that Africa went through. Isn't it justice, and won't they be free afterwards?
It's a powerful urge. We can also see it play out in modern-day Israel. Two thousand years of L'shanah haba'a b'Yerushalayim, Next Year in Jerusalem, and now that we're there, are we worthy of it? Hmm.
Captain America was a fun movie, but it didn't have any of this messaging. There's not much moral ambiguity in killing nazis. Black Panther is much better at being both fun to look at and fun to think about, and I'm glad I went.
