Believing The Hype
*In early January 2018, New York resident Frederick Joseph created a GoFundMe campaign in hopes to raise money to help children of color at the Boys & Girls Club in Harlem see Black Panther. Joseph called the release of Black Panther a “rare opportunity for young students (primarily of color) to see a black major cinematic and comic book character come to life. This representation is truly fundamental for young people, especially those who are often underserved, unprivileged, and marginalized both nationally and globally.”
“I miss going to a movie theater filled with black people. My people. The feeling of being in majority for something so simple as watching a movie. Growing up further south of here in Mt. Vernon I was able to have this experience, but here in Kingston – not so much.” -Micah Blumenthal
GoFundMe created a centralized page for anyone wishing to create a campaign for the challenge, and revealed that 10 campaigns created using the sign-up page would receive a $100 donation from GoFundMe. Over 400 additional campaigns were started around the world, with many celebrities offering their support and contributions to the campaigns, such as actress Octavia Spencer, who intended to buy out a theater in Mississippi for underserved members of the community. The campaign became the largest GoFundMe in history for an entertainment event and raised over $400,000.
Micha Blumenthal, a writer, speaker activist and business owner in Kingston,N.Y. sighted many communities are segregated and inspired by ALAMO DRAFTHOUSE Women only showings of Wonder Woman, hosted a “Black Panther Movie POC Takeover” on Genorosity.Com at Regal Cinema Hudson Valley Mall 12 in his community.
“It’s no secret that many cities across the country are struggling with segregation and the Hudson Valley is no different. More than that, there is a lack of friendly spaces for POC to live, create, meet, organize, and just be. That’s why groups like Black and Brown have cropped up and why TMI Project created their Black Stories Matter program. While the recent redlining scandal at Ulster Savings Bank may have been a shock to some people, for long time residents of color it was just another example, stretching back to the 70s when they were pushed off the waterfront, of how they have been marginalized and made invisible.”
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Here is a video where Micah recalls during the TMI Project event – Black Stories Matter. He speaks of growing up and watching the black characters die first, watching that change with shows like Luke Cage and how that felt to be able to watch that with his son. He spoke about super heroes, like his grandmother.
Educators Get Involved
The release of Black Panther during Black History Month was not accidental. Many Teachers are building lessons based on the film, set in the super hi-tech, uncolonized African nation of Wakanda. Students at Roy Clark Academy erupting into joyful dancing after finding out they’re going to see ‘Black Panther’ to an instrumental to the film went viral-
Chicago middle school teacher Tess Raser wrote the “Wakanda Curriculum” to help her students explore the film’s themes of colonialism, cultural representation, global anti-blackness, black feminism, and Afrofuturism. The lessons guide students in grades 5 through 8 in character analysis, asking questions like: “What character traits did T’Challa show? What do his actions reveal about his character? Do you agree with all of his actions?”
Another activity guides students in a debate over what Wakanda represents: black elitism or the “possibility for a black future.” Students are asked to use evidence from the film as well as their own background knowledge to support their reasoning.
“I hope that my students leave a lesson a little bit more confident in their blackness, that they see themselves as leaders equipped with the political analysis and tools to create the Wakanda of their dreams,” Raser told Blavity, a Los Angeles-based news site created by black millenials. “I hope that they learn the ways in which our blackness connects us to people across the world, while appreciating and understanding and honoring our differences.
Science & Entertainment Exchange Director for the National Academy of Sciences Richard Loverd felt the film would increase interest in science, technology, and Africa for young black Americans, similarly to how The Hunger Games films and Brave sparked girls’ interest in archery.
Media As Both Mirror & Window
Child development expert Deborah Gilboa felt the film would make a huge impact on children’s spirits, by offering positive role models and knowing that “not only can they succeed, they need to see that lots of people want to sit in a theater and watch someone like them succeed in a big, big way. That’s how we help build a generation of young people who are engaged in the greater good and courageous in their actions.”
*Jamie Broadnax, editor-in-chief and creator of Black Girl Nerds, felt Black Panther would “bring in a lot of people [of color] who don’t even really go to comic-book movies… [since] they’re going to see themselves reflected in a huge way that they just haven’t been able to see before”, especially since the film avoided black pain, suffering, and poverty, usual topics in films about the black experience. She added that the strong female characters, such as Shuri, would be an inspiration for girls and young people.
*In the film’s opening weekend, 37% of audiences in the United States were African-American, according to Screen Engine/comScore’s PostTrak service, compared to 35% Caucasian, 18% Hispanic, and 5% Asian. This was the most diverse audience for a superhero film ever, where African-Americans generally make up 15% of audiences for such films. In its second weekend, demographics were 37% Caucasian, 33% African American, 18% Hispanic and 7% Asian.
“This film is critically important. Its a gate-opener opportunity for other black-centered projects.” – Gil Robertson, co-founder and president of the African American Film Critics Association”
Jamil Smith in his article for Time Magazine “The Revolutionary Power Of Black Panther” felt Black Panther, which he described as a film “about what it means to be black in both America and Africa—and, more broadly, in the world”, was “poised to prove to Hollywood that African-American narratives have the power to generate profits from all audiences. And, more important, that making movies about black lives is part of showing that they matter.” He added, “In the midst of a regressive cultural and political moment fueled in part by the white-nativist movement, the very existence of Black Panther feels like resistance. Its themes challenge institutional bias, its characters take unsubtle digs at oppressors, and its narrative includes prismatic perspectives on black life and tradition.”
*Historian Nathan D. B. Connolly felt Black Panther was “a breakthrough in black cultural representation. It’s a powerful fictional analogy for real-life struggles. And Black Panther owes its very existence to centuries of political and artistic activity, always occurring in real places and under the mortal (but still super-) powers of real people… Black Panther taps a 500-year history of African-descended people imagining freedom, land and national autonomy.” Connolly also felt, culturally, the film would be this generation’s A Raisin in the Sun.
The Message In The Movement
A number of writers like Patrick Gathara, writing in The Washington Post were critical of Black Panther’s subtexts, described the film as offering a “regressive, neocolonial vision of Africa”, which – rather than a “redemptive counter-mythology” – offers “the same destructive myths”. Gathara highlighted the Africa that is portrayed as being divided and tribalized, with Wakanda run by a wealthy and feuding elite, centered upon “royalty and warriors”, whose fortune comes not from its citizens’ skill or ingenuity, but from a “lucky meteor strike”, and as a country which, despite its advanced technical abilities, does not evince any great thinkers, nor even a means of succession beyond lethal combat and primeval trials of strength.
Gathara continued that the very idea of “Africa” is essentially of European creation, and concluded that “Despite their centuries of vibranium-induced technological advancement, the Wakandans remain so remarkably unsophisticated that a ‘returning’ American can basically stroll in and take over, just as 19th-century Europeans did to the real Africa … The film should not be mistaken for an attempt at liberating Africa from Europe. Quite the opposite. Its ‘redemptive counter-mythology’ entrenches the tropes that have been used to dehumanize Africans for centuries. The Wakandans, for all their technological progress, still cleanly fit into the Western molds, a dark people in a dark continent”.
In Dwayne Wong Omowale’s HuffPost article “Black Panther: An Anti-Colonial Pan-African Superhero” he saw the film and its comic origins as “addressing serious political issues concerning Africa’s relationship to the West that is very rarely given the serious attention that it deserves”. Wakandans are “at times portrayed as being very suspicious towards outsiders, to the point of almost being xenophobic” and “no outsider can truly be trusted” with its security. He concludes that while the country is fictional, “the politics … are very real. The end of colonialism did not end Western tampering in Africa’s politics. We see this issue still going on in Africa today … The Black Panther movie offers an opportunity to explore this issue of neo-colonialism and its continued impact on Africa’s development”
Christopher Lebron, in a piece for Boston Review, “Black Panther Is Not The Movie We Deserve” called Ross being a hero “racist”. Wilt also wrote, concerning the villain Killmonger, that “all the most hideous traits imaginable are downgraded on to him, making the only major African-American character and agitator for revolution a manic killer consumed by rage and violence”, which is a common trope. Russell Rickford of Africa is a Country agreed with Wilt’s assessment of Killmonger, whose role as a character is “to discredit radical internationalism” and reproduce “a host of disturbing tropes”.
Lebron later concluded that “In 2018, a world home to both the Movement for Black Lives and a president who identifies white supremacists as fine people, we are given a movie about black empowerment where the only redeemed blacks are African nobles. They safeguard virtue and goodness against the threat not of white Americans or Europeans, but a black American”.
Team T’Challa vs. Team Killmonger
Now is Black Panther the perfect vehicle to teach everything about neo-colonialism or to make the case for armed rebellion vs. non-violent reconciliation efforts? Should filmmakers bend over backwards to comb out every trace of “respectability politics” from the narrative?
Of course not.
I took that stance in my article that was published here and blackenterprise.com titled “Remember When We Were Sidekicks? – Black Panther And Comic Book Politics”
“First, this film isn’t “homework.” Typically, movies featuring a black cast feel as if they need to instruct audiences about the ills of society past and present. Black creatives know we may never have the media mic again, so we don’t waste any moments. In my humble opinion, you’re grown, and it’s unrealistic to burden a mainstream movie with responsibility to make you a better person. That cake is baked. The only hope for a better tomorrow lies within the children. Which is why the stories they see and hear about heroic people that look like them, and don’t, are vital. Blissfully, there are no sermons in Black Panther.”
Black Panther is a film, a very good film, that as a piece of art stands head and shoulders above the typical CBM. The political themes it touches upon are real and immediate but it’s not a Black Studies Class any more than Wonder Woman was a Woman’s Studies Class, though clever educators can and have used both films to teach from.
Cary Darling’s Houston Chronicle review “Black superheroes matter in ‘Black Panther‘”is spot on in this regard. –
“Still, coming on the heels of “Logan,” “Wonder Woman,” and “Thor: Ragnarok,” “Black Panther” is more proof that superhero movies don’t have to be turgid, money-grubbing exercises in formula.
They can be smart, cinematic, thrilling and, most of all, fun.”
It’s entertainment, its a piece of art, in art you make choices. I appreciate the efforts of those involved to entertain and spark the curiosity of my children. That I can share the many takes about this cultural artifact both pro and con, speaks to it’s power, but ultimately, it’s a only a tool, one among many, that can be used in whichever way I choose to further educate my children on the history of the African Diaspora. We all have work to do to continually educate ourselves and use that knowledge as we see fit.To blame this film for not being an African Studies class, fully addressing the realities Black People find ourselves in or creative choices you agree or disagree with misses the point.
My 11 year old son said to me after his first screening, “I am T’Challa AND Killmonger, we choose who we want to be.” This belief, which we share, is we are not what happens to us throughout our lives. We are the sum of the choices we make in response. My eight year old daughter pointed out that Killmonger and Nakia were basically saying the same things, but – “Killmonger was a bad King. He hated his enemies more than he loved his people.”
We continue to discuss the film and after each viewing, examining the film’s subtext and what it says about American history, African history, Colonialism (including post-colonialism and neocolonialism), and tensions between African, Afro-Caribbean & African-American culture.
No worries Marvel, I got this. “It’s the poor worker who blames his tools.” Any gaps in my knowledge on this subject are on me to address.
Our children, black children lose their innocence too quickly in a society where “Black Lives Matter” is a controversial statement. Black kids deserve to be kids too and have fun. I work hard for my children to hold onto childhood’s wonder, curiosity, bravery and spirt. It’s every parents duty to work themselves out of a job. To raise self-sufficient individuals who recognize their self-worth, beauty and intelligence with hearts undamaged enough to recognize those traits in others.
Our lessons are our legacy and memories they share with our descendants our immortality. To that end, the burden and blessing to inform and educate our children about what we deem is most important is still our own. In my opinion, this duty cannot be wholly abdicated to the random chance of mass media, school districts or school curriculums. It’s far too important. In particular for kids of color in a *society financially invested in their failure.
For example, I’ll share a journal entry eight-year-old King Johnson wrote after speaking with his mother, Robin Johnson, about the meaning of Columbus Day. I’ll reprint below:
“Today was not a good learning day. Blah, Blah, Blah. I only wanted to hear you not talking. You said something wrong and I can’t listen when I hear lies. My mother says the only Christopher we acknowledge is Wallace because Columbus did not find our country, the Indians did. I like to have Columbus Day off but I want you not to teach me lies. That is all. My question for this day is how can white people teach Black History?”
The article I generated about this teachers response “What Kind of Learning Day Did You Have Today?” is illustrative of my broader point. –
If teachers don’t have a solid grasp on what messages their curriculum says about their students, or how their interactions impact their relationships then nephew King was correct, and they have no business teaching Black History.
I’m a firm believer in teachable moments, hooking a child’s curiosity and harnessing their need to understand the world. Children deserve to be protected, and enlightened for a brighter future for all within our society. An educated, informed and empowered populace are an inoculation against authoritarian regimes. It’s why the first signs of Despotism are anti-intellectual propaganda, persecution of Educators and the targeting of institutions of higher learning.
Did you watch “Education” Secretary De Vose on 60 minutes? It was a disaster.
Teaching & Learning are Revolutionary Acts
It’s not enough to bring a child to see a Comic Book Movie and expect them to walk away with a deeper understanding of the complexities of the African Diaspora. The reality is Black Panther in this context is important because of the deeper discussions and thoughtful curriculums it generates, the visions it displays and the wounds it salts. Black Panther stands as a reminder of what we’ve lost and what we stand to gain if we seize opportunities to remember our greatness and teach it to inspire our young people.
The history of the African Diaspora is a painful one true, it’s also full of pride. Blacks in the crucible of America today still struggle and still succeed, clearly we want less of the former and of more of the the latter but ultimately as a people, we have always been stronger than the impediments in our path. We need our kids to internalize this. Our unique stories wont be told unless we support black creatives efforts. We can teach and learn the lessons, we can draw our own conclusions but at the end of the day educating the young while we have the mass media hook is paramount.
We’ve seldom had a bigger hook than Black Panther to spark these debates. I encourage all to take advantage of it.
*Citation Wikipedia
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Art Credit-Marvel