Every company tries their best to promote a positive image that better represents what they stand for or, at the very least, make it look like they stand for something positive. If a company can help promote something positive like giving some of its proceeds to charity, or helping to make an important statement for positive change, then the outcome is one that ideally helps everyone. People buy the company’s products, the people feel like they are a part of something important and can help promote something positive, and the overall look helps boost an important cause. Everyone gets just the thing they wanted. Sure, it could be seen as corporate manipulation, but if the overall good outweighs the bad, it doesn’t really matter. One company that arguably didn’t need to do much of anything to enhance their image is that of Disney. Disney recently came out with a film under the Marvel Studios moniker called Black Panther. Whether Disney knew how big the film was going to be or if it was a genuine surprise to everyone is still up in the air, but it is no secret that it has become a sort of cultural phenomenon.
Black Panther is a film that follows T’Challa (played by Chadwick Boseman), an African king of a fictional country known as Wakanda and superhero known as the Black Panther. Wakanda is a hyper technological African country that has remained hidden from the entire world for centuries and it is up to the Black Panther and the citizens of Wakanda to keep it that way. The villain of the film, Erik “Killmonger” Stevens (brilliantly portrayed by Michael B. Jordan), finds out about Wakanda’s futuristic technology and his goal is to arm all people of African descent with the wonders that have been hidden from them, especially when they needed it most.
What makes the movie so important is that it gives people of African descent a sense of wonder and a superhero that is more than the usual gangbanger, drug dealer, slave, and other not so positive images so often portrayed in film and television ever since the medium was born. What the film also does is explore a concept known as Afrofuturism. Afrofuturism is the idea of African/African-American technological advances that either could have happened or will happen in the future just so long as they were left to their own devices and what a future could look like if African descenters fused technology with their culture. In this film, Wakanda is the staple of Afrofuturism. Wakanda, hundreds of years ago, was hit by a meteor containing the strongest and lightest metal in the world known as Vibranium. It is of alien origin, but over the course of the hundreds of years it was in Wakanda, the Wakandians managed to make their own technology using this high tech metal.
It is these reasons for the villains main purpose in the story. Killmonger grew up his whole life in Oakland, California (where the Black Panther Party was formed. It doesn’t have any relation to the comic book character, but for this it is a good parallel.) He grew up in a poor neighborhood where the basketball hoop composed of a pole with a milk crate bolted to it. Killmonger represents the side of the African American and the injustices one encounters on a daily basis. Killmonger makes a point in the film about how African people have been suffering all this time and Wakanda had all the technology it had for so long that they didn’t bother to help slaves during the slave trade or even the many starving African countries just at the borders of Wakanda.
It is these two viewpoints that make the conflict so great. The Wakandan people fear opening their doors to the public because of what might happen. What if another country tries to control them when they have managed to live as they please for so long? In the film, there is a BBC newscast about the “poor starving citizens of Wakanda and the king that refuses outside help,” meanwhile they’re flying around in hover cars and have beads that project holograms in their hands. And then there is Killmonger , while a bit hostile, he makes an excellent point about how Wakanda should do more to take care of people that look just like them all over the world who are suffering different injustices.
The film does a great balance of having a 2 hour conversation while also dressing it up with amazing visuals and breathtaking battles. Arguably a conversation many African descent people have made/been making for so long and that is why the film is so successful. Even in the marketing, changes have been made. You know those toy commercials you see on any given children's channel that have all these cool masks and play blasters and it's usually a bunch of little white or racially ambiguous kids having fun and playing? They did those commercials for Black Panther like any Marvel movie, but even when I saw a commercial for these Black Panther toys, I had a sense of pride in my soul. You just don’t really get to see that many kids of color doing that sort of thing in commercials. And if you do they're always dressed up as white superheros. Which is fine, if you like Spider-Man, dress up as Spider-Man. Nobody cares. But it is refreshing to see a superhero of color with a true costume. As much as I love Blade and Luke Cage, they don’t really have “costumes.” Just exaggerated street clothes.
Another thing that makes Black Panther so popular is how it portrays the women in the film, and there are a lot of them. Firstly, you have the Dora Milaje (led by Danai Gurira ), a group of specially trained women that guard the king of Wakanda. They are arguably the greatest fighters of Wakanda that could put any member of the Secret Service (Kingsmen or otherwise) to shame. Then you have T’Challa’s sister Shuri who is the Black Panther’s version of Q (a la James Bond). She steals every scene she has in the film and is also amazingly smart giving the Black Panther literally everything he has that allows him to do the amazing things he does. Many women, not just of African descent, have cited the women in the film as an important and empowering benchmark. The film more than emphasises that the Black Panther would be nothing without the women around him and he more than acknowledges that fact time and time again.
Overall, what the film does is give representation to those who don’t get it normally in mainstream cinema and mainstream media in general. The original box office predictions for Black Panther were $60-75 million, $80 million tops. In the opening weekend alone, the film grossed $292 million dollars in North America ALONE. Which is one of the biggest accomplishments, even outpacing the first Avengers film that has 6 super heroes coming together for the first time which was a big deal in and of itself back in 2012. What I think people weren’t taking into account when projecting Black Panther’s box office is the true value of African American community dollars. I’ve heard stories of grandmothers who haven’t been to a theater for 30 years just to see this film. Fathers, mothers, children all look up to Black Panther. With the success of the film, Disney donated $1 million dollars to STEM and opening 12 new STEM locations all across America including New Orleans, LA; Harlem, NY; and Oakland, CA. Disney is more than putting out films about superheroes. They’re making statements and dishing out some of the millions of dollars they're making to places that need it most and that is why many people appreciate Black Panther. #WakandaForever
P.S. Ryan Coogler has all my money all the time.
