I'm struggling to follow the claim that the film represents stereotypes of Africans or the reference to mass muder.
I recall Black Panther from my Marvel Comics reading teenage days.
Marvel also had Luke Cage and Brother Voodoo among other Black heroes.
The world of the US Black minority is very different from that of Africans living in countries where they are a majority and where the legacy of slavery still persists. For them, in a world where Hollywood is so powrful, a Black superhero carries much weight.
Though I am an African in Africa, it carries much weight for me too.
Comics were significant in shaping my understanding of reality and its possiblities. A good no of the ideas that excite me these days in philosophy and spirituality, I first ecountered in Western fairy tales, Western myth and comics, at a time when I had little acess to exciting African literature of such speculative kind.
Mental communication with plants which I later experimented with as part of my exploring Benin nature spirituality/Western animism, I first encounetered in the Marvel story about the sentient plant race, the Cotati. The concept of sentient, non-biological forms of being central to my interest in Odu Ifa first reached me through the Western concept of the magical book, as in the Book of Skelos in Marvel Comics Dr. Strange comics.
I later practised Western magic and adapted it to the Yoruba Orisa cosmology but my first encounter with magic was in the Dr. Strange comics, where I learned the fundamentals without knowing I was doing that through enjoying fiction.
Babatunde Lawal’s superb summations on Ile, Earth, the Great Mother in The Gelede Spectacle, Rowland Abiodun’s discussions of ase, a Yoruba concept of creative cosmic force inherent in or accessible to all forms of being were already foreshadowed for me by similar ideas in Dr. Strange, made vivid through striking characterisation, memorable plot and rich storylines, the relationship between good and evil that has become foregrounded in the bad press African magic has in the Nigeria media today also foreshadowed by struggles btw evil and good magicians in Marvel Comics.
Today’s agonizings over artificial intelligence were magnificently captured in the story of Quasimodo, the sentient robot who badly wanted to be fully human.
Tchalla, son of Tchaka, the Black Panther’s name as different from his superhero name, with his use of African herbal culture allied with Western technology, was really powerful for me.
One could place him alongside the hidden kingdom of the Inhumans, the undersea sea world of Lemuria and its leader the Submariner, the extraterritorial universe of the Beyonders and many more universes created by Marvel.
On recalling Tchalla, one would chant his full name personal name and ancestral lineage name with a resonant tone, like a Yoruba oriki, in the excitement of that memory.
The Black Panther is so busy saving the world he can’t be idle. He is fighting world class bad guys like Baron Zemo, the Red Skull, Doctor Doom etc. When he is not doing that, he is fending off greedy people who want to destroy Wakanda.
He lives in an Africa of our dreams, an Africa that unifies classical, non-superstitious African knowledge with the highest levels of Western science and technology, both of these cultural streams fully integrated into Wakanda’s social and educational system, making that science and its further development endogenous to the country, a country where leadership is fully synonymous with service.
Should we not spend time occasionally in this marvellous world? Is it not from dreams that new realities are created?
Make mine Marvel!-a rallying cry of Marvel devotes.
I also couldn’t help but see the many ways in which the movie reinforces stereotypes about Africa and Africans, because for me as a non-diasporic African, colour representation— which is the main excitement of the movie for many— is not exactly a primary consideration. Neo- Tarzanism indeed.
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So Toyin, you dream about living in a despotic kingdom rather than in a democracy with all its flaws? That is your right to dream what you like or like what you dream but you have no power to impose your magical fantasies on the realities of others who have survived genocidal wars over resource control.
Biko
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On Sun, 11/2/18, Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju <toyin....@gmail.com> wrote:
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Africa Trending (2)
To: "usaafricadialogue" <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
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Bro Toyin
The burden of proof is on you. What makes the kingdom of Wakanda democratic? I am assuming that there is a consensus that the future of Africa should be democratic but you are welcome to disagree and opt for natural rulers with all their technological juju
You are completely mistaken in your assumption that genocidal resource control wars took place only agaunst people in Biafra. Count your teeth with your tongue.
Biko
--------------------------------------------
On Sun, 11/2/18, Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju <toyin....@gmail.com> wrote:
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Africa Trending (2)
To: "usaafricadialogue" <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Current archives at http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
Early archives at http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
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