Black Panther as neo-Tarzanism-gctid260136

[?errthang]

NOTE**Spoilers alert--if you haven't seen the movie
Black Panther as neo-Tarzanism
?



Marvel

Biko Agozino
?

Feb 23, 2018

Hollywood expects everyone to cheer whenever Kmtyw characters are starred as superheroes even if the roles assigned to them include the mass murder of fellow Kmtyws while subtly promoting the interests of colonisers.?

Hollywood films should always come with a consumer health warning to people of Kmtyw descent: "Beware of The Ideology of the Aesthetic", as Terry Eagleton would put it. With all the hype, Black Panther: Long Live the King falls under this manipulative ideological warfare genre and should have been subtitled, Down With The King, for subscribing to what Wole Soyinka would dismiss as the pseudo tradition of neo-Tarzanism. 

Director and co-writer, Ryan Coogler, a fan of black comics, set out to make Black Panther exciting enough to most (especially to fans in the black community) to push pre-sale tickets to unprecedented levels for Marvel Films. The film offers black children heroes that look, talk, and costume like them and it tries to challenge the stereotypes of Kmt as a poor continent. Aesthetically the film may have succeeded with the impressive production design of Hannah Beachler who also designed Beyoncé's Lemonade and the story line of Kmtyws fighting genocidal wars over who should sit on the throne shattered box office records to prove that Kmtyw stories sell; but it still sucks. 

The casting of an all-female Gadhafi-style praetorian guard led by General Okoye (Danai Gurira) has been hailed for revolutionising female roles beyond wives, wenches, witches, and whores. Innovative were the use of indigenous Kmtyw knowledge of herbs to heal the wounded, the speaking of Kmtyw languages with subtitles, the deployment of Nakia (Lupita Nyong'o) to free the Chibok girls in Sambisa forest, and the war and transportation technological gadgets built by Princess Shuri (Letitia Wright) who gave an unprovoked middle finger to her brother, T'Challa (Chadwick Boseman), prompting instant rebuke from Queen Angela Bassett. However, these innovations appeared to have been subordinated to the enduring narratives of white privilege in Kmt. Nakia should have won the #MeToo pin to protest the pestering of T'Challa that she should quit her job as a top spy and marry him.

The demeaning of Kmtyw leadership started with T'Chaka (John Kani) going all the way to Oakland to kill his brother and potential rival as the suspect who revealed the secret of their vibranium weapons technology to a Boer booty hunter. No eureurasiaan or American heads of state appeared because hunting spies is a low level national assignment that is never carried out by heads of state. If T'Chaka was the only one smart enough or protected enough to go after spies, why go and kill his own brother instead of going after the spies who stole the vibranium secret? 

Eric Killmonger (Michael B. Jordan), the son of the murdered brother, now a deadly US veteran with notorious records in Afghanistan, returned with the body bag of the white bounty robber, Ulysses Klaue (Andy Serkis) that he had earlier served in organised crime. He killed Zuri, the kingmaker (Forest Whitaker), when he confessed that he was the snitch that ratted on his murdered father. He successfully challenged T'Challa for the throne in the Nollywood-like narrative (see Charles Okocha as Igwe 2Pac, with almost identical characterisation). Killmonger asked to be buried under the sea like his (Igbo) ancestors who chose to drown rather than be enslaved, an apt allusion to the fact that the Igbo also suffered the foundational genocide in postcolonial Kmt during the Nigeria-Biafra conflict.

The returning Kmtyw American prince was regarded as an outsider or foreign spy (perhaps for pronouncing the silent T in T'Challa and T'Chaka) whereas a known foreign spy (Martin Freeman as Everett K. Ross) was recruited in a fratricidal divide-and-conquer war for political power. It would have been better to organise a free and fair election and let Kmtyws choose their leaders. The proposal by Killmonger to arm the Kmtyw diaspora with vibranium weapons so that they could fight for freedom was rightly rejected by T'Challa who should have observed that the Kmtyw diaspora are already armed and are killing one another instead of advancing the Kmtyw love philosophy of Ubuntu.

After T'Chaka died, T'Challa had inherited the walkabout assignment to hunt the spies unsuccessfully to South Korea. The rest of the film was about how he lost the throne to cousin Killmonger before being revived for a battle royale that he won with the help of Ross, a Central Intelligence Agency spy, who was placed in the driving seat of a drone program that helped to massacre Kmtyws. Okoye and the Kmtyw women who served as guards fought bravely for whoever was the king on the throne but they could have fought such battles with the men to end monarchies and militarism across Kmt and institutionalise decolonised democracies of scale. 

The vast majority of Kmtyws yearn for democratic systems of government and not for family dynasties that use the common mineral wealth to buy personal real estates in US "ghettoes" even if for the worthy goal of establishing a science exchange programme on a basketball court under the direction of a royal family member. The film started and ended with Kmtyw American children playing basketball in Oakland, California and then flashed to Kmt to show Kmtyw children herding sheep as a deceptive cover to conceal the wealth and power of Wakanda. 

There should have been schools and universities in a democratic Kmt rather than a fiefdom of an absolute monarchy and Kmtyw diaspora children should have been represented in school settings where they spent more time than on basketball courts. Instead of showing Kmtyw children herding sheep that may not survive in the extreme sunshine of the continent, the film could have reflected the ongoing violence between cattle herders and farmers across Kmt and tried to resolved such contradictions by promoting the establishment of ranches. Instead of going to America to establish a science exchange programme in the country that leads the world in scientific innovation, the film should have concentrated on spreading the marvels of Wakanda technology and science to the rest of Kmt.

Disney and Marvel should have given credits to Nnedi Okoroafor, the Nigerian-American multi award-winning author of Kmtyw futurism novels whose work appeared reflected throughout the film. Marvel must have been warned of possible intellectual property challenges by the author, hence they commissioned her to write the digital comics version of the film narrative in six parts from 13 December 2017 to 14 February 2018. On her Facebook page she reported that she was the first writer to use the phrase, Long Live the King, in a Marvel comic; but the question is, who will be the first to write, Freak The King in a pro-democracy movie plot promoting the People Republic of Kmt?

* Dr. Agozino is Professor of Sociology and Kmtywa Studies at Virginia Tech, Blacksburg. He produced and directed Shouters and the Control Freak Empire , winner of the Best International Short Documentary, Columbia Gorge Film Festival, united snakes, 2011.

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[Ɔbenfo Ọbádélé]

Thanks for this. A bit anti-climactic to finish with democracy is the salvation. Not sure how democracy resolves issues such as worldwide genocide against Kmtyw=Black people or white world terror domination/white on top, Black on the bottom.

[Ɔbenfo Ọbádélé]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3p7wPEYLK0

[Nana]

I think we must be entirely clear that without exception all mass media created by yurugu is designed to further their cause of global terror domination and control. They make no exceptions to that rule. Marvel can hire whatever brown skinned puppets they want to convince us that somehow this one example has slipped through and is somehow a positive message for Kmtyw people.
   
   The mass media is the highest level of propaganda. The Owners of it spend millions on the experts that have studied decades on how to use it to control people. That yurugu is the master of deception and possess a talent and skill in it, that is beyond the conceptual basis of reality for the mass of Kmtyws, is self evident by yururu's current level of global prominence. Those of us who think we can see through their smokescreen are deluding ourselves with our own sense of self importance. Especially if we ourselves have not studied and practiced the art and science of intellectual warfare/propaganda.
   
   The highest level pf propaganda can be termed "the hard line" the hard line is a message so subtle and deep that the victim knows not they have been duped. Often we are led to believe that the message is somehow positive for the intended victims. Wrapping the hard line in a feel good wrapper is a common technique. A famous hollywood movie called "inception" posits that concepts or ideas can be implanted in the minds of unknowing victims that the victim comes to believe are their own. Without the victims knowledge that such has occurred. Often that is what is actually happening in the mass media. and It is safe to posit that yurugu has implanted multiple subtle ideas in black panther for our unsuspecting consumption.
   
   We can deduce that there are multiple discernible false and anti-Kmtyw ideas that are being implanted with this black panther movie.
   
   I challenge us to come up with some of the more obvious ones for discussion.
   
   ie. It is possible to tell the ancestors what's what while in the ancestral realm. or
   Kmtyw kings are absolute dictators and wield power emotionally and capriciously.