Black Panther Revisited

I finally saw Black Panther tonight and it had me on a critical roller-coaster between loving it and being angry at it.

It was majestic.

But, it was about a make believe Kingdom full of super people with super powers and resources and a super moral culture.

It was beautiful.

But it was so politically tame.

It extolled so many beautiful features of real Black cultures.      

While it implied rejection of so much of what the actual Black Panther Party and other Black radical groups of the 60’s rightfully advocated and organized toward.

Yet, in the end ... it reasoned its way into advocacy of the very community-building philosophy of those same radical groups

I came away from it mostly content. I don’t feel the point in raging against a positive, family adventure film that advocates non-violence and sharing. But I’ll at least wag my proverbial finger at the soft politics of the film.

It beautifully fulfills / exemplifies a complaint that was heard frequently during this week’s commemoration of the half century that has passed since the assassination of Dr. King while he organized to redress economic imbalances. The complaints were about how much King’s image has been sanitized. He’s been turned into a saint, and turned from a man who unflinchingly challenged America’s racism, hypocrisy, war-mongering and engines of economic oppression.

This film directly rejects Black militancy, the kind that arose out of unvented rage and put lives on the line to literally fight a defensive war against murderous police aggression. All of the Wakandan villains in this film are virtual Black Panthers in the mold of Huey Newton, whose poster we see in the film, adorning the apartment of Killmonger’s father.

The protagonist – the cartoon-birthed Black Panther, leader of the fictitious nation – ultimately comes around to agreeing that the villains are right, in principle. Resources and sacrifices ought to go toward aiding the oppressed elsewhere in overcoming their oppressors. But this doesn’t stop the villains from being villains. Because they have been embittered by anger, moved too far toward “by any means necessary”, have grown too comfortable with violence. They have become the proverbial 'angry, black man', Now, they can only become noble in death.

As Dr. King became more noble in death. Then, the angry Black minister, putting life and limb on the line, to force his oppressors out of their comfortable, cozy evil, was buried, and Saint Dr. Martin Luther King was born, smiling down on his native America, which he so dearly loved.

Black Panther’s villains die also, but the resurrected T’Challa endures. In real life, the Black Panthers were virtually exterminated. One by one they died in police and FBI raids. And though, to some degree, the sanitizing of Dr. King’s posthumous stature was in part because he had been less threatening than the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, some of that stature came from the fact that he was dead. No longer a threat. In the film, we become able to respect and empathize with Killmonger only as he dies.

In the end, I like the film. Great seeing all those badass sisters up on the screen. And the cultural artifacts, and the ancestor rituals. I wonder how those viewers raised in Africa took in all the accents. They rang fine in my unschooled ear, and I enjoyed the acting, especially Bozeman’s. He brought a earnestness and humility to the role that kept the superhero human. As entertainment goes, this film was dazzling on a visual design level, and the action sequences were clear enough for my old eyes to keep up with what was going on.

But ya know? I think it’s about time I pulled out Spike Lee’s “Malcolm X” for a fresh viewing.