W*****B
发帖数: 4796 | 1 影评家们高潮连连。票房会不会破纪录？将军们会去看吗？我对黑人没兴趣，所以不太
可能去看。
The Revolutionary Power of Black Panther
TIME Staff
The RevolutionaryPower of Black Panther
Marvel’s new movie marks a major milestoneBy JAMIL SMITH
The first movie I remember seeing in a theater had a black hero. Lando
Calrissian, played by Billy Dee Williams, didn’t have any superpowers, but
he ran his own city. That movie, the 1980 Star Wars sequel The Empire
Strikes Back, introduced Calrissian as a complicated human being who still
did the right thing. That’s one reason I grew up knowing I could be the
same.
If you are reading this and you are white, seeing people who look like you
in mass media probably isn’t something you think about often. Every day,
the culture reflects not only you but nearly infinite versions of you—
executives, poets, garbage collectors, soldiers, nurses and so on. The world
shows you that your possibilities are boundless. Now, after a brief respite
, you again have a President.
Those of us who are not white have considerably more trouble not only
finding representation of ourselves in mass media and other arenas of public
life, but also finding representation that indicates that our humanity is
multifaceted. Relating to characters onscreen is necessary not merely
for us to feel seen and understood, but also for others who need to see and
understand us. When it doesn’t happen, we are all the poorer for it.
This is one of the many reasons Black Panther is significant. What seems
like just another entry in an endless parade of superhero movies is
actually something much bigger. It hasn’t even hit theaters yet and its
cultural footprint is already enormous. It’s a movie about what it means to
be black in both America and Africa—and, more broadly, in the world.
Rather than dodge complicated themes about race and identity, the film
grapples head-on with the issues affecting modern-day black life. It is also
incredibly entertaining, filled with timely comedy, sharply choreographed
action and gorgeously lit people of all colors. “You have superhero films
that are gritty dramas or action comedies,” director Ryan Coogler tells
TIME. But this movie, he says, tackles another important genre: “Superhero
films that deal with issues of being of African descent.”
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Black Panther is the 18th movie in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, a
franchise that has made $13.5 billion at the global box office over the past
10 years. (Marvel is owned by Disney.) It may be the first megabudget
movie—not just about superheroes, but about anyone—to have an African-
American director and a predominantly black cast. Hollywood has never
produced a blockbuster this splendidly black.
The movie, out Feb. 16, comes as the entertainment industry is wrestling
with its toxic treatment of women and persons of color. This rapidly
expanding reckoning—one that reflects the importance of representation in
our culture—is long overdue. Black Panther is 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.
The invitation to the Black Panther premiere read “Royal attire requested.
” Yet no one showed up to the Dolby Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard on Jan.
29 looking like an extra from a British costume drama. On display instead
were crowns of a different sort—ascending head wraps made of various
African fabrics. Oscar winner Lupita Nyong’o wore her natural hair tightly
wrapped above a resplendent bejeweled purple gown. Men, including star
Chadwick Boseman and Coogler, wore Afrocentric patterns and clothing,
dashikis and boubous. Co-star Daniel Kaluuya, an Oscar nominee for his star
turn in Get Out, arrived wearing a kanzu, the formal tunic of his Ugandan
ancestry.
After the Obama era, perhaps none of this should feel groundbreaking. But it
does. 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. The fact that Black
Panther is excellent only helps.
Back when the film was announced, in 2014, nobody knew that it would be
released into the fraught climate of President Trump’s America—where a
thriving black future seems more difficult to see. Trump’s reaction to the
Charlottesville chaos last summer equated those protesting racism with
violent neo-Nazis defending a statue honoring a Confederate general.
Immigrants from Mexico, Central America and predominantly Muslim countries
are some of the President’s most frequent scapegoats. So what does it mean
to see this film, a vision of unmitigated black excellence, in a moment when
the Commander in Chief reportedly, in a recent meeting, dismissed the 54
nations of Africa as “sh-thole countries”?
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As is typical of the climate we’re in, Black Panther is already running
into its share of trolls—including a Facebook group that sought,
unsuccessfully, to flood the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes with negative
ratings of the film. That Black Panther signifies a threat to some is
unsurprising. A fictional African King with the technological war power to
destroy you—or, worse, the wealth to buy your land—may not please someone
who just wants to consume the latest Marvel chapter without deeper political
consideration. Black Panther is emblematic of the most productive responses
to bigotry: rather than going for hearts and minds of racists, it
celebrates what those who choose to prohibit equal representation and rights
are ignoring, willfully or not. They are missing out on the full
possibility of the world and the very America they seek to make “great.”
They cannot stop this representation of it. When considering the folks who
preemptively hate Black Panther and seek to stop it from influencing
American culture, I echo the response that the movie’s hero T’Challa is
known to give when warned of those who seek to invade his home country: Let
them try.
The history of black power and the movement that bore its name can be traced
back to the summer of 1966. The activist Stokely Carmichael was searching
for something more than mere liberty. To him, integration in a white-
dominated America meant assimilation by default. About one year after the
assassination of Malcolm X and the Watts riots in Los Angeles, Carmichael
took over the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee from John Lewis.
Carmichael decided to move the organization away from a philosophy of
pacifism and escalate the group’s militancy to emphasize armed self-defense
, black business ownership and community control.
In June of that year, James Meredith, an activist who four years earlier had
become the first black person admitted to Ole Miss, started the March
Against Fear, a long walk of protest from Memphis to Mississippi, alone. On
the second day of the march, he was wounded by a gunman. Carmichael and tens
of thousands of others continued in Meredith’s absence. Carmichael, who
was arrested halfway through the march, was incensed upon his release. “The
only way we gonna stop them white men from whuppin’ us is to take over,”
he declared before a passionate crowd on June 16. “We been saying freedom
for six years and we ain’t got nothin’. What we gonna start sayin’ now is
Black Power!”
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Black Panther was born in the civil rights era, and he reflected the
politics of that time. The month after Carmichael’s Black Power declaration
, the character debuted in Marvel Comics’ Fantastic Four No. 52.
Supernatural strength and agility were his main features, but a genius
intellect was his best attribute. “Black Panther” wasn’t an alter ego; it
was the formal title for T’Challa, King of Wakanda, a fictional African
nation that, thanks to its exclusive hold on the sound-absorbent metal
vibranium, had become the most technologically advanced nation in the world.
It was a vision of black grandeur and, indeed, power in a trying time, when
more than 41% of African Americans were at or below the poverty line and
comprised nearly a third of the nation’s poor. Much like the iconic
Lieutenant Uhura character, played by Nichelle Nichols, that debuted in Star
Trek in September 1966, Black Panther was an expression of Afrofuturism—an
ethos that fuses African mythologies, technology and science fiction and
serves to rebuke conventional depictions of (or, worse, efforts to bring
about) a future bereft of black people. His white creators, Stan Lee and
Jack Kirby, did not consciously conjure a fantasy-world response to
Carmichael’s call, but the image still held power. T’Challa was not only
strong and educated; he was also royalty. He didn’t have to take over. He
was already in charge.
“You might say that this African nation is fantasy,” says Boseman, who
portrays T’Challa in the movie. “But to have the opportunity to pull from
real ideas, real places and real African concepts, and put it inside of this
idea of Wakanda—that’s a great opportunity to develop a sense of what
that identity is, especially when you’re disconnected from it.”
The character emerged at a time when the civil rights movement rightfully
began to increase its demands of an America that had promised so much and
delivered so little to its black population. Fifty-two years after the
introduction of T’Challa, those demands have yet to be fully answered.
According to the Federal Reserve, the typical African-American family had a
median net worth of $17,600 in 2016. In contrast, white households had a
median net worth of $171,000. The revolutionary thing about Black Panther is
that it envisions a world not devoid of racism but one in which black
people have the wealth, technology and military might to level the playing
field—a scenario applicable not only to the predominantly white landscape
of Hollywood but, more important, to the world at large.
The Black Panther Party, the revolutionary organization founded in Oakland,
Calif., a few months after T’Challa’s debut, was depicted in the media as
a threatening and radical group with goals that differed dramatically from
the more pacifist vision of civil rights leaders like Martin Luther King Jr.
and Lewis. Marvel even briefly changed the character’s name to Black
Leopard because of the inevitable association with the Panthers, but soon
reverted. For some viewers, “Black Panther” may have undeservedly sinister
connotations, but the 2018 film reclaims the symbol to be celebrated by all
as an avatar for change.
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The urgency for change is partly what Carmichael was trying to express in
the summer of ’66, and the powers that be needed to listen. It’s still
true in 2018.
Moviegoers first encountered Boseman’s T’Challa in Marvel’s 2016 ensemble
hit Captain America: Civil War, and he instantly cut a striking figure in
his sleek vibranium suit. As Black Panther opens, with T’Challa grieving
the death of his father and coming to grips with his sudden ascension to the
Wakandan throne, it’s clear that our hero’s royal upbringing has kept him
sheltered from the realities of how systemic racism has touched just about
every black life across the globe.
The comic, especially in its most recent incarnations as rendered by the
writers Ta-Nehisi Coates and Roxane Gay, has worked to expunge Euro
centric misconceptions of Africa—and the film’s imagery and thematic
material follow suit. “People often ask, ‘What is Black Panther? What is
his power?’ And they have a misconception that he only has power through
his suit,” says Boseman. “The character is existing with power inside
power.”
Coogler says that Black Panther, like his previous films—including the
police-brutality drama Fruitvale Station and his innovative Rocky sequel
Creed—explores issues of identity. “That’s something I’ve always
struggled with as a person,” says the director. “Like the first time that
I found out I was black.” He’s talking less about an epidermal self-
awareness than about learning how white society views his black skin. “Not
just identity, but names. ‘Who are you?’ is a question that comes up a lot
in this film. T’Challa knows exactly who he is. The antagonist in this
film has many names.”
That villain comes in the form of Erik “Killmonger” Stevens, a former
black-ops soldier with Wakandan ties who seeks to both outwit and beat down
T’Challa for the crown. As played by a scene-stealing Michael B. Jordan
, Killmonger’s motivations illuminate thorny questions about how black
people worldwide should best use their power.
In the movie, Killmonger is, like Coogler, a native of Oakland. By exploring
the disparate experiences of Africans and African Americans, Coogler shines
a bright light on the psychic scars of slavery’s legacy and how black
Americans endure the real-life consequences of it in the present day.
Killmonger’s perspective is rendered in full; his rage over how he and
other black people across the world have been disenfranchised and
disempowered is justifiable.
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Coogler, who co-wrote the screenplay with Joe Robert Cole, also includes
another important antagonist from the comics: the dastardly and bigoted
Ulysses Klaue (Andy Serkis). “What I love about this experience is that it
could have been the idea of black exploitation: he’s gonna fight Klaue, he
’s gonna go after the white man and that’s it—that’s the enemy,”
Boseman says. He recognizes that some fans will take issue with a black male
villain fighting black protagonists. Killmonger fights not only T’Challa,
but also warrior women like the spy Nakia (Nyong’o), Okoye (Danai Gurira)
and the rest of the Dora Milaje, T’Challa’s all-female royal guards.
Killmonger and Shuri (Letitia Wright), T’Challa’s quippy tech-genius
sister, also face off.
T’Challa and Killmonger are mirror images, separated only by the accident
of where they were born. “What they don’t realize,” Boseman says, “is
that the greatest conflict you will ever face will be the conflict with
yourself.”
Both T’Challa and Killmonger had to be compelling in order for the movie to
succeed. “Obviously, the superhero is who puts you in the seat,” Coogler
says.
“That’s who you want to see come out on top. But I’ll be damned if the
villains ain’t cool too. They have to be able to stand up to the hero, and
have you saying, ‘Man, I don’t know if the hero’s going to make it out of
this.’”
“If you don’t have that,” Boseman says, “you don’t have a movie.”
This is not just a movie about a black superhero; it’s very much a black
movie. It carries a weight that neither Thor nor Captain America could lift:
serving a black audience that has long gone underrepresented. For so
long, films that depict a reality where whiteness isn’t the default have
been ghettoized, marketed largely to audiences of color as niche
entertainment, instead of as part of the mainstream. Think of Tyler Perry’s
Madea movies, Malcolm D. Lee’s surprise 1999 hit The Best Man or the
Barbershop franchise that launched in 2002. But over the past year, the
success of films including Get Out and Girls Trip have done even bigger
business at the box office, led to commercial acclaim and minted new stars
like Kaluuya and Tiffany Haddish. Those two hits have only bolstered an
argument that has persisted since well before Spike Lee made his debut:
black films with black themes and black stars can and should be marketed
like any other. No one talks about Woody Allen and Wes Anderson movies as “
white movies” to be marketed only to that audience.
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Black Panther marks the biggest move yet in this wave: it’s both a black
film and the newest entrant in the most bankable movie franchise in history.
For a wary and risk-averse film business, led largely by white film
executives who have been historically predisposed to greenlight projects
featuring characters who look like them, Black Panther will offer proof that
a depiction of a reality of something other than whiteness can make a ton
of money.
The film’s positive reception—as of Feb. 6, the day initial reviews
surfaced, it had a 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes—bodes well for its
commercial prospects. Variety predicted that it could threaten the
Presidents’ Day weekend record of $152 million, set in 2016 by Deadpool.
Some of the film’s early success can be credited to Nate Moore, an African
-American executive producer in Marvel’s film division who has been
vocal about the importance of including black characters in the Marvel
universe. But beyond Wakanda, the questions of power and responsibility, it
seems, are not only applicable to the characters in Black Panther. Once this
film blows the doors off, as expected, Hollywood must do more to reckon
with that issue than merely greenlight more black stories. It also needs
more Nate Moores.
“I know people [in the entertainment industry] are going to see this and
aspire to it,” Boseman says. “But this is also having people inside spaces
—gatekeeper positions, people who can open doors and take that idea. How
can this be done? How can we be represented in a way that is aspirational?”
Because Black Panther marks such an unprecedented moment that excitement for
the film feels almost kinetic. Black Panther parties are being organized,
pre- and post-film soirées for fans new and old. A video of young Atlanta
students dancing in their classroom once they learned they were going to see
the film together went viral in early February. Oscar winner Octavia
Spencer announced on her Instagram account that she’ll be in
Mississippi when Black Panther opens and that she plans to buy out a theater
“in an underserved community there to ensure that all our brown children
can see themselves as a superhero.”
Many civil rights pioneers and other trailblazing forebears have received
lavish cinematic treatments, in films including Malcolm X, Selma and Hidden
Figures. Jackie Robinson even portrayed himself onscreen. Fictional
celluloid champions have included Virgil Tibbs, John Shaft and Foxy Brown.
Lando, too. But Black Panther matters more, because he is our best chance
for people of every color to see a black hero. That is its own kind of power.
Jamil Smith is a journalist born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio. He lives in
Los Angeles.
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