When I first heard about the film Black Panther, I was so excited. A film about Huey Newton! I know so little about Newton, beyond the bare fact that he was leader of the Black Panther Party, and it seemed very topical. People were talking about the diverse cast, and it had an African-American director - this is not the 2001 biopic, political porn for a white gaze (I haven't seen it so I may be completely unfair) - this is real, a big budget pic I can listen and learn from, as well as being awesome representation. Newton himself said "I did not have one teacher who taught me anything relevant to my own life or experience. Not one instructor ever awoke in me a desire to learn more or to question or to explore the worlds of literature, science, and history. All they did was try to rob me of the sense of my own uniqueness and worth, and in the process nearly killed my urge to inquire." I fear that's often still the case, and this film, this will redress the balance a tiny bit.
Well, that film
is in the works, but Black Panther is not it.
Black Panther is a superhero film - heavy on the fight scenes, to my taste, but with a great cast, and particularly great familial relationships - I loved the mother, and the sister, in particular. I wish Lupita Nyong'o had been the title character instead of the love interest, but then, I just read Into the Drowning Deep by Mira Grant and was equally annoyed that the autistic character was love interest not main character. In my head she's played by
Taraji P Henson; yes, she's blonde, but so has
Henson been. What I'm saying is, I'd like to see more female protagonists of colour. I think it's coming: looking at the Disney channel listing, I see 15 distinct shows, all of which have female protagonists, two feature mixed race protagonists, two African American, three Hispanic, one Chinese and one has no single lead but mixed race/gender leads. It still leans white, but less so than their stuff aimed at adults. I have hope that that diversity will slowly bleed into Disney stuff aimed at adults, like Black Panther. (Lots of kids in the audience yesterday, though, which is nice)
The other thing about Nyong'o as lead is, it would eliminate my main annoyance with the film. Wakanda is a Kikongo word. It means Families. (Wa is a Bantu prefix indicating plural - kanda is the stem of family. I am not familiar with Kikongo, but I could buy that as a country etymology, especially as the language name follows that pattern, Ki is the prefix for singular, and the stem of the word is Kongo). In the film it's in central Africa, in the comics, east. So why do the Wakandas speak isiXhosa? That's like setting a fiction in central Europe and having them speak Icelandic; any Germanic language will do, no? Well, the reason appears to be that Chadwick Boseman speaks isiXhosa. Nyong'o speaks Swahili, the most widely spoken Bantu language, and in particular, is actually spoken in the region Wakanda appears to be. Obviously, Kikongo would be my choice of language for this, but Swahili would work much more believably than isiXhosa.
I admit, partly I find it frustrating because isiXhosa and other Zunda languages are almost familiar. I recognise a couple of words, can almost grasp at meaning. Swahili, depending on how much practise I've been putting in, I have reasonable receptive vocab. Mostly, though, I find it annoyingly almost there geographically.
It's not just language either - from Igbo masks to Zulu headdresses, pan-African cultural borrowings are sprinkled liberally throughout the film. It's a game of 'guess the nation' with every item of clothing, jewellery, tattoo. So perhaps it's deliberate. I've met too many people who just say 'well, it's African, close enough' though, and perhaps I should rather glory in this image of Wakanda as a united Africa? IDK. (Not just Africa; one time a teacher was using a menorah to teach about Sukkot because 'it's used in a Jewish festival, and Sukkot is a Jewish festival' *headdesk*). I think the reason this cultural pan-Africanism bothers me less than the linguistic is because Wakanda needs culture, taking from one country makes it a more direct mapping rather than a purely fictional country, and better that Wakanda culture is African than European or American. I can't rule out that it's because I'm racist though.
Don't get me wrong, Boseman is a great actor. I just would have enjoyed the film more with Nyong'o as lead, and Boseman as love interest. I look forward to seeing more of Letitia Wright. The other standout performance from a side character, for me, was Nabiyah Be as Linda. She reminded me of a grown up Sofia Wiley (Andi Mack). Somewhat disappointed that Be has only one credit on IMDb so I've already seen everything she's done.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif){kind=small}
