When someone watches a movie, they watch it for entertainment but if you take a different approach, you notice the history. Black Panther is the very first Marvel movie to have an almost entirely black cast. But that is not the only thing. They are also the very first Marvel movie to combine entertainment with African culture as well. In this paper I will be telling you in what ways the Black Panther incorporates African American culture and history.
To start off the movie, there is a little boy and a father talking. The little boy asks the father to tell him a story. The father then asks, “which one.” The little boy then responds, “the story of home.” Just with those few couple of words, something sparked in my brain. Back during the slave times, and even today, many African Americans share stories of their “home.” Just as the story of the Black Panther, it was not just all good memories or a story with no struggle. African Americans today and in history have stories of when they were being forced to do labor and being mistreated by those who felt were superior to them. But they also shared stories of their ancestors and their homes in Africa and their culture alone. These stories were passed down from generation to generation to help the youth be educated in where they came from and the struggles that their ancestors had to go through in order for the youth to be where they are today in society.
Throughout the movie as well we learn that Wakanda is “hidden in plain sight.” This then proves to me that in society black power and the nature of black successes is also hidden in plain sight. It’s a sad reality but a true one because the Black Panther helps us to see this so clearly. Outsiders see them as a poor country in which is barely surviving and has little to no resources, while the whole time Wakanada is way more advanced than the rest of the world.
They also use a very intense comparison. A man named claw decides to steal Wakanda’s vibranium. Thus showing us that a white man is stealing a very valuable natural resource in which Wakanda has used to survive for many centuries. This to me just shows how the creator of the Black Panther uses the history of whites/outsiders coming into Africa and taking the resources that many Africans used to survive and were natural resources in which only Africa could provide. This is a very strong event in history because this is what started a great war between blacks and whites.
Wakanda is symbolism of what Africa could have been or could be in today’s world if it wouldn’t have been invaded by those who wanted what Africans had and most importantly African people.
In a scene in which the black panther and two other female leads go to capture Claw, they have one of the warriors put a wig on her head because of the fact that she was bald and in America/society that is not seen as normal and or what is acceptable. We get told that she is uncomfortable in it and when she gets the opportunity to take it off she does so as soon as she possibly could. Today we see many whites try and do hairstyles in which they do not know the meaning behind. We have seen whites with dreads we have seen whites putting corn rolls in their head because of the fact that African Americans look “cool” with them. But when the tables are turned African Americans do not want to “fit in” or look like whites because it shows their strength and also their natural beauty.
With the death of Erik’s father when he was very young, helps us to see the loss of connection to those of African decent. This blows my mind because I compare it to the time in which people were taken as slaves. They lost their connection to their African roots and their ancestors as years went by because they were not able to experience/learn about it from those in which who knew most about it. When Erik becomes the black panther it shows us that he still has Wakandan inside of him but when being cut out of one’s heritage, it then becomes detrimental. When king T’Challa gets to drink the purple herbs he gets to see his father in his beautiful land surrounded by his ancestors but when Erik does the same thing he sees his father in the apartment in which he was killed isolated from their ancestors, away from”home.”
Throughout the Black Panther you get to really see the difference between a typical Marvel movie and this Marvel movie. Throughout Superman, Batman etc., it was all about two people fighting to beat each other unlike the Black Panther which shows us that they fight for their community. They fight for Wakanda which is more important for them than the power to just be king, it is more important to be able to decide what helps others and what does not in their present and future.
Throughout this movie we see many comparisons and symbolism. Some may have been more obvious like the African culture of dance and ceremony and others like the way in which characters represent the African descent in which they came from like Erik and T’Challa. Every movie has history, but not the history of African Americans. This movie is inspiring, this movie is inspirational, this movie is historical. It made history, history in which needed to be made.