Movie Review:
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The 2018 movie; “Black Panther”, an adaptation of the Marvel comics in the 1960s was received positively by everyone of all races all over the world. To the Africans it was something for once they could be proud of particularly when the blockbuster film starred African-Americans as the majority actors. The movie showed how advanced and self-sufficient an African civilisation could be while at the same time preserving it’s beautiful culture as illustrated by the exotic fashion and art.
I remember being at the edge of my sit throughout the movie. I did not want to miss any action nor a single word uttered by the actors. The names, the accent and Wakanda itself was captivating and boomed the energies of power and pride. I have always been interested with the history of civilisations and symbols of nationalism; kings, monarchies and caliphates. Genuine and authentic without any proxies whatsoever unlike today’s hypocrisy of democracy. I have always been fascinated with genetics and people’s origins.
I would see hundreds of people walking in the gates everyday from the elevated like cabin structure where I work and proceed to observe the people’s faces. I would ponder of their past and how they would have lived or looked like a 100 or a 1000 years ago. I would see a stout African man with a suit and imagine him lean and reaped covered with traditional clothes and accessories holding a spear, leading his tribe. Similarly I would spot a caucasian man and immediately ponder how he would have looked like and behaved if he was among the Celtic warriors of the past, covered with blue printed exotic tattoos indicating his tribe affiliation, with beads hanging on his beard; wielding an axe or two.
I’ve never recalled how often Hollywood made a genuine movie to celebrate or present African historical culture and achievements good enough to make everyone including Africans themselves to be proud of their significant past glory. While they do make movies of the black slavery to educate the masses of how hard times were back then and how far we’ve reached today, I believe there is a more sinister reasoning behind movies presenting such a dogma.
Movies about slavery does not stand for the benefit of the Africans, it just builds in to racism and hatred which is already circulating in the USA not to mention glorifying the system which abolished slavery that had little or nothing to do with the benefit of the Africans but its own personal gain and to instill in them an inferiority complex that whenever evil comes is from the white men and whenever good comes is also from the white men.
While Hollywood is surrounded by the ones who claim to be liberals, antifascists, and “Black lives matter” supporters, when you peel one layer of onion after the other, you will find out that they are far from what they claim to be. The movie “Black Panther” is a depiction of a comic book. That is okey seeming that all Marvel and DC comics want to illustrate their works, philosophy and doctrine to appeal to a wider audience and medium and so they’ve decided that the stories of their comics, one after the other are to take the centre stage by using the visual representation of film making.
Here is where my problem lies with the African people’s infatuation with the movie “Black Panther”. There have never been a recent Hollywood, historical depiction of the prominence of African civilisations and success but when Hollywood thought about bringing a similitude of Africa’s golden age they didn’t think of any other story other than a story based entirely on fiction whose origin is of a comic book written by a white man.
The nation of Wakanda, it’s triumph and the characters are not a real people nor did they ever exist in the universe we are living. Africans today cannot pride themselves and their past glory from a civilisation which never existed nor have anything in common. While children of European descent would watch movies such as “300”, ” Troy”, “Gladiator” influencing them to walk high and proud, something I well support – in contrary, “Black panther” will not have the same literal or practical correlation to the African people.
This reminds me of another 2018 mini series which is produced by both Netflix and BBC called “Troy: Fall of a city” where a black man played the Greek hero “Achilles”. I sincerely believe selecting a black man to star as the white hero was a troll move to ire the white nationalists. The only thing the movie did was contributing to the already existing racial tension in America and Europe.
My humble opinion is if Hollywood wanted to depict African heroes and marvel us with their past they should create and make authentic historical heroes the likes of Shakazulu, Askia of Timbuktu or the King Jaja himself who actually existed instead of black washing white heroes and making it seem there was no any African heroes or their great anecdotes in existence. Hollywood make it seems like they are standing for and covering the racial gap but all their projects of political correctness causes a contrary outcome as if intentionally instigating tensions and conflict between different races, religions and subcultures.
