Satisfying, yet Hollywood

Rating: 7/10 (22 April 2018)

The Black Panther (2018) is a film about superheroes. Whether it is different from other American films in the genre in terms of plot and tropes? I am not sure. In fact, it is full of clichÃ©s. I expected that the creators' will revert the Eurocentric worldview and the resulting power hierarchy, which it fails to do. Nevertheless, it was a pleasant experience to see positive and strong black heroes. In a generation that we all come to associate superheroes, from Jesus to Superman and Wonderwoman with white people, this is a big deal. The allows to imagine a world in which Europe or America is not seen as almost a divinely ordained centre of the world and the avant-garde of human civilization. Indirectly, it hints that all the races came from Africa, that Africa is actually the locomotive of human civilisation in historical retrospect.
The film is, on another level, a brutal, yet superficial criticism of Euro-American imperialism, with all its nasty components from heritage stealing and colonising to coup-manufacturing and invasions. In an ironic fantasy world, the young King of Wakanda is fighting to death to prevent the distribution of state of art arms and technology to the world? Does anyone see the parallel? Yes, America is the biggest arm-dealer of the world with the most advanced military technology.
Besides falling into the tropes of Western motives, such as seeking the treasure, having a CIA guy always onsite and so on, I think the film does a good job to make us think and critic the Eurocentric worldview and decolonise our minds. Of course, one has to understand the struggle of the Black Americans and centuries long racism and discrimination to understand the film. Watching the film, I recall being in the Museum of African-American Heritage in Washington DC with my black friend from Malawi, where I was feeling joy and anger at the same time.
All in all the film failed me. I was hoping that the script writers and directors will bring the American revolutionary cousin (Killmonger) to unite the Wakandans, to ridicule the CIA guy and perhaps kick him out of Wakanda. Alas not. He is there to be demonised. Why are they portraying a CIA guy as an almost innocent lunatic with a baby-face? And a black revolutionary as a gangster and ultimately a monster who is there to destroy the world and disrupt the peace that the CIA is so eager to preserve? And, yes, Killmonger is right to ask: why the technologically advanced Wakandans are doing nothing for other people including Africans who suffer from poverty, instead they are content in their comfortable fantasy world.? It is not a caricature of the modern world. It is painfully realistic. The gap between rich and poor countries and rich and poor individuals has never been so greater, yet our Hollywood superhero is doing nothing to that end. He is happy with the state of affairs. He failed us just as Barack Obama failed every one of us sucking up to the power structure, doing nothing to stop American imperialism and overseas warfare.