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Black Panther Rules Cinema Earth by Doniphan Blair
Chadwick Boseman (lft) and Michael Jordan duke it out for the throne of Wakanda in Ryan Coogler's super-hero blockbuster, 'Black Panther'. photo: courtesy R. Coogler
WITH 'BLACK PANTHER' CRACKING ONE
billion box-office dollars world-wide, one month after it opened on February 15th, it takes its rightful place as both a spectacular hit and an important African-American film. It is also an important Oakland story, building on the city’s symbolism in popular culture.
Although it focuses on the adventures of a prince assuming the throne of Wakanda, an ultra-modern but still-tribal African kingdom, and features fantastic visions of women scientists and warriors as well as Africa, it has a plethora subplots, from Oakland revolutionaries and an abandoned child to a sympathetic CIA man and a vicious South African gangster.
“Black Panther” is star-studded, including Forest Whitaker and Angela Basset as well as a massive team of stellar black Los Angeles actors and artists. The hero, T’Challa, is well rendered by Chadwick Boseman, the 42 year-old South Carolinian, who did beautiful jobs as the first black pro baseballer Jackie Robinson (“42”, 2013) and the first black Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall (“Marshall”, 2017).
It also stars Michael Jordan (“Creed”, 2016, “Fruitvale”, 2013) as Erik Killmonger, the complex anti-hero often preferred by critics, who challenges T’Challa for the throne and the black panther’s magical powers. He advocates distributing Wakanda’s high tech tools to oppressed peoples—ie revolution.
With African-American culture so popular worldwide as well as across the United States, including Trump Territory, and with the paucity of black super—or regular—hero films, there is fantastic pent up demand. No wonder “Black Panther” became the third top domestic grosser, after “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” (2015) and “Avatar” (2009), and the thirtieth top-grossing film of history, inflation adjusted.
Produced by Marvel, which invented as well as mastered the superhero style, from computer graphics to hero stories, in over twenty blockbuster films (“Spiderman”, 1999, “The Fantastic Four”, 2013), it still has a lot of humor, human touches and cultural context, coming directly from director Ryan Coogler, an Oakland native, who also co-wrote.
The head of Wakandan security, played by Kenyan-parented, Mexico-born, Lupita Nyong'o, in 'Black Panther'. photo: courtesy R. Coogler
In just seven films, Coogler has surmounted cinema’s entire genre hierarchy. While at USC Film School in Los Angeles, he did the arty, streetwise short “Locks” (2009), which he set in West Oakland. After three other shorts, he made the powerful indie feature, “Fruitvale Station”, based on a true story about Oscar Grant, the young black man killed by police at the Oakland BART station of the same name.
By his second feature, Coogler took on the typical Hollywood flick, “Creed” (2015). Technically an under-a-million indie, it reprised the “Rocky” franchise, replete with Sylvester Stallone playing a trainer and the “winning isn’t everything” final. Interestingly, “Creed” was a straight-forward, no-nonsense story with few frills, aside from its quality script and acting, somewhat in the directorial mode of Clint Eastwood.
Interestingly, it was shot by Maryse Alberti, a French cinematographer, making Coogler the only director to use women “cameramen” in a majority of his films, regardless of macho content or style. “Fruitvale” and “Panther” were lensed by Rachel Morrison, whom Coogler met in LA, where she moved after New York University Film School to attend AFI. She also shot the non-Coogler features "Cake” (2014), “Dope” (2015) and “Mudbound” (2017).
While “Black Panther” takes place mostly in Wakanda, it starts in Oakland with basketball-playing kids, one of whom is the son of the revolutionary plotting an action upstairs until he is interrupted by the crew coming from Wakanda to anoint him king.
Although the film makes no overt reference, setting it in Oakland is enough to connect it directly to the Black Panther Party, which Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale started six months after Marvel debuted their first Black Panther issue in Spring of ‘66. Newton was a big fan of pop culture but he doesn’t cite the comic, created by two Jewish writers in New York, as inspiration.
Nevertheless, it was Marvel’s legitimate response to black interests and politics in the ‘60s, and it highlight the virtuous rather than vicious circle of cultural appropriation. From cubism and classical music to jazz and rap, culture is all about virtuous appropriation since once you express something publicly, it is free to inspire, travel and evolve.
Indeed, Coogler homages the connection by having one of those writers, Stan Lee (also credited as one of the film’s writers), appear as the Thirsty Gambler with a few lines in a casino scene.
A fascinating-looking ancient-current shaman attends a meeting of the tribes in 'Black Panther'. photo: courtesy R. Coogler
While Coogler doesn’t include a single one of the Black Panther’s world-famous icons—the upraised fist, the black beret, the leather jacket, probably assuming it would break the fantasy or open a can of worms, he continues one of the party’s central political discussions.
He makes the struggle between N’Kanda and Killmonger about whether to just achieve freedom and prosperity for yourself or to share the revolution with oppressed people worldwide. The film finally splits the difference, using technology for good and improving civilization, not overthrowing it with all the destruction that can involve.
Unfortunately, “Black Panther”’s script buries those ideas one level too deep while letting the multiple stories weave a notch too complex, perhaps following the superhero narrative mode, with too many subplots and car and plane chases.
Moreover, the scenes unravel a tad too fast to conjure their full cinematic weight or visual enjoyment, say of a woman warrior wielding a high-tech spear or galloping atop a rhino, succumbing to the standards of superhero films, which need to be testosterone addled to capture the interest of attention-deficit-disordered, video-game-saturated boys.
Nevertheless there are enough pauses and funny lines, like when the CIA man, sweetly played by Martin Freeman, comes upon the new king’s sister, perfectly portrayed by Letitia Wright, and she exclaims, “Don’t scare me like that, colonizer.” And there are lots of visual treats, from wide panoramas of a gathering of the tribes to the avant-garde photography Coogler likes to include at least once in every film except “Creed”.
“Black Panther” has an upside down dolly shot into a meeting with the king, which reminded me of one weird shot in “Fruitvale”, hand held running down the street, an odd but interesting choice by cinematographer Rachel Morrison.
“Black Panther” also had a lot of fascinating tidbits I would have enjoyed more of: a slick, modern shaman in bright green tailored suit and a six-inch lip-expanding ring of South American tribes, a wizen old but fascinating looking woman leading one of the warrior clans.
Oakland now sports a modern sci-fi feel, most notably its unpretentious multiculturalism. photo: D. Blair
I would have also loved to see some Latino or Asian kids playing basketball at the end of the film, given Oakland’s multicultural courts and the conclusion of the film with similar sentiments of sharing expressed by T’Challa during his appearance at the United Nations.
Regardless, “Black Panther” is a spectacular vision of a modern African society that is both free of colonizers but able to accept one white CIA guy, that is both a super hero story but full of humanity. It certainly was to the ten-year-old kid I played basketball one day in March, whose aunt arranged for the whole family to see the film together.
“Black Panther” is certainly a testament to the art both of Coogler and Hollywood’s large, powerful and talented African-American community, many of whom will undoubtedly being doing fantastically more in the near future.
Doniphan Blair is a writer, film magazine publisher, designer, musician and filmmaker ('Our Holocaust Vacation'), who can be reached . Posted on May 14, 2018 - 12:47 AM