Document Type
Article
Source
Religions
ISSN
2077-1444
Volume
9
Issue
10
First Page
304
Publication Date
10-8-2018
Department
Religion and Philosophy
Abstract
Directed by Ryan Coogler, the film Black Panther portrays the heroes of the fictional African kingdom of Wakanda as godlike. They possess otherworldly sophistication by virtue of their blackness, in contrast to longstanding tendencies in mainstream film toward tokenism, stereotyping, and victimhood in depictions of people of African descent. The superhero the Black Panther, a.k.a. King T’Challa, learns to stand in solidarity with the oppressed, even those in whose oppression he has been unwittingly complicit, such as the children of the African diaspora. As a result, the film can function as catalyst for reflection on the part of viewers in terms of how they might perceive more clearly the complexity, variety, and ambiguity represented by blackness, whether others’ or their own, and how they, too, might identify with the Other.
Rights
Copyright © 2018 the author(s)
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.