When this movie came out it was a big freakin’ deal you HAD to go see it! And go see it I did, I’m all into the Marvel universe so I was pretty excited to see the next installment of Marvel comic superhero movies. The film was awesome in how it ties into all the others but was also a great film on it’s own. I must admit though that the biggest reason I wanted to see it was for more than the film itself. Number one: one of my favorite artist’s is Sacramento’s own Mozzy and I got word that he was supposed to feature a few songs on the Black Panther soundtrack and I just had to hear. He wasn’t too well known yet so to get his work featured in this movie was dope and would help catapult his career. Number two: I’m a huge Ryan Coogler fan, for those who don’t know he’s the director of Black Panther. He’s an Oakland Native and attended Sac State and I have ties to both Sac and Oakland so I was super excited and proud to see his rising success. He previously worked with Michael B. Jordan on his directorial debut film Fruitvale Station, for those who don’t know it’s about the events leading to the death of Oscar Grant, young man who was killed in 2009 by a BART police officer at the Fruitvale district station of the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) system in Oakland. Great movie highly recommend it, you won’t regret it. Watching Black Panther for the first time I did it for pure entertainment value, this time around with a critical race theory lens I saw things I missed and seen things completely different.
Black Panther takes place in a hidden advanced African nation, Wakanda. The movie introduces and follows T’Challa (Black Panther) who, after the death of his father, the King of Wakanda, returns home to the isolated, technologically advanced kingdom to succeed to the throne and take his rightful place as king. We are then introduced to Killmonger Black Panther’s enemy, he challenges T’Challa’s mettle as king and later dethrone’s him and proceeds to excuse my french, fuck shit up. It ends up like all other Marvel movies where the superhero saves the day and all order is restored. Now equipped with the proper critical race theory tools I see the movie way differently, a way everyone should experience it.
From the readings, I have learned the movie ‘Black Panther’ was a special moment for African Americans as it displayed the racial group in a light they typically aren’t shown in. In the article, “Why ’Black Panther’ Is a Defining Moment for Black America,” Jamie Broadnax of Black Girl Nerds made the claim the characters “are rulers of a kingdom, inventors and creators of advanced technology. We’re not dealing with black pain, and black suffering, and black poverty.” Even the African American women are positively displayed as ”uniformly independent, strong, courageous, brilliant, inventive, resourceful, and ethically determined” as said in the “‘Black Panther’ Is Not the Movie We Deserve”. The ‘Black Panther’ was a successful movie in the way it showed black power and was even favorable at the box office. Just as there’s a need for more racial diversity in the creation of media, we also need more in areas of critiquing the work. “Why Cultural Critics of Color Matter” makes the claim more cultural representation needs to be made in the critics as it is unfair for the work of colored people to be criticized mainly by white people. The readings all argue other races need to have better representation in the media on both sides of the creation and the critiquing to balance out the number of white people in the industry. Black Panther was a movie our society needed, although it was a step in the right direction we have a long way to go.
Inside the Mind of Los 