Black Panther - The Significance

So here's the other part of my Black Panther post, if for some reason, like me, you're interested in the cultural accuracy, then I recommend you go and look at my last post in which I deconstructed the trailer, but for this section I'm going to look at the cinematography surrounding this incredible character, I'll also explain why it is such an important film in the western world, so let's get on with it.

Although the trailer for Black Panther showcased the thought that went into the film beautifully, it didn't do a fantastic job at drawing in the audience, throughout we see a lot of mystery and a lot of conflict, but very little explanation on either account. Even the reference to El Dorado in the first scene of the trailer would need a decent sized scene to explain the parallels of lost cities and precious metals (Vibranium as opposed to gold), which the trailer just doesn't supply. Now I understand that the fact that Wakanada is a mysterious place is a major theme and the trailer is trying to mirror this, but it's very easy to give a film mystery and explain a necessary amount as well. Then again this is a teaser trailer and only establishing the overall theme so maybe I'm being too harsh here.

African culture has been criminally underused throughout Hollywood. (Ooh topical with the many recent racism claims!), to see this just think about what we see in modern films! The Greek myths have been done to death, with films involving various gods, heroes, legends and the like taking centre stage over the past few years, most recently being Wonder Woman featuring her amazon origins (brilliant film by the way). Also in the process of being milked are the Norse myths, you'd be hard pressed to find someone who hadn't heard of Odin the all father or Thor these days. Native american burial ground are such an overused trope that they're now a joke in pop culture and looking back a couple of generations we see the enormous overuse of Asian culture with ridiculous amounts of marital art and samurai movies (okay maybe not all of Asia is equally represented either). And of course, European and American history has been run into the ground over and over again.

But one of the most notable exceptions to this list is THE WHOLE FUCKING CONTINENT OF AFRICA!!

T'Challa is not amused

Being the second largest and second most populated continent on Earth you'd think it would attract a bit of attention. With 10% of the population following traditional religions and an estimated up to 3000 tribes, one would assume that Hollywood would be able to find a hell of a lot of inspiration among its incredibly diverse culture. However, possibly due to remaining stigmas from hundreds of years of racism, or the European purge of African history, extremely few films take any inspiration from Africa and this is the point in time where that could change.

The ridiculous amount of unexplored concepts makes for a goldmine of original ideas, something which Hollywood and Western media is severely lacking currently, and there are several points about this film which dramatically increase its appeal to a far larger audience. Firstly the inspired fusion between the enormously popular sci fi genre with these underused concepts means it could be everything Indiana Jones 4 tried to be!

Secondly, it has what I like to call the nostalgia factor. Several decades ago there was a boom in adventure films, when the classics such as Indiana Jones and The Mummy rocked the world of our parents. If this is done correctly, the parallels of El Dorado could make for an adventure like concept in the film and the atmosphere of mystery and intrigue similar to what was inspired by the greats. The fact that it's also drawing inspiration from the current geopolitical mess that is our worldwide political system should also make it an interesting watch.

Finally, the fact that it's a Marvel film alone should make it extremely successful. In order to prove this, I took the data from IMDb on gross income for all marvel films since phase 1 (in USD) and compiled it into a handy chart of estimated budget (I couldn't find actual figures for budgets or breakdowns anywhere), profit and the profit to budget ratio.

So the black line is the average profit : budget ratio, scaled so that 400 million is breaking even (1:1). Although it's skewed because of the gaps between the phases and my Microsoft Word refusing to ignore them, it's still pretty obvious how successful, with the only loss being on The Incredible Hulk. And it's also worth noting that Guardians of the Galaxy 1 and Ant Man, which featured far more obscure characters than Black Panther did ridiculously well. Anyone who's seen them knows that if there's one thing that Marvel do well, it's pull off the unusual incredibly. Also worth noting that Captain America Civil War, where they introduced the character, has extremely high profit and therefore viewers.

And so that's basically everything I have to say, if this film is a major success, it could be a major turning point in Hollywood inspiring films with origins in lesser known cultures and a far more interesting world of cinema than the endless cycle of remakes and indie films that it seems to be tending towards at the moment. Thanks for reading!! Au Revoir!

Image credit goes to Marvel.

Black Panther - A Cultural Perspective

Long time no read! On the off chance that I had any regular readers beforehand, and on the even offer chance that any of them are still around, I'd like to apologise but what with university, I've barely had time for anything for months now. But from this day forth, that changes!

Thanks to an interesting debate that I had with a friend, I've decided to make my extraordinarily grand return a two part series on the upcoming Black Panther film. The first part (this one), will be on analysing the cultural accuracy and inspirations of the black panther film from the posters and trailers we currently have. The second part (not this one), will be to analyse the cinematography and hopefully will give a broader view on trends throughout the marvel universe, although that one need a lot more research so I've decided to do the easier one first!

So lets dig in, although if you haven't seen the trailer yet, I'll embed it here so you can have some idea what I'm on about.

 

From what we know so far, the film deals with the immediate aftermath of Captain America Civil War including a power struggle in Wakanda as with T'Chaka dead, several of the local tribal leaders challenge T'Challa for the throne and also how Wakanda interacts with the rest of the world as it goes from a country that keeps to itself (think super badass Switzerland), to being forced into the spotlight after recent events, note the trailer song.

This is almost definitely what will lead others to fight T'Challa for the throne as African culture is usually very tradition focused and so such a large change in such a powerful country could not go unchallenged, but I'm getting off topic, back to the matter at hand.

Western pop culture (I'm looking at you Hollywood) almost exclusively forgets that Africa has an incredibly rich and diverse culture. This isn't exactly helped by the overshadowing nation of Egypt, or the atrocities committed against African culture by settling Europeans, but provided that Marvel pulls this off perfectly, they may well be in a position to change all that and put Africa into the spotlight, giving its incredible culture the recognition it deserves.

In order to understand the film's inspiration, we should first understand the inspiration of the character, the character originated in the 1960s at the heart of the black rights movements in America. One group in Alabama took the panther, to be their mascot and became known as the black panther group, and when Stan Lee and Jack Kirby read about this group in a newspaper article in 1966, they made the choice to take a black superhero that they had been toying with the idea for, the coal tiger, and incorporate him into The Fantastic 4 #52 under the new name - Black Panther.

But how does the film compare to actual African culture? Well in order to do that we should look at the trailer in more detail. Firstly we get this stunning scene of T'Challa disembarking his jet, surrounded by people in vibrant outfits and frankly incredible scenery. And all of this is accurate to real life! The costumes were designed by Ruth Carter (known for Roots and Malcolm X) who has in interviews commented that she looked to the Masai and the Suri tribes for inspiration.

Of course the fact that Wakanda is a significantly more advanced country than any that exist today adds another element of challenge, especially since the designs all seem to be drawn from very old cultures, but it looks like the costume designers did a fantastic job of preserving the vibrant colours and traditional forms of clothing while using futuristic looking materials. We can also see they still have futuristic but familiar looking spears as the weapon of choice, just like may of today's African tribes.

In a shot further on in the trailer, we see a gorgeous aerial view of the city, and honestly the design is flawless, as well as looking like the sort of high rise you'd see in Japan or Korea, it's complete with the African propensity for circular structures which we see in tribal huts and buildings today, along with even having traditional straw roofs on some of these high rise buildings! Even the infrastructure is laid out in a way so that it is efficient and away from the ground, which appears to be covered in plants, looking almost like a rainforest, echoing the huge respect for nature prevalent in African culture.

In addition to this, there is evidence in the trailer and descriptions that it is a nation ruling over several tribes who occupy different regions of Wakanda, echoing the African social structure of old and finally we have the poster released for the film. This poster caused the internet to reel with stupidity even more so than usual when it was released, with racist conspiracy theorists running rampant, claiming that it looked overly militant and that white genocide was coming.

As entertaining as it was to read about, I personally think that it's on the same level of stupid as flat earth theorists. Because while it has also been compared to images of American black rights leaders, which is at least a bit less insulting, I would like to point out that there are only so many ways to sit on a throne. Personally I think that it looks similar in style to portraits of monarchs from European history. This is also pretty likely as there is a lot of inspiration to draw from in these easy accessible images of kings and queens, and also it would be a nice nod from the designers of the poster to the associations of these sorts of portraits with royalty and developed societies.

I'd also like to point out some more examples of the incredible attention to detail in this poster. The juxtaposition of the beautifully designed hall to the dirt on which the throne sits implies a certain level of humbleness and connection to nature. The throne's large prongs resemble claws and finally the text on the throne and walls appear to be a more modernised version of the traditional Adinkra symbols used throughout Africa (also worth noting they are carved on stools for rituals).


So I hope you all enjoyed this whistle stop tour of African culture in what's sure to be a great film. Next week I'll try to analyse the cinematography of this and what it could mean for the Marvel universe and for cinema itself (cue ominous noise). Anyways - Peace out!

So that I don't get sued - All image credit goes to Marvel Studios/Disney and no copyright infringement intended, thanks to my debate buddy Adam for the idea.