Tag: meta

Why Black Panther will do well in China

This post contains SPOILERS for the Black Panther movie.

Black Panther has taken Korea by storm, hitting the one million viewers mark on its second day. Now with BP set for an early March release in China, astutely avoiding the Chinese New Year but a few weeks ahead of serious competition starting with Pacific Rim Uprising, the speculation is on whether it will succeed in the second largest movie market in the world.

Rob Caine at Forbes.com has pointed out that Black-led movies in the past were either not distributed at all or did not do well in China. However, I believe BP can break that streak and be a hit in China. In addition to being a good movie with universal appeal, its story and aesthetics, whether intentionally or not, are a good fit for that market.

Let’s talk about simple stuff first, the visuals. One reason given for why Star Wars: The Last Jedi did so poorly in China was its drab visuals, which did not live up to what audiences there expect in a science fiction blockbuster. In contrast Black Panther, thanks to the work of costume designer Ruth Carter and set designer Hannah Beachler, is awash in vivid color and a sense of style that are garnering widespread acclaim. For this reason Black Panther is likely to be eye-catching for Chinese audiences.

China is also a market with high expectations for action scenes, and Black Panther with its extravaganza of action, with a particular emphasis on handheld weaponry and hand to hand combat, aims to satisfy. Wakanda’s general Okoye scoffing at guns as “primitive” and taking out a vehicle with a well-placed–and high tech, of course–spear is a meta moment, the announcement of a movie that largely eschews gunfights in favor of old school fighting prowess.

Then there is Wakanda itself, which is not a Western representative democracy but is technologically advanced, prosperous, and has deep roots in tradition and shared values in harmony with its material advances. This is much the same way China sees itself, as a country that does not have a Western-approved form of government but is still successful both politically and economically, leading the world in technology while avoiding the West’s bloodstained history of imperialism. (Whether reality matches this self conception is another matter and outside the scope of this post.)

Even T’Challa’s ultimate decision to bring Wakanda out of its self-imposed seclusion can be read as a parallel to China’s past isolation from, and subsequent reengagement with, the world. One of the ways China has expanded its global reach is through foreign aid, something Wakanda is shown to be doing at the end of the movie. Furthermore, Africa is the recipient of almost half of China’s foreign aid. Given China’s increasing economic and political ties to the region, the African continent is ripe to enter the Chinese popular imagination and Black Panther is an inviting entry point.

Taking a step back from current events into history, the conflict between royal contender Erik Killmonger/N’Jadaka’s violent revolutionary aspirations and spy with a heart of gold Nakia’s call for reforms and greater engagement can be read as a reflection of China’s own reckoning with the Cultural Revolution. China has experienced a rage-fueled, horrendously destructive upheaval in its own past and is still grappling with the consequences As such it may well find itself fascinated by the charismatic antagonist ably played by Michael B. Jordan while being relieved by the ultimate victory of stability and moderation in the form of T’Challa and his marriage, both political and romantic, with the humanitarian Nakia.

Even farther back in history, and in the realm of aesthetics, the dynastic struggle of Black Panther–brother pitted against brother, the poisoned legacy of fratricide, a king’s tragic death, his mother and sibling forced to flee for their lives–hits the beats of royal political dramas that are still reproduced and reimagined in popular media. It should be a comfortably familiar tale for Chinese audiences, down to the rules of succession more ironbound than personal loyalties. Even better, these rules of succession happily involve more of the aforementioned hand-to-hand combat.

Fatherhood and legacy form another strong motif in Black Panther, and this too is likely to hit home with audiences in China. If one were to try and come up with a story that would pull at the heartstrings of the country that invented Confucianism, one could do much worse than two sons coming to grips with grief, loss, and legacy from their fathers and actually meeting their ancestral spirits on the way, all against the background of duty to people and country. (It’s surprising that the movie was cleared for distribution, actually, because the
censors tend to frown on the supernatural and ghosts. I suppose
they were able to pass the scenes of T’Challa and Killmonger meeting
their fathers as psychedelic hallucinations.)

The women of Black Panther are likely to fit comfortably into preexisting niches, too. For all the talk about how revolutionary it is for the movie to have so many action heroines, Chinese media has quite a long history of such characters from wuxia novels and movies. They are rarely the centers of their own stories, true, but rather play supporting roles as love interests, family members, allies, and enemies of male protagonists. Black Panther’s female cast are likely to be received as part of that tradition.

For all these reasons, if I were to take a guess, I would say Black Panther has been engineered at least as much for success in China as domestically. If the film does well in that market, it would be well-deserved: in addition to its universal themes, Black Panther has much to offer to Chinese audiences in particular and I think they will come away from it deeply satisfied.

What did you think of W’Kabi? I got why he sided with Erik over T’Challa, but him being okay with Wakanda taking on the entire world and becoming an imperialist nation? That’s a heck of a leap. Was there a scene that implied he’s had these feelings for a while that I missed?

On my second viewing, I definitely caught a hint of his expansionist leanings early on when he just casually told T’Challa he and the Border Tribe would be happy to “clean up” outside if T’Challa ordered it. I think he’s seen a lot of things at the border, interacting with the outside world, and he’s come to see preemptive Wakandan intervention as the answer to both outside threats and outside disorder.

He probably faced a lot of condescension from the outside world, too, as the contrived face of a “poor” nation, and may well have been burning at the indignities he got from people who didn’t have a tenth of his power. I didn’t get the sense he shared in Erik’s rhetoric of racial justice, but rather found it suited his own vision for Wakanda’s future.

What’s more, I think Erik’s actions for the first half of the movie, helping and then rescuing Klaue to make T’Challa look weak and then turning on Klaue to take his corpse to the border, were entirely about turning W’Kabi to his side and convincing him that Erik would be the better king. The wily bastard’s been trained for this sort of thing, after all, exploiting and worsening internal dissensions to take over. W’Kabi was a pawn but a willing one, and I find his worldview and decisions fascinating from even the brief hints in the movie.

perfumeofsighs:

mcu m’baku is honestly one of the greatest aspects of black panther. he respects and honors the customs of his people and of the crown. he was defeated and accepted the outcome, and even when he was offered the throne, he honorably declined because t’challa is still alive. When ramonda, shuri and nakia give t’challa the heart shaped herb, he turned around…. this has to do with the crown of wakanda, and it’s not something he should be privy too, and he respectfully turns away (unlike ross who was wide mouth gaping at the ritual of it all).  

ALSO t’challa asks him to look after his mother, and he promises that no harm will come to her, and YOU BELIEVE HIM BECAUSE HE’S ALL ABOUT HONOR…. BUT he makes it clear that he’s doing this out of respect for Wakanda and the crown, not really out of respect to t’challa himself. He also doesn’t waste an opportunity to remind t’challa that this is the first time the king has come to the Jabaris in years, that his tribe is often dismissed and overlooked by the rest of the nation. 

To find M’Baku’s voice, he researched and imitated Nigerian accents, further separating the character from the South African-inspired T’Challa. It’s just one of many ways the Jabari differ from the city-based Wakandans, who largely worship the panther god Bast. “The panther is sleek, the panther is sneaky, the panther is covert—meanwhile, the gorilla will show up and bang on his chest and make noises to warn you about what is about to happen if you continue to cross the line,” Duke says. “We don’t hide, we don’t sneak. We come through the front door.” (x)

I love this detail! You can all be considered Wakandan, but there is clearly a perceived hierarchy and a tier of importance here, an “othering” of people despite the same allegiance to your country, and I love that M’Baku sticks it to T’Challa this way. And also to to Everett Ross. No fucks given there- About the Jabaris, Winston Duke says… 

“They haven’t been affected by colonialism and all the narratives that are associated with developing a sense of inferiority and people comparing them to animals”[…] “To them, this is just who they pray to, and they find their strength and agency in this religion. So being a bit gorilla-influenced was a sense of pride for them.”

He grunts at Ross to silence him. Ross is kind of an interloper. He has no say in Wakandan traditions, and has no place in his court. Even if Ross thinks of M’Baku as an animal, it literally means nothing because his opinion does not matter. 

Later when M’Baku and the Jabari show up, it was in the nick of time but also  it’s him announcing that they will want a greater say in the future of their country. And you’re hinted that this might be the case because M’baku is in the last council scene next to T’Challa. 

This is not to say that M’Baku is without fault. He scoffs at Shuri and is dismissive of her ability and ridicules T’Challa for putting a 16 year old girl in charge of the technological future of the country. It will be very interesting to see how he and Shuri interact in future installments. I WOULD REALLY REALLY LIKE TO SEE THIS, especially since they both got jokes, generally at the expense of the colonizer. It is not like tradition and technology cannot co-exist, although finding that balance can be extremely difficult. I think this is a really interesting sub-theme that runs through the movie. 

aryainwinterfell:

Of all the perfect things about Black Panther, one of the purest has to be T’Challa and Nakia’s relationship. Seriously:

  • Exes who don’t have any bitterness or resentment toward each other 
  • Exes who have gone their separate ways because they both have individual goals they want to pursue, not because one has wronged the other
  • Exes who want different things and disagree without being hateful or verbally abusive toward each other
  • Exes who are still adorably crushing on each other and everyone around them can see it and tease them endlessly over it
  • Exes who can work as a team
  • Exes who laugh and playfully tease each other
  • Exes who comfort and support each other
  • SPOILER A reunited couple who faces the world together, ready to make it a better place

This is it. T’Challa and Nakia have done it. They are the truest of all the OTPs. 

I feel like Ross had one sole significant job in the movie which was to verbally explain Killmonger’s plan to the audience, but I feel like that didn’t even play out right enough? Like, I had friends asking “why didn’t erik kill and deliver klaue right away? why help him in london and busan?”. My interpretation was “to make T’Challa look weak, increasing Erik’s odds”; it’s dirty politics CIA would use. Ross should’ve stated “Busan was Killmonger’s plan” at some point, I feel. But he didn’t.

thehungryvortigaunt:

lj-writes:

They’re the SAME GUYS, both CIA, both trained in its tactics and its worldview. Killmonger just had a much more sympathetic motivation and wanted a different set of people on top of the same structure. I hate that the story didn’t make this clear enough, making it seem like Ross is somehow better than Killmonger.

I know the studio-mandated reason why…funny, since with very little tweaking it’d be easy to frame Ross as the monster who CREATED Killmonger.

Omg exactly. And he could have died redeeming himself for a lifetime of destroying people for the American Empire, when he realized those same tactics could be used against all he held dear. That would have been actually powerful and meaningful. Instead we get a weaksauce non-relationship and last minute escape. Ross was the weak link in an otherwise stellar story.

ori-ebon:

zamzamafterzina:

lp1kfa:

erik killmonger is a villian, yes. but the reason black people can so easily humanize him is because we feel his sentiments. he is meant to represent the raw, unfiltered rage and frustration that black people feel deep down when we analyze how we’re treated around the world. he isn’t meant to be some smol lovable cinnamon roll uwu.

we aren’t glorifying him for murdering or being abusive or violent. we are sympathizing with him for having extremely valid and relevant reasons for being hurt. his anger is powerful and complex because it’s fueled by pain that every black person has felt some time in their lives. his intentions for wakanda were actually noble, he and nakia shared a similar vision. he just executed it differently for other reasons.

now please go nut over some evan peter gifs and leave black people alone.

*anti hero, that was butchered by a straw radical trope

^This. A character like Killmonger would be smart enough to realize how reckless and riddled with flaws his plan was as executed in the movie. The eventual fallout of his plan would be for Wakandan tech to fall into the hands of the oppressors, in one way or another. His idea was sloppy. The smart way to go about it would be to arm those Black communities, yes of course, but for the purpose of defending themselves while they organized, in a manner that was impossible back in the day, rather than just killing the people in power. But then that wouldn’t be a villain.

lj-writes:

Spoilers for Black Lightning early Season 1 (eps 1-4).

Excited as I am at the prospect of ThunderGrace, I wish we’d gotten
to see more of Anissa/Chenoa before the relationship ended. Chenoa looked like a character with a lot
of potential, and I don’t think the way either Anissa or the narrative
treated her was entirely fair.

Though I’m sad that we may not get to know more about Chenoa (hoping I’m wrong on that, fingers crossed), I do like the flaws the relationship and the way it ended revealed in Anissa’s character. It looks like her struggle will be to open up to others, even those closest to her, and I hope this will be something she has to face up to in her new romance as well as her relationship with her family.

And I certainly don’t want ThunderGrace to be magically perfect because it’s with a new girl, because that would imply the problem was Chenoa. There was nothing wrong with Chenoa other than Anissa not being into her, and not having the courage to tell her until she was caught flirting with another woman. I’m not letting Grace off the hook here, either–she was entirely too sanguine about the information that Anissa had a girlfriend. I suspect her flaw is that she’s a people-pleaser, since she mentioned a strained relationship with her parents.

I really respected Chenoa, by the way, for not putting up with Anissa’s behavior, and for having the sense to see it wasn’t working. This was the girl she had been dating for a year having self-described “mind-blowing” sex with, the girl she wanted to introduce to her parents, the girl she was trying to hold onto even though she knew it wasn’t working. That took guts to move on after a year of investment in a relationship. It’s why I wished she’d gotten a fairer shake from the show, and why I hope to see more of her.

@spacecadetjaylah​ said:

I’m
enjoying Black Lighthing so far but this storyline bothered me, I
didn’t get what was the point of having Anissa date Chenoa only for them
to break up, what, two episodes in so Anissa could be with his comic
canon girlfriend? If they really needed to break them up for Anissa’s
character development, I wish they didn’t involve Grace in it

The
only way I can justify it in my mind is: the way Anissa and Chenoa’s
relationship went was meant to show that both Anissa and Grace are
flawed characters. Anissa doesn’t let people get too close, even hiding
important things from her family, and Grace is afraid to speak up and
lose people she loves, as her relationship with her parents seems to
have suffered when they found out about her bisexuality.

Anissa’s
issue was  clearer than Grace’s, but Grace’s flaw is definitely there
if the viewer is willing to see Anissa and Chenoa’s breakup scene (which
happened off camera ffs) through any other lens
than “ThunderGrace can finally date for real whoo!” I mean, Anissa
straight up admitted that she’d been leading on Chenoa and using her,
and Grace is, like, way too okay with that in my opinion. Their issues
would interact in interesting ways with the storyline of a couple
dealing with superpowers, something that’s already explored in part with
Jeff and Lynn. How open and vulnerable is Anissa willing to be with
Grace? And how willing will Grace be to speak up when things get hard
for her or she thinks Anissa is wrong?

If revealing character
flaws was the intent of the Anissa/Chenoa storyline, though, I think the
story should have stayed a little longer with Chenoa and given her more
respectful treatment. I cringed when Jeff and Lynn joked about not
being able to remember her name, and while I get that it’s because
Anissa didn’t introduce them and didn’t talk much about Chenoa, it still
struck me as dismissive–especially when Chenoa wanted to introduce
Anissa to her own parents and Anissa more or less shut her down. Worse,
the story itself treated Chenoa as a non-entity and, in their last scene
as a couple, a bad person when she had every right to be angry that
Anissa was flirting with another woman. We didn’t even get to see
Chenoa’s pain at the end of her relationship because, again, the breakup
happened off screen. This is completely disrespectful of both the relationship and the character.

This
dismissive treatment and even outright vilification of Chenoa lessens
the effect of revealing Anissa’s and Grace’s character flaws and the
potential problems they will face as a couple. Worse, if the storyline
is made to show Anissa and Grace as being in the right, then there
really was no reason for Anissa to start the show in another
relationship and the writers are being incredibly oblivious of what
that storyline revealed about Anissa and Grace.

Spoilers for Black Lightning early Season 1 (eps 1-4).

Excited as I am at the prospect of ThunderGrace, I wish we’d gotten
to see more of Anissa/Chenoa before the relationship ended. Chenoa looked like a character with a lot
of potential, and I don’t think the way either Anissa or the narrative
treated her was entirely fair.

Though I’m sad that we may not get to know more about Chenoa (hoping I’m wrong on that, fingers crossed), I do like the flaws the relationship and the way it ended revealed in Anissa’s character. It looks like her struggle will be to open up to others, even those closest to her, and I hope this will be something she has to face up to in her new romance as well as her relationship with her family.

And I certainly don’t want ThunderGrace to be magically perfect because it’s with a new girl, because that would imply the problem was Chenoa. There was nothing wrong with Chenoa other than Anissa not being into her, and not having the courage to tell her until she was caught flirting with another woman. I’m not letting Grace off the hook here, either–she was entirely too sanguine about the information that Anissa had a girlfriend. I suspect her flaw is that she’s a people-pleaser, since she mentioned a strained relationship with her parents.

I really respected Chenoa, by the way, for not putting up with Anissa’s behavior, and for having the sense to see it wasn’t working. This was the girl she had been dating for a year having self-described “mind-blowing” sex with, the girl she wanted to introduce to her parents, the girl she was trying to hold onto even though she knew it wasn’t working. That took guts to move on after a year of investment in a relationship. It’s why I wished she’d gotten a fairer shake from the show, and why I hope to see more of her.

omfg help me, i’ve never seen more hypocritical white feminism bullshit today than the white women who woobify the fuck outta loki and kilo ron being quick as fuck to demonize the fuck outta killmonger. for real, it’s gross, like “killmonger stands for everything wrong with the black community and if you stan him you’re missing the whole point of black panther” but “loki? kilo? aw, my precious femme-/queer-coded white baby needs a hug, everyone treated this innocent little boy so wrong” WTFFFFFF

lj-writes:

What the fuck. First of all, nonblack people do NOT get a say on Black intracommunity issues so she needs to keep that shit out of her mouth. Second of all, killmonger who actually has a sympathetic and relatable motivation is a bad guy, while lokilo who are entitled elitists who decided to go on murderous rampages for selfish reasons are precious babies who can do no wrong? The hypocrisy, it burns.

BP SPOILERS below the cut:

@thehungryvortigaunt Yup, and that’s in large part because his methods were learned from his oppressors, something made very clear through Agent Ross’s exposition. Erik thought the answer was to keep the same unjust and violent structure in place, just with different bosses. That–the very thing Europeans have been doing for centuries to build their empires–is what made him a bad guy.