Black Panther: A Postmodernist Film OR Now My Writing Samples Are In One Place

Todays post is a little different from what's usually on this blog. As I have been looking for jobs post-graduation (Hooray Class of 2019!) I have realized that it would make the most sense to have all of my writing samples in one place. This blog has gone through evolutions before so I hope no one will judge me too harshly for adding this academic paper to a blog that is generally just book reviews. I don't want any of my regular readers to feel the need to read this ten page academic paper, but I am very proud of it. And if anyone every wants to talk about Black Panther, let me know. Because I am always ready to talk about Black Panther. So, to my regular readers, thank you for all of your support! And to the potential employers reading this as a part of my writing sample, I hope to hear from you soon!

XO, Ellen

Black Panther: A Postmodernist Film

            When Black Panther came out in theaters in February of 2018, audiences had high expectations for the superhero movie. From the trailers we knew that the film had a great soundtrack and an even better cast, but from the full film we expected more. Audiences expected social commentary, meaningful character development, and an entertaining story. I believe the film met and exceeded many of its audiences’ expectations, but to continue on that thread would be to make a judgement of taste, which is not what I am here to do. I intend to show that Black Panther is a film that executes a postmodernist critique on present day racial politics, making it a film worthy of critical consideration. In this paper I will utilize the critical texts of Linda Hutcheon, Barbara Thaden, Ivory Toldson, Giana Eckhardt, and Eberhard Alsen to support a postmodernist and racially critical viewing of Black Panther. I will also use Mark Twain’s Pudd’nhead Wilson and Charles Johnson’s Middle Passage to show how the film fits into existing postmodernist discussions of race using aesthetic texts.

            As Linda Hutcheon shows in her first chapter of The Politics of Postmodernism, one can spend pages and pages attempting to properly define postmodernism. For the sake of this paper I want to focus on two definitions. The first is a quote from the beginning of Hutcheon’s text being that “postmodernism is a phenomenon whose mode is resolutely contradictory as well as unavoidably political” (1). This definition engages with postmodernism’s role in political discourse and the multiplicity inherent in attempts to define such an extensively applicable concept. The second is a condensed version of my understanding of Hutcheon’s article as a whole being that postmodernism is the calling out of stereotypes that inform our worldviews. Not only does postmodernism call attention to the stereotypes, but it informs us that those stereotypes are not based as strongly in fact as we might have otherwise believed. These two, of course, are imperfect definitions of an expansive and complicated topic. But, since I do not have the space to write a book on the topic, these are the definitions I will base my work on as I continue in this paper.

            To begin, Black Panther is the latest rendition of the story of Wakanda, an African country that has never been under colonial rule. The new king T’Challa, as he mourns the death of his father T’Chaka, struggles between continuing in the old ways or creating a new way of life outside of generations of tradition. This decision is further complicated when T’Challa’s cousin, Erik Killmonger arrives, challenges T’Challa for the throne, and wins. This victory does not only give Killmonger the throne, but also grants him the title of Black Panther, whose powers are bestowed by the heart-shaped herb. Killmonger then enacts a plan to share the technology and weaponry of Wakanda with all black communities throughout the world so that they can attack and rise above the people that have limited them, essentially reversing the proverbial script of colonization and power. In the end, T’Challa returns and he and Killmonger fight, but this time T’Challa is victorious. T’Challa then chooses to create a new way of life, somewhere between the old way and Killmonger’s way, as he spreads the technology and wellbeing of his country peacefully throughout the world.

Hutcheon’s text explains that postmodernist media often uses the ‘doxa’, or societal norm, and ‘de-doxifying’, the questioning of the societal norm, in order to call out the problems of that norm (3). It also seems that writers will often make the ‘doxa’ appear ridiculous in some way in order to create a basis of questioning. We see this in Twain’s Pudd’nhead Wilson as characters act according to their social limitations in a way that is made to appear absurd by those limitations. This kind of absurdity is particularly clear in Twain’s character of Fake Tom in Pudd’nhead Wilson. While Fake Tom is raised white, he learns later in life that he is actually the son of a slave and is technically black. Upon learning this, Fake Tom starts to act differently, as if this new information changes not only his understanding of himself but how the people in his community will understand him. This turns into a self-fulfilling prophecy as Fake Tom’s actions change so drastically as to call attention to himself, which is shown by the confused looks he starts to get from those he once saw as his peers and when Judge Driscoll asks him, “What’s the matter with you?—you look as meek as a nigger” (Twain 49). When Fake Tom learns the truth of his identity he does not change because something tangible has changed, but because how he perceives himself has changed. He can no longer act like a white man, despite being raised as such, because he believes that his 1/32^nd blackness outweighs everything else. This is absurd to the reader because obviously nothing has really changed, but for Fake Tom the stereotypes that define his world outweigh logic and create that change. By making this change ridiculous to the audience, Twain’s novel ‘de-doxifies’ the societal norm of the 1800s, being that white people and black people are inherently different in a negative way.

By calling attention to the ‘doxa’ Twain’s novel does the job of ‘de-doxifying’ in a way that is interesting but can be misinterpreted. Audiences often believe that the ‘de-doxifying’ force or the ridicule of the ‘doxa’ suggests how the world is or should be instead of suggesting what is wrong with the world. This can apply in interesting ways to Twain’s Pudd’nhead Wilson because of how the popularity of the novel has changed throughout time. In 1970, almost a century after the original publication of the novel, George Spangler published a thematic analysis of the book, arguing that the novel is “far from being incoherent or inconsistent” as it presents its “concern with the theme of property” (Spangler qtd Alsen 135). This started critical analysis of the novel that continued to expand and continues to expand today as the novel is now accepted as a text worthy of critical analysis. This applies to the novels work with the ‘doxa’ of postmodernism because of the time it took for that ‘doxa’ to become clear. With the book originally being seen as something just about the world and showing how the world works without pushback, the 1894 novel was seen as nothing more than something Twain wrote quickly and sloppily to get some cash. But now we can look back and see the societal norms that Twain was critiquing and understand that his work was a critique and not an endorsement of the societal norms of the time. This change in understanding with time becomes interesting as we consider Black Panther because of the implication that critiques become more important with time. While the film has yet to lead to more than a few critical reviews and commentaries in academic journals, the fact that those reviews and commentaries already exist in a critical setting after just over a year tells us something about the import of the film. Right now many of the writings on Black Panther are on personal blogs and news sources that go through no peer review before publication. But even these sources are evolving past simple movie reviews and are starting to engage in a more critical discourse on what the movie says about our society today and how it can influence change in the future.

In Charles Johnson’s novel Middle Passage we see similar work being done as Twain’s Pudd’nhead Wilson, but that work is being done in a very different context. While Twain was writing a critique of his present in his present, Johnson writes a critique that takes place in the past and uses that past to call attention to the present. Using elements of the familiar slave narrative Johnson wrote a book that took place in the 1830s that was engaging with events of the 1980s. By using anachrony Johnson makes it apparent that interpretations of his work should not be limited to the period in which it takes place. The clearest example of anachrony in the novel is Falcon’s description of affirmative action, a concept that did not exist in the 1830s but was at the forefront of many minds in the 1980s (Johnson 32). But Johnson is doing all of this work in an academic context where means of critical analysis already exist. Pudd’nhead Wilson could not have been an intentional postmodernist novel because postmodernism did not exist. But Middle Passage can be read as a purposeful postmodernist critique, because such critique existed when the novel was written.

A frequent confusion when engaging with postmodernist texts is whether or not the text is representing or endorsing its content. For audiences it is generally simpler to assume that a book or movie is saying that this is how the world should be rather than see that it is actually showing how the world is and should not be. Or, when the political climate of the book or movie seems to be close to reality, it is simpler to assume that this is an endorsement of the norm rather than a condemnation of it. This confusion can be applied easily to the two major possibilities of postmodernist interpretation of the Black Panther, being if it is showing that we have solved the problems of race or if we are calling out the problems of race. At first glance maybe we are seeing that the problem of race has been solved as we watch a successful film with a highly diverse cast. With only two white characters playing any kind of significant role, maybe Black Panther is showing us that racism has been fixed and that the peace of Afrofuturistic Wakanda can exist in the real world. Or maybe the film is showing us the absurdity of the stereotypes that we limit African communities to, as if an entire ethnicity could be simplified to one of two types. And maybe the film is showing us the danger of such limitations.

In her review “Black Panther: Thrills, Postcolonial Discourse, and Blacktopia”, Giana Eckhardt engages with the dichotomous stereotypes that she feels are embodied by the characters of Killmonger and T’Challa. Eckhardt reminds us of the Civil Rights Movement and how there seemed to only be two camps one could participate in. You could either “advocat[e] for a revolution using any means necessary, including violence”, a stereotype embodied by Killmonger and born of Malcolm X, or you could want change “but only via peaceful means”, a stereotype embodied in the film by T’Challa and born of Martin Luther King, Jr. (Eckhardt 5). These stereotypes are grounded in a history of change, but I believe that there is another set of stereotypes that fits the narrative of the film and the characters more closely. T’Chaka, late king of Wakanda, represents the stereotype of the patriarch who refuses to change because they feel safe with the comfort of tradition. His commitment to that tradition led to T’Chaka leaving his nephew, Erik, alone in Oakland which can be directly linked as the cause of the later conflict of the film. Erik, on the other hand, represents the stereotype of the abandoned angry black man, convinced that the only way to right the wrongs of the past is to take power to the same extent that it was taken. The only way to beat the colonizer is to become the colonizer, a view made obvious when he says “I know how colonizers think. So we’re going to use their own strategy against ‘em” (1:30:22).

Whenever questions of race are engaged with in popular culture there is a history that comes with them. The historical contexts of slavery and the Civil Rights Movement are inextricable from any contemporary discussion of race. But there are also new problems that we must engage with now, outside the purview of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. The contemporary impact of violence, incarceration, and institutional racism in African American communities has evolved beyond the stereotypes of the past into ideas less distinct than the leaders of the Civil Rights Movement, but nonetheless impactful and important. That being said, all stereotypes that are assigned to communities of color oversimplify those cultures. But, the stereotypes that are assigned are indicative of the larger problems in play in those communities. By focusing on different stereotypes in the film, Black Panther is engaging with current racial politics in a way that has not been done previously in the superhero genre.

Outside of engaging with the political world as the Marvel Cinematic Universe has not done before, Black Panther can also be analyzed in comparison to Middle Passage much as Barbara Thaden analyzes Middle Passage with some of Melville’s work in her article “Charles Johnson’s Middle Passage as Historiographic Metafiction”. With this article I will argue that T’Challa and Rutherford Calhoun play the same role in their respective narratives. Both characters have to recover from a loss of self, stemming from a discovery about their fathers. Just as Calhoun contends with the fact that his father did not abandon his children but died soon after his escape (Johnson 168), T’Challa contends with the fact that his father was not as good of a man as T’Challa once believed. When Calhoun learns that his understanding of his father’s history is inaccurate, he has to acknowledge that the excuses that he made for his actions up to that point are no longer valid. He can no longer claim that he is the way he is because his father intentionally abandoned him. So Calhoun has to reevaluate who he is and how he interacts with the world. In this rediscovery Calhoun comes to terms with his place in the world and how it differs from the stereotypes he adhered to previously. Upon learning of T’Chaka’s betrayal of his brother and nephew, T’Challa has to rebuild his understanding of the world on a new foundation. He always understood his father to be a good man and a good king and a change in that understanding causes T’Challa to doubt if he himself is a good man who is capable of being a good king. It is not until after Killmonger challenges T’Challa for the throne and wins that we learn how T’Challa’s understanding of himself has changed. During T’Challa’s second experience of the film with the heart-shaped herb and the subsequent visit to the ancestral plain, he speaks honestly to his ancestors. In this scene, T’Challa tells his father and his other ancestors that they were wrong “to turn [their] backs on the rest of the world! We let the fear of our discovery stop us from doing what is right!” And when he refuses to stay, instead choosing to return to life to fix the mistakes that had been made he says of Erik, “he is a monster of our own making” (1:37:42). In this moment we see that T’Challa has come to a new understanding of himself as a man who learns from his mistakes and does not continue in them for the sake of tradition. In this way, Calhoun and T’Challa have to go through similar processes in their character development. They do not change simply because of the events of the present, but because of a new understanding of the past. By both going through this process, both characters come to have a meta-understanding of the worlds in which they live.

Black Panther and Middle Passage are written in similar styles despite existing as different forms and different genres. Thaden refers to a change in Johnson’s style between Middle Passage and some of his earlier works in a way that “guid[es] readers over the abyss of postmodernism on the bridge of an adventure/romance plot” (755). The way that Johnson writes his novel allows audiences to read it without considering the deeper theoretical and critical aspects of the work. Audiences can read the novel and just enjoy it as a good novel. Because of this not all audiences perceive the stereotypes and caricatures of the characters because “they are so used to this type of characterization that they take it at face value” (Thaden 755). In Middle Passage, it is possible to just read and enjoy the book because it is well written. You do not have to have an understanding of the larger discussion that it is responding and adding to in order to appreciate it. I believe that Black Panther can also be understood in this manner. It was made as a superhero movie, a genre in which audiences have very specific expectations. And it meets all of those expectations and more, which makes it an enjoyable film to watch just as something to watch. It is, on its own, a good superhero movie. But it is also more than that. In this film, black communities were able to see themselves in a place of power that had not been given to them previously. Dark skin boys, girls, men, and women were able to see people who look like them as powerful. The film also confronts more serious and widespread political issues. From colonialism to racism, the film reminds us of parts of our history that continue to affect the world even as we claim those problems have been solved. And the film directly confronts the political leanings of isolationism that seem to become more prominent with each passing day with Brexit and Trump’s wall. In the first post-credit scene we see T’Challa addressing the U.N. to end the isolationism of his own country, but in a way that could easily be referring to any number of countries or people in our world today. He states,

Wakanda will no longer watch from the shadows. We cannot. We must not. We will work to be an example of how we as brother and sisters of this earth should treat each other. Now, more than ever the illusions of division threaten our very existence. We all know the truth. More connects us than separates us. But in times of crisis the wise build bridges while the foolish build barriers. We must find a way to look after one another as if we were one, single tribe. (2:05:43).

Not only is it simple to connect this quote to our current political climate, but it seems like audiences are supposed to. Director Ryan Coogler did not have to show T’Challa addressing the U.N., he could have simply suggested that things were going to change in Wakanda and moved on, perhaps putting a wedding or comedic event in place of that scene, which would have been the more entertaining choice. Instead he made the deliberate choice to openly make this political statement in the film. In Ivory Toldson’s commentary “In Search of Wakanda” he also addresses the political issues that the film calls attention to and how Black Panther as a character has always fought racism, with comics showing him fighting the KKK in 1976 and South African apartheid in 1989 (1). The idea that the character would confront racism and other political problems throughout the world is not new, but is as old as the character himself, whose first comic book was published in 1966. Ryan Coogler was not creating a new tradition of resistance with this film but continuing the longstanding tradition of resistance that started with all of the writers and artists of Black Panther that came before him.

            In conclusion, there is a long history of critique in comics, from Captain America punching Hitler in the face to this latest Black Panther film implicitly referring to Trump’s wall. I have just applied the logic of postmodernism to this latest critique. Black Panther calls our attention to stereotypes and the absurdity of them, much like Pudd’nhead Wilson and Middle Passage. It also reminds us that it is possible to break from those stereotypes, an idea that is also similar to one of the possible conclusions of Middle Passage. The analysis that Thaden applied to Middle Passage can also be applied to much of Black Panther, particularly since Calhoun and T’Challa play similar roles in the two stories. The film works with Barthes concepts of ‘doxa’ and ‘de-doxify’ as they are introduced by Hutcheon. Through all of this, the film does not have to be watched through a critical lens. A person could just watch and enjoy the movie. But the film can be watched through a critical lens as a critique and analysis of our world today. Black Panther is more than just another superhero movie. And it should be treated as such.

Works Cited

Alsen, Eberhard. “Pudd’nhead Wilson’s Fight for Popularity and Power.” Western American       Literature, vol. 7, no. 2, pp. 135-143.

Black Panther. Coogler, Ryan, director. Marvel, 2018.

Eckhardt, Giana M. “Black Panther: Thrills, Postcolonial Discourse, and Blacktopia.” Markets,   Globalization & Development Review, vol. 03, no. 2, article 6, 2018, doi:10,23860/mgdr-2018-03-02-06.

Hutcheon, Linda. “The Politics of Postmodernism.” Routledge, 1989, 1-29.

Johnson, Charles. Middle Passage: A Novel. Scribner, 2015.

Thaden, Barbara Z. “Charles Johnson’s Middle Passage as Historiographic Metafiction.” College English, vol. 59, no. 7, Nov. 1997, pp. 753-766.

Toldson, Ivory A. “In Search of Wakanda: Lifting the Cloak of White Objectivity to Reveal a      Powerful Black Nation Hidden in Plain Sight (Editor’s Commentary).” Journal of Negro Education, vol. 87, no. 1, Winter 2018, pp. 1-3.

Twain, Mark. Pudd’nhead Wilson and Those Extraordinary Twins: Authoritative Texts, Textual  Introduction and Tables of Variants, Criticism. Edited by Sidney E. Berger, W.W. Norton & Cie, 2005.