Do you have a home? I am and have been various kinds of homeless, which can be another way of being alone or unsafe: literal and figurative in the Robert Frost sense of “Home is where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.” I am reluctantly allowed to inhabit certain spaces, but I stay in the front room, polite, not relaxed, minding my manners, knowing that others will be relieved once I leave. I have made the best home that I could on the firmest ground that I could find in a hostile territory, but it is a fragile home built on debt and others’ benevolence so that sense of homelessness is still palpable. I am uncertain whether I will ever recover from the trauma of homelessness and feel secure. Many don’t.
When I watch a movie, I pay attention to when I cry. The first time that I saw Black Panther, it was the beginning of the film. I was just so happy that imagination did not produce a world that the Nazis or the Confederates won, but a world where I could be happy for others that could live fully without intrusion. The second time that I saw Black Panther, I cried when death was defeated by a cry for justice against my homelessness. Now I cry because I awake to a world where imagination is better than reality, and there is no Wakanda except in our dreams.
Black Panther is the eighteenth and arguably the best Marvel movie to date. It is Ryan Coogler’s third and biggest film after Fruitvale Station and Creed, another ghost story and way of tackling the thorniness of being a human being versus an icon to avoid either becoming a ghost or kept prisoner to that ghost’s legacy. It begins with a child’s bedtime story, a tale of civil war mostly resolved by one man’s wisdom and power, then ends with an adult confronting the image evoked in that simplistic story and discovering the disillusioning texture hidden in plain sight. The underlying question of Black Panther is who should he be, what should he do with that information and how does he rule? Serve and save. Not or.
T’Challa is a man finally touched by tragedy, but has no opportunity to mourn and must immediately be anointed the King of Wakanda. He is uncertain how to do it while simultaneously tackling his grief so he reflexively follows his father’s instructions: surround yourself with good advisors. There is Okoye, a traditional Wakandan played by the stunning Danai Gurira; Nakia, an ex-girlfriend, a War Dog, a potential heir to the throne from the River Tribe who represents a new Wakanda that will save others played by the luminescent Lupita Nyong’o; W’Kabi, the only Wakandan who has tasted the sorrow of the outside world, is a close friend, a potential heir to the throne from the Border Tribe who does not exercise this right because he believes that T’Challa will give him revenge, is pro-closed borders and hopes for a new Wakanda that will wage war played by Get Out’s Daniel Kaluuya; Shuri, his sister and another potential heir who is a technological visionary and perhaps the wisest person in Wakanda played by breakout star Letitia Wright; Zuri, the religious leader of Wakanda played by thespian Forrest Whitaker; and Ramonda, the Queen Mother who has complete faith in and unconditional love and for T’Challa and T’Chaka played by breathing icon Angela Bassett. The implementation of that advice leaves him fractured and responding to, instead of initiating, action.
The source of T’Challa’s strength can be unlocked by exploring Ramonda’s cry during ritual combat, “Show him who you are!” He initially translates this cry as a reminder that he is the son and unquestioning heir of T’Chaka. When his faith in T’Chaka’s true character is shaken by objectively damning information, he reflexively continues his approach of continuing his father’s legacy of hiding the truth, which is his main weakness and almost destroys him. He exorcises that weakness by doing something revolutionary, especially for black people. He corrects older folk and stops following their advice, “You were wrong to turn your back on the world.” When he separates himself from a legacy of privilege and embraces the horror of truth instead of continuing to erase it, he shows who he is: a good man.
How do you serve and save? How do you implement justice? I have a rule when it comes to power: be a pipe, not a bank. If it flows through you to others so they can act fully without fear then it will not build up and destroy whatever contains it from within. Black Panther is a study in contrasts: ritual combat, the ancestral plane and entering and ruling in the throne room. T’Challa’s foil is Killmonger, a man who rejects tears as he sheds them and believes strength is found in denying himself simple human reactions such as grief and love. Many of us share more characteristics with Killmonger than T’Challa. We are abandoned, denied children who emerged stronger and more certain from the struggle but also forced to mutilate ourselves to survive. Unlike us, he actually does have the potential of a home, although he knows that he is not welcome.
There is power to knowing that your mere existence can crumble foundations. I literally have this power on a smaller scale, and there is a thrill to insisting on occupying that space, but I have explored its furthest corners and retreated back into exile with infrequent visits to a place that can never be my home. There are options, and none of them felt completely nourishing to me. I can insist on staying, but live with the constant nagging reminder of the pain of earlier rejection. The lack of a home is never erased, and I will never truly trust those few that do welcome me. When they try to show me the world that I missed, even if it is beautiful, some part of me will resent it, hate it, see it as a lie, reject it and destroy it. I will want to inject every beautiful memory with the reminder that all those whom you love and occupy your soul were nothing because they let a child suffer if that memory does not explicitly hold some acknowledgment of my existence, your failure. I am a silent footnote to your stories, and it is in many ways too late for me to learn them because I know that they are lies and irrelevant to my life if I want to move forward, but I’ve never deluded myself into believing that I could or should rule a home that I know nothing of, that I have never seen the sun rise or set upon, that I don’t actually love.
Lately the Marvel universe has been dominated by the danger of the veneer of resistance hiding vengeance against individual pain and grievance, which is not justice or restoration to resolve systematic societal wrongs, but personal, self-motivated revenge and exploitation of others’ justified pain. I am not recommending that you watch Inhumans, but Killmonger’s story arc is very similar to a Maximus’ character development. I don’t think that they accidentally gave the same storyline to different mediums in the same phase. I also think it oversimplifies Killmonger and Maximus’ storyline to simply empathize with their pain and cheer their desire to fight back, but ignore the real damage of the injustice that they perpetuate. Marvel is not advocating for nonviolence versus armed resistance, but acknowledging that vengeance, though satisfying and human, has a tendency to erase not only the ones that did you wrong, but destroy what was right about society in an effort to horde power. Marvel is cautioning us in our justified desire for reform to not accidentally fall prey to fascism. One only has to glance at W’Kabi’s storyline to know that Killmonger’s response is not a solution, but will only magnify it. He never learns from his father’s mistakes.
Coogler’s depiction of T’Challa and Killmonger’s wielding of power is in conflict. Their choice of necklaces is reminiscent of the test in Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade. My favorite shot is when Killmonger enters the throne room, but the camera shows him entering as if he is upside down and walking on the ceiling then slowly adjusts to show the distortion and destruction of his reign. T’Challa’s rule is characterized by giving others room to outshine him, a realm of harmony and celebration. Those who surround him are relaxed, can ridicule him, be better than him, disobey him without fear. He is inclusive and wants everyone to participate. Killmonger dominates, destroys, silences. He only pretends to rectify past wrongs and criticizes failed solutions that he sabotaged. T’Challa wants other to yield, not to his power, but to life so they can lead. Killmonger wants others to die so they can know what it feels like to lose everything as he has. Killmonger rejects the necessity of having the presence of all the Wakandans, only allies himself with the military tribe and leads to civil war, which is the antithesis of what the Black Panther mantle was supposed to resolve. The tragedy of Killmonger is that he is incapable of living or recognizing that losing everything at one time does not mean that he cannot have a future and begin to have a life. He literally has no vision.
When in doubt, Black Panther follows the black women. Each woman occupies an exclusive sphere of power, but they coexist in their independent realms with complementary functions even when challenging and confronting each other. Shuri is the one that is above everyone in terms of moral authority and is the real power behind Black Panther. Unlike Tony Stark, she understands the power of her creation and will fight to make sure that it is used as a shield, not a spear in the world. I’m not sure if it was the intention of the writers or Wright’s powerful delivery of her character’s words, but when Nakia rejects her offer of power before the final battle, “I am not a Dora Milaje,” Shuri replies, ”Just put it on. It is armour.” The women of Black Panther know who they are and never falter at turning points unlike the men. We take for granted the power of contentment and self-awareness of these women, which is shocking considering how the men are constantly at sea in attempting to fully know themselves.
When T’Challa is tempted to keep his oath to his friend in his pursuit of Klaue, instead he heeds Nakia and Okoye’s admonishment that as king and Black Panther, he has a higher calling. These women agree that Klaue deserves death, but “The world is watching.” How Black Panther administers justice matters. Killmonger’s weakness is that his first survival impulse is to kill them. When facing a fight with Nakia and Shuri, Killmonger’s primary focus is on Shuri even though he could have killed Nakia. Killmonger wants to destroy anyone or anything that is a source of his power to create a fiction of self-sufficiency. He wants the technology, but not the person who created it. He wants to be the only wielder of power, the Alpha and the Omega, the only and last Black Panther. He is worse than Cronus. He cannot even imagine a world where he has children, successors, future Black Panthers. A world with no future is a world that silences, rejects or destroys women. The real villain for me is W’Kabi, a man who knows and loves the best of Wakanda and for a long time, refuses to listen to her counsel, works to undermine her and is tempted to advise his men to try and destroy her and her women instead of yield to their authority.
Killmonger’s foil is M’Baku. M’Baku is also an outsider to Wakanda, though still a part of it, perceives T’Challa’s weaknesses and sees the deficiencies in T’Chaka’s reign. He also has a somewhat problematic existence with women. He sees Shuri’s power as flouting of tradition, but we do not get a glimpse of what he means except he incorrectly correlates age with wisdom. Women are not present in the seat of power, but they do wield it on the battlefield. He may share many of Killmonger’s flaws, but he shares essential qualities with T’Challa: the understanding that leadership and preservation of life is more important than pride in the idea of what it is to be a man. His willingness to yield and protect does not erase his grievance and actually elevates his argument against the neglect of his people in the glory of Wakanda and gives him an opportunity to reluctantly take center stage by distinguishing past wrongs with present reality.
Black Panther forges a new path by facing difficult truths instead of tearing it down, but I must confess that even if it means homelessness, I would prefer that they remain hidden instead of taking leadership because I fear that their existence will face a mortal danger in Avengers: Infinity War. The outside world should remain ignorant of their existence except for a select few. I would choose that some remain untouched even if I remain alone in exile. Wakanda forever!