Black Panther wins for best propaganda

By far the best bit of comic book propaganda released in film in recent memory is Black Panther.

Unfortunately, Black Panther comes on the heals of a far inferior propaganda film, Wonder Woman, which got a lot more hype in national media.

Black Panther does more than just play lip service to the African American community the way Wonder Woman does in regard to women’s issues.

With Wonder Woman what you see is what you get, while Black Panther’s manipulation of fact is much more devious to the point of being brilliant.

Both films establish an idea world from which their heroes emerge. One is a remote island of women where warriors prepare for the inevitable confrontation with the Roman God of War, Mars. Like most comic reproductions of myth, Wonder Woman distorts Greek mythology (upon which Roman myth is founded) to suit the comic writer’s uses much in the way previous feminist writers have distorted the King Arthur myths. Unfortunately for Wonder Woman, once she leaves this perfect man-less island, she can never return.

In Black Panther, we also have a hidden perfect world (located in the heart of Africa) which is kept secret from the outside world, and like in Wonder Woman, this Garden of Eden is spoiled by evils outside their boundaries.

In both films, these worlds are violated. In Wonder Woman the hero chooses to leave her world in order to confront evil before it gets its chance to destroy Eden.

In Black Panther, the hero must go out and set things right in order to keep his world’s secretes from being exploited by unscrupulous people, some white, others much to the chagrin of the hero, black, and worse, related to royalty back home.

But real message of Black Panther is to say while white men may be truly evil, the black villain is not, and has legitimate reasons for doing what he does, based somewhere in the distant past when African Americans lived through 400 years of slavery. There are no real evil black people in Black Panther, only some who are misguided, and some who must die in a Christ-like fashion to be forgiven. The film and comic book upon which it was based largely ignores the complicity of other Africans in capturing and selling people into slavery, but worse, ignores the vicious behavior of African culture itself in which Sangomas and Inyangas, and the influence of witch doctors resulted in animal sacrifices, human mutilations, and the murder of black and white people – cultural tribalism that continues today. All the Sangomas in Black Panther are good and noble, seeking only to preserve their culture and their technological superiority. Even the other tribal leaders turn out to good guys with good intentions, even when in the beginning they do not start out looking that way.

This reshaping of the reality of African culture is the core of the misinformation the film portrays, and by glossing over of actual tribal influences, the film paints a perfect world that does not and cannot exist, although makes for great fiction.

Black Panther is a film designed to bolster all of the current myths being sold to the public and does so brilliantly. It is a mythological film about and for blacks, and nobody else.

This is where is diverges sharply from Wonder Woman. For all the hype, Wonder Woman is a hero of the whole world, not just a racism or gender segment. While she plays lip service to the feminist community, Wonder Woman’s role is to go out into the world and fight for humanity, beyond the borders of her own world, and beyond the limited scope of her own gender.

While Black Panther eventually comes to the conclusion that it cannot remain uninvolved with the world beyond its borders, it reaches out in the end not to save the world from Fascism or even to help build a farer world for black and white, it uses its resources to help other black people. It never resolves the race issue – in fact, it never makes the attempt.

Black Panther confronts a token white villain, even though ultimately the greater threat to his perfect world comes from another black man, the result of a self-inflicted evil that takes the film to a whole different level of complexity and manipulation.

Because this is a film made by black people for black people, it raises appropriate questions about the responsibilities black people have in regards to other portions of the black community, a sense of obligation to make the world right for all people of color, and not just to those who happen to be born into a perfect economic and powerful piece of the world.

While Black Panther plays up all the usual platitudes of current liberalism – such as the idea that people of today are somehow responsible or even impacted by the ill deeds of the distant past – it does raise questions about the conditions of poor blacks and the responsibilities of those who have made it to the mountain have in helping other reach the same peak.

To straighten out the kinks in the plot, the film story starts with Black Panther’s father, who as king of the hidden land, is also Black Panther and in charge of protecting his Eden and its secrets.

He discovered that his brother has stolen – lets call it a magic elixir although it is more than that) and intend to sue it as part of a radical movement to overthrow countries that oppress black people.

But before the elder Black Panther can bring his brother back to face justice at home, he is forced to kill him.

Shamed by his own actions and not to expose the kingdom to the world, the king leaves his brother’s son – a boy born in America to a woman who is not from the magic kingdom.

From this seed comes the central conflict of the film, a villain not born from the oppressors race, but from their own race, who cooperates with the white villain to steal the secrets of the magic world, resulting in the death (murder) of the old king, and the rise to power of the old king’s son, the film’s Black Panther.

Black Panther is unaware of his uncle, the boy’s father, or even the existence of the boy, who helped the white villain kill the old king while stealing the magic elixir.

The boy ultimately kills the white villain as a way of gaining access to the magic land – where he as a descendant of royal blood – challenges Black Panther for leadership.

Like his father, the boy – now a man – wants to use the power of the secret land to attack white oppressors everywhere, a symbol of the radical movements that no longer want the kind of equality Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. espoused, but for dominance, to reverse roles and to get even for all the real or imagined sins of the past.

For Black Panther, this is a story of a need to change, not only for him personally (mired in old traditions), but also for the concept of society that kept itself isolated from the world in order to save itself. Black Panther must give into some of the valid concerns of his nephew in that a successful black society must somehow intervene to help those who are mired in poverty and violence elsewhere.

The conflict in this move is over the means, not the ends. Does Black Panther become a tyrant the boy would have him become, or to give those close to him who have urged for his society to reach out to help, allowing for his country to share its knowledge with other black people, and perhaps somehow achieve real equality.

While Black Panther is loaded with propaganda, it also asks the right question as the right time when the black community is at a crossroads, where its radical element seeks to push the agenda down a road that will inevitably lead to greater violence, actions that will inspire reaction and will create a never-ending cycle of violence.

Or does the black community find a more positive path, seeking to education and enlighten, to use power not for conquest but to build a society that does not have to remain hidden to survive, and does not need violence to achieve equality.