{"id":9811,"date":"2018-03-22T19:11:09","date_gmt":"2018-03-22T19:11:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/?p=9811"},"modified":"2018-03-23T18:07:24","modified_gmt":"2018-03-23T18:07:24","slug":"black-panther-stalks-the-serious-stuff-with-powers-that-dazzle-and-inspire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/?p=9811","title":{"rendered":"“Black Panther” stalks the serious stuff with powers that dazzle and inspire"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Even without his mask, T’Challa (Chadwick Boseman as The Black Panther) retains his superpowers by wearing a magical necklace. Courtesy www.frontera.info.com <\/em><\/p>\n

The Marcus Theater ticket taker \u2013 a pudgy, full-grown\u00a0white<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>man with an adolescent’s gawky enthusiasm \u2013 seemed to have hot-wired\u00a0<\/span>Black Panther <\/em>into his skull, and could hardly stay seated on his stool. He blurted out a single run-on-sentence- thumbs-way-up review of it, and told us to stay after the closing credits for a postlude. I almost expected him to follow us in, plop down, gobble our popcorn, and blab a scene-by-scene spoiling of the movie and, while it played, show us how to order <\/span>Black Panther<\/em> paraphernalia online with his smart phone. <\/span><\/p>\n

Thankfully he didn’t, so I was merely bemused, which primed me, and probably helped my receptivity.\u00a0<\/span>You see, I came to Black Panther<\/em> as in inverted sort of viewer, one who only periodically partakes of action super-hero movies, and resistant to the sense-gorging proliferation of digital special-effects, most of which for me, despite their frequent razzle-dazzle, go down like artificially manufactured food, with injected nutrition, if it’s there at all.<\/p>\n

Give me\u00a0the vintage and hard-to-imagine magic and romance of the original 1933 King Kong,<\/em> and the mighty ebb-and-flow of the 1956 Moby-Dick<\/em>, for big special effects, or the chilling subtleties of the original Dracula<\/em> with Bela Lugosi, for supernature. Such films exercise the imagination, instead of overwhelming it with effects, and still seem somehow more akin to nature, and supernature, as I\u00a0sense\u00a0<\/span>and imagine monsters, vampires and dinosaurs might be if around today (look again, wary reader). If that makes me hopelessly old and unhip in some eyes, so be it. At least I have a distinct point of view that doesn’t simply reel with every gigantic screen explosion of easy, digital intoxication.<\/span><\/p>\n

As for Black Panther,<\/em>\u00a0it’s a lot more than a gargantuan carton of force-fed digital popcorn exploding in your mouth and ears, tasting and sounding like hard-edged cardboard. There’s<\/span>\u00a0plenty of nutrition, intellectually and spiritually, which deftly sustains its two-and-a-half hours as much as the action counterpoints the often-reflective and introspective dialogue. <\/span><\/p>\n

The only superhero movies I’ve bothered to attend in theaters in recent times have been a couple of Christopher Nolan’s\u00a0<\/span>abundantly dark\u00a0<\/span>Batman<\/em> movies buoyed by, in <\/span>The Dark Knight<\/em>, the peculiar humor of the quintessential British character actor Michael Caine as Bruce Wayne’s busy-body butler Alfred Pennyworth, and Heath Ledger’s almost career-defining Joker, a strangely affecting, almost sympathetic original of a monstrosity, maybe the best arch-villain in movie history. However Tom Hardy’s intellectual, arrogant, sneering brute Bane, in <\/span>The Dark Knight Rises<\/em>, competes with The Joker.<\/span><\/p>\n

Black Panther<\/em>\u00a0trafficks in plenty of shadows but is ultimately a self-questioning, affirmative, empowering saga and it earns that exalted position, just like the mythical African nation of Wakanda’s king T’Challa (Chadwick Boseman) earns his throne by facing several mano-a-mano challenges in primal duels with swords and shields. One could’ve easily imagined an African-American Batman,<\/em> for the first truly epic black movie superhero, given the black motif of his style, which gives the darkest color a brooding nobility.\u00a0<\/span>But Nolan seems to have cornered that franchise with plenty of substance in its bulwark.<\/p>\n

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The movie Black Panther in full regalia. Courtesy imstnyyjfm-flywheel.netdna.ssi.com<\/em><\/p>\n

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Vintage “Black Panther” comic book cover. Courtesy coverbrowse.com<\/em><\/p>\n

So writer director Ryan Coogler wisely fashioned a superhero with\u00a0a grand composite of a vintage comic book hero *above) and the real-life\u00a0<\/span>African-American militant activist group, the Black Panthers, which itself draws from African mythology, excavated well here. <\/span>Coogler, still only 31 years old, was born in Oakland, as were the real\u00a0<\/span>Black Panthers, and he surely has their complicated legacy deeply ingrained in him. But his fascination with this hero mythology grew from his boyhood immersion in the ground-breaking <\/span>Black Panther, <\/em>the black\u00a0comic book superhero from\u00a0Marvel Comics. <\/span><\/p>\n

He also likely drew inspiration from noted author, social critic and essayist Ta-Nehisi Coates, who wrote an update of the superhero in comic book form.<\/span><\/p>\n

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The recent comic book written by noted author and social critic Ta-Nehisi Coates may have inspired the strong social and political consciousness in Ryan Coogler’s “Black Panther.” Courtesy\u00a0sarjakuvakaupa.fi<\/em><\/p>\n

Coogler crucially addresses the historical Panthers’ militant gun-toting side and their sometimes-impulsive violence, but this movie finally affirms redemptive, constructive, liberating Black Panther values, even reflecting the real-life group’s extensive, underpublicized, community-oriented work, which happened in Oakland and Chicago, among other cities. (For more on this subject, see my blog on the documentary photo book on the civil rights era in the north):<\/span><\/p>\n

Of Charlottesville, the “first white president,” black football players, and Civil Rights history<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n