Saturday, March 10, 2018

Marvel's Wakanda Problem: Creating a Problematic Utopia

Marvel Studios has created an intricate universe of gods and monsters, faraway lands and made familiar landscapes anew. They've taken us to outer space, to realms of mythology, and most unrealistically a working United Nations. We've been given fantastic characters of supermen and women from everyday heroes given extraordinary powers to mere mortals with wits that can rival the most powerful foes.

The most recent entry into this pantheon is Black Panther (aka King T'Challa) from the land of Wakanda. His first stand-alone film gave us our first real glimpse of this hidden African nation settled near the heart of the forgotten continent, a place that has seen more than its share of struggle and strife, which is still going on to this day. While the film itself is in my humble opinion mediocre at best, my biggest problem with it comes with the creation of this idealized African nation, especially considering the heavily political nature of the film (which can easily be said to be the most political film in the MCU, bypassing Captain America: Civil War by several miles).

Let's start off by discussing the politics put forth by the film. The film actively calls out mistreatment of the descendants from Africa all across the world, first by the Transatlantic Slave Trade, then by racial prejudice that had seen countless murders and systemic terror. It makes the argument that Africa as a continent had not fully developed to its full potential due to European interference due to both slavery and colonization, which forced the various tribes into close proximity and rivalry through artificial lines being drawn marking conquered territories.

Now let's discuss the uniqueness of Wakanda in relation to the rest of Africa. Wakanda is a economic and military powerhouse that hides said power via holographic projectors and appearing to the world as a poor yet independent nation. Their key valuable resource is a mineral called Vibranium, whose properties are vastly stronger than other metals yet malleable enough to be used in the construction of buildings and manufactured goods. Their scientific knowledge surpasses even those of the outside world, save for possibly Tony Stark (aka Iron Man). The film makes it clear that these advancements come from the lack of outside influence, having successfully thwarted both slavery and colonization (much like Ethiopia) and it can be assumed that much of it was because of their harnessing of vibranium. Wakanda does export very little vibranium to the outside for other necessities, yet they foolishly tell the world their entire supply was stolen by a smuggler years before in order to keep their full supply from being found out. While the landscape is futuristic metropolitan, Wakanda is ruled by an absolute monarch whose rule is settled by an ancient rite of battle on a sacred waterfall. While we don't know a great deal about the reign of most of the Wakandan kings, we are lead to believe that the last two kings had been for the most part benign (more on that later).

We as the audience are lead to believe that Wakanda is a fantasy utopia, a relatively peaceful and prosperous nation whose needs are fully met and could rival the world if they wanted to. We could make comparisons to Marvel's other utopian nation, Asgard from the Thor mythology as they are both ruled by a king through relatively peaceful spans while holding otherworldly magic-like powers. Both have warrior classes whose renown are legendary. Both also hold dark secrets in their past. But there's also differences between the two. First off, Asgard is fully diverse with different ethnicities inhabiting it whereas Wakanda is mono ethnic. Asgard sees itself as the defender of other realms besides their own (Earth being part of Midgard) and comes to their aid when needed. Wakanda is entirely nationalistic, putting their safety and security above others, including their African neighbors.

Keep in mind that Wakanda held a technological superiority for thousands of years as was told in the opening of the film, yet their neighbors not only had to worry about the colonies and slave trade, but the even longer history of tribal warfare. Those tribes often murdered and enslaved each other, selling them to other tribes in the process. Not to mention the brutal expansion of Islam from the Middle East. As mentioned before, we aren't given a full history of Wakanda and perhaps as Thor did in its most recent installment, this could be addressed in future sequels. Considering that at the end of this film, Wakanda reveals itself to the world, this basically FORCES any future Black Panther sequels to address this or show a blatant bias that could stain Marvel's credibility for world-building. And personally speaking, this would a great move towards fully realizing the complex world Marvel has built, showing the both the wonder as well as the problems of the real world through their fantasy heroes.

Yet the filmmakers and critics alike have all but completely seemed to ignore the problems of the Wakanda we have seen so far. The "sins of the past" story line given to us by the film sugarcoat the problem. Yes, the film calls out that T'Challa's father was involved in the murder of his brother and abandoned his nephew out of fear of revealing Wakanda's technological advances. It does create an X-Men-like conflict between T'Challa and Killmonger as the Xavier and Magneto (respectively) of this story, two completely understandable positions, yet Killmonger's is more fully realized while T'Challa really doesn't explain why his position is better. Granted, Killmonger seems to be using his position as an excuse to gain control and to be a tyrant in his own right (just like Magneto), and Michael B. Jordan's performance shows us that his self-perceived righteous rage and ego have made him a monster.

This leads me to the contradiction of the film's view on blame and reconciliation. We're supposed to believe that modern-day European descendants should be held accountable for the sins of their forefathers, either through violent revolution via Killmonger or through shame as the film not-so-subtly does throughout the film. Yet Wakanda is only responsible for not getting involved in the modern time.

Again, this could be addressed in future films, but that would mean adapting the victim narrative that has been prominent in popular culture and accepting nuance in history that many people either can't accept or will flat-out refuse. They might even try ret-conning this entire plot point, but in doing so would lead to even more questions than the filmmakers are ready to answer.

Note: This commentary could be seen by some as being insensitive or holding offensive views. While that is not my intention for this commentary, I will accept any criticism I get for my opinion while stating vehemently that I do not hold racist biases or a Euro centric view of history. History is violent, ugly and rarely looks good on anyone. This is one of the problems of mixing history and fantasy, especially when politics are also present. That also said, I'm open to being convinced if I'm wrong, but that will have to be proven and open to rebuttal. Either way, thank you for reading.