Bernie’s taking a lot of heat from left Twitter today due to his hesitancy to call for the abolition of ICE.
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I mean, it’s not even really an allegory. Killmonger is explicitly stated to have had a career killing people in order to facilitate regime change to further US interests, and the CIA agent, in analysing Killmonger’s tactics, states that he’s doing exactly what he learned from his time doing US foreign intervention.
What he’s doing is explicitly bringing US-style imperialism to Wakanda and rebranding it as black liberation.
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Niall Ferguson was never almost anywhere but up his own ass.
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Wait… wasn’t it Trump who endlessly complained about Elizabeth Warren “claiming” native status at some point? Assholes.
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I think you’re entirely right about Killmonger and how awful his vision is. And yet when I saw it, someone had remarked that for a villain he had a pretty good point, and he does. Because he’s set up in contrast to T’Chaka’s traditional policy of leaving the oppressed elsewhere to fend for themselves.
The movie concludes these are both wrong and that T’Challa needs to find a middle course, and out of those options he should. I don’t think you can fault it for not endorsing Killmonger as he is. But on the other hand, you can ask about the way those options have been framed. If Leslie Lee’s complaint is the movie bringing up black liberation only for it to be represented exclusively by an evil ideology, well, that’s not wrong.
As for the freest black people slaughtering each other, well, they’re really not that free. The central conflict is a Shakespearean style brother-against-brother, and ultimately it happens because they have the same Medieval monarchy that Asgard does. Which really does not play against Wakanda being some kind of futurist utopia at all, but then, this comes with being a superhero movie.
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Oh, I agree, entirely. He’s one of the great Marvel villains, because he absolutely has a valid point. His father was trying to make things better for black people everywhere, and got unceremoniously murdered for his efforts. He got abandoned and got to see (and take part in) the worst of what white people do to maintain their power. Black Panther is a tragedy, and I’d argue Killmonger isn’t a villain at all, but a tragic hero.
And, of course, with a tragic hero comes a tragic flaw, Killmonger’s being that he was willing to burn down all that Wakanda is (symbolized by both burning the garden of the heart-shaped herb and the refusal of the succession challenge) in order to spread its influence where it is needed.
I’d still argue that “black liberation” was never what was being sold here. It’s what Killmonger is presenting his goal as (and maybe what he actually tells himself his goal is), but, again, when he comes into his power as King and Black Panther, the very first thing he does is to order his new people, against their will and under threat of violence, to burn down a sacred part of their heritage. That’s not the act of a liberator; that’s the act of a tyrant.
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That’s the limit of superhero stories. They can include serious in-universe discussions (the superhero-intervention debates in Civil War for example) that mirror real-world debates about justice and war, but because we don’t actually have superheroes in the world, our real world issues are fucked off into an allegory that is dishonest.
I like Black Panther and Civil War but Thor: Ragnarok is much more honest about these issues.
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Pelosi is not just corrupt and incompetent, she is actively destructive.
https://twitter.com/aumentlyin/status/1011333342086778880?s=21
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Dean apparently continuing with the theory that classist sneering is the path to success.
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