2018/10/08 by George Faithful · 1 citation
Psychology · #Leadership, Courage, and Heroism Studies #Solidarity #Mainstream #African descent #Oppression #Sociology #Gender studies #Ambiguity #Aesthetics #Virtue #Diaspora #Art #Philosophy #Theology #Anthropology #Political science #Politics
paper · pdf · doi:10.3390/rel9100304
openalex publication_date 2018/10/08 · openalex created_date 2018/10/12 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/23
Directed by Ryan Coogler, the film Black Panther portrays the heroes of the fictional African kingdom of Wakanda as godlike. They possess otherworldly sophistication by virtue of their blackness, in contrast to longstanding tendencies in mainstream film toward tokenism, stereotyping, and victimhood in depictions of people of African descent. The superhero the Black Panther, a.k.a. King T’Challa, learns to stand in solidarity with the oppressed, even those in whose oppression he has been unwittingly complicit, such as the children of the African diaspora. As a result, the film can function as catalyst for reflection on the part of viewers in terms of how they might perceive more clearly the complexity, variety, and ambiguity represented by blackness, whether others’ or their own, and how they, too, might identify with the Other.