I was shocked by the casting so many dark-skinned women in Black Panther, three of them well known.
No lie. I mean it. I almost fell of my chair when I found out big name dark-skinned women like Lupita N'yongo and Angela Bassett were both in it. And I gasped when they added a new comer Letitia Wright. Then I found my homegirl, the kick ass playwright Danai Gurira --who also plays Michonne in THE WALKING DEAD-- was going to be in BLACK PANTHER too, I was in danger of passing out due to joy overload.
But now that I've seen the movie, I've had another shock. These four women were in the entire movie.
That is, they didn't have one pretty cool scene each as I fully expected. They were in the entire movie.
They had lines to speak. They made choices. Two or three of these women were truly main characters and they played women that had their own lives. Little black girls in the audience got to see dark-skinned black women have these awesome, massively long action scenes in a movie with more than a little bit of sci-fi going on.
And Omigaaawd, these women had opinions that did not agree with their love interest's. Even after ugly things got said and uglier things got done, mutual respect returned (I think. Can't say more.)
Dark black girls got to imagine themselves as spies and generals and as the superhero's super capable sidekicks who can hold it down when he's busy elsewhere.
The movie wasn't perfect. The father probably wasn't fleshed out enough to truly explain a fairly significant plot point. But I suppose the movie would have been too long. And you won't really notice it if you don't think about it too hard. And you're not supposed to think about Superhero movies that hard.
But you should think about THIS PARTICULAR SUPERHERO MOVIE hard or at least just let the values be absorbed into your skin naturally.
THE SOCIAL ATTRIBUTES OF BLACK PANTHER1) Colorism reduced by 98% (can't bring myself to say 100. And maybe there could have been one more pale-ish sistah in there, for a a minute.)
2) Sexism reduced by 90%
3) Feminist attitudes up by 4000%
4) And best of all there were black discussions of race; class; immigration; isolationism; selfish self-protectiveness; legitimate anger at white supremacy; and discussions about copying the oppressor's methods to set oppressed black people that live elsewhere free.
I can't believe I was disappointed Ava DuVernay didn't wind up directing this movie.
Ryan Coogler brang it.
Coogler brought everything to this movie I thought only a female black feminist could bring. (And he might just be doing better than Ava on the colorism thing. Not sure. We'll see what Coogler's next movie looks like when the movies not mostly set in sub-Saharan Africa)
TRUST!
Ryan Coogler has raised the bar as to how black female characters should be handled in black movies. Frankly, I really don't know how the heck will Spike Lee, John Singleton, F Gary Gray are going to make movies that please more than 65% of the black community after this.
BLACK PANTHER WAS AWESOME. I don't care if you don't usually like Superhero movies. Go see THIS ONE.
BLACKCHICKROCKED.BLOGSPOT.COM
No lie. I mean it. I almost fell of my chair when I found out big name dark-skinned women like Lupita N'yongo and Angela Bassett were both in it. And I gasped when they added a new comer Letitia Wright. Then I found my homegirl, the kick ass playwright Danai Gurira --who also plays Michonne in THE WALKING DEAD-- was going to be in BLACK PANTHER too, I was in danger of passing out due to joy overload.
But now that I've seen the movie, I've had another shock. These four women were in the entire movie.
 |
| Lupita, Danai, Letitia, and Angela |
They were in the ENTIRE movie
They had lines to speak. They made choices. Two or three of these women were truly main characters and they played women that had their own lives. Little black girls in the audience got to see dark-skinned black women have these awesome, massively long action scenes in a movie with more than a little bit of sci-fi going on.
And Omigaaawd, these women had opinions that did not agree with their love interest's. Even after ugly things got said and uglier things got done, mutual respect returned (I think. Can't say more.)
Dark black girls got to imagine themselves as spies and generals and as the superhero's super capable sidekicks who can hold it down when he's busy elsewhere.
The movie wasn't perfect. The father probably wasn't fleshed out enough to truly explain a fairly significant plot point. But I suppose the movie would have been too long. And you won't really notice it if you don't think about it too hard. And you're not supposed to think about Superhero movies that hard.
But you should think about THIS PARTICULAR SUPERHERO MOVIE hard or at least just let the values be absorbed into your skin naturally.
THE SOCIAL ATTRIBUTES OF BLACK PANTHER1) Colorism reduced by 98% (can't bring myself to say 100. And maybe there could have been one more pale-ish sistah in there, for a a minute.)
2) Sexism reduced by 90%
3) Feminist attitudes up by 4000%
4) And best of all there were black discussions of race; class; immigration; isolationism; selfish self-protectiveness; legitimate anger at white supremacy; and discussions about copying the oppressor's methods to set oppressed black people that live elsewhere free.
I can't believe I was disappointed Ava DuVernay didn't wind up directing this movie.
Ryan Coogler brang it.
TRUST!
Ryan Coogler has raised the bar as to how black female characters should be handled in black movies. Frankly, I really don't know how the heck will Spike Lee, John Singleton, F Gary Gray are going to make movies that please more than 65% of the black community after this.
BLACK PANTHER WAS AWESOME. I don't care if you don't usually like Superhero movies. Go see THIS ONE.
BLACKCHICKROCKED.BLOGSPOT.COM
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