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  • Wakanda and the Politics of Reparation
  • Nicole Simek (bio)

Premiering in early 2018, in an atmosphere marked in the U.S. by a rise in racist hate crimes and Trump-emboldened white nationalism, but also by the continued growth of the Black Lives Matter movement and anti-racist solidarity actions, Marvel Studios' Black Panther, co-written and directed by Ryan Coogler, touched a sharp need among its audience, and particularly among Black viewers, for legitimation, joy, fortification, and visionary imagination. "In the midst of a regressive cultural and political moment fueled in part by the white-nativist movement," wrote Jamil Smith for Time magazine, "the very existence of Black Panther feels like resistance. Its themes challenge institutional bias, its characters take unsubtle digs at oppressors, and its narrative includes prismatic perspectives on black life and tradition" (2018). The specificity of the historical moment, Smith observed, helped explain the palpable, "almost kinetic" enthusiasm surrounding the film:

Black Panther parties are being organized, pre- and post-film soirées for fans new and old. A video of young Atlanta students dancing in their classroom once they learned they were going to see the film together went viral in early February. Oscar winner Octavia Spencer announced on her Instagram account that she'll be in Mississippi when Black Panther opens and that she plans to buy out a theater "in an underserved community there to ensure that all our brown children can see themselves as a superhero."

(2018)

Writing for the New York Times Magazine, Carvell Wallace also highlighted the importance of the film's timing, while situating the excitement of its reparative promise in a longer cultural and political history. "'Black Panther' is a Hollywood movie, and Wakanda is a fictional nation," noted Wallace (2018). "But coming when they do, from a director like Coogler [whose acclaimed debut feature, Fruitvale Station, recounted the police killing of Oscar Grant], they must also function as a place for multiple generations of black Americans to store some of our most deeply held aspirations" (2018). Recalling Black Panther's predecessors on screen and in print, as well as Black traditions of communal support and public affirmations of love, Wallace reads the film as taking up the baton in a relay of resistance and resilience, [End Page 267] one in which Black audience members act not simply as spectators but as co-creators:

Beyond the question of what the movie will bring to African-Americans sits what might be a more important question: What will black people bring to "Black Panther"? The film arrives as a corporate product, but we are using it for our own purposes, posting with unbridled ardor about what we're going to wear to the opening night, announcing the depths of the squads we'll be rolling with, declaring that Feb. 16, 2018, will be "the Blackest Day in History." This is all part of a tradition of unrestrained celebration and joy that we have come to rely on for our spiritual survival. We know that there is no end to the reminders that our lives, our hearts, our personhoods are expendable. Yes, many nonblack people will say differently; they will declare their love for us, they will post Martin Luther King Jr. and Nelson Mandela quotes one or two days a year. But the actions of our country and its collective society, and our experiences within it, speak unquestionably to the opposite. Love for black people isn't just saying Oscar Grant should not be dead. Love for black people is Oscar Grant not being dead in the first place.

(Wallace 2018)

In this passage, Wallace situates joyous Black responses to the film in the context of life under the unremitting threat of death. The vigilant alertness to a danger one cannot fully predict or avert and the toll such heightened tension takes on the self and on one's relationships to others necessitate countervailing efforts to repair and sustain a sense of oneself as worthy and capable of persisting. Moreover, these survival strategies must also remake social bonds broken not only by violence itself, but also by white accusations of paranoia—the denial that Black fears of future anti-Black...

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