# Black Panther movie **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [February 18, 2018, 8:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/black-panther-movie/809075 "2018-02-18T20:07:04Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 305
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2018, 8:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/black-panther-movie/809075/305 "2018-03-04T20:50:15Z")
> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > So, maybe I’m wrong, maybe you’ve got some deep cultural background in Kenya, beyond “I rode a colonial choo choo in Kenya and I miss it!” So far, the evidence that you’ve got anything interesting to say on the subject from the perspective of someone immersed in African culture is…lacking. Maybe you want to explain more? Like, maybe you weren’t just born in Kenya because your parents from Ohio were on a mission through their church in Kenya or something? The “choo-choo” line was a sick burn the first time (I do genuinely enjoy your acerbic wit, even when the pointy end of the rapier is stuck in my backside), but you are undermining its breezy, seemingly castoff quality by returning to the well. It’s amusing to imagine my very secular, Marxist parents (from NYC and Denver) as missionaries from Ohio. I would cop to being a “thoroughgoing American” in most respects, although my college French professor always complimented me (a huge Francophile) by telling me in front of other upper division students (all French majors, unlike me) that I “must be secretly French”. But aren’t you going down a tricky and problematic road by doubting anyone’s right to be a native of the country they are born in? Isn’t that the kind of Trumpian move people make when they question how assimilated immigrant communities are, or ask an Asian American “where are you from?” and then when told “Oregon”, press “No, but where are you ORIGINALLY from?” :dubious: Anyhoo, my parents were doctoral students in anthropology and sociology. They brought me back to the U.S. when I was still an infant, but we went back to Kenya for half my sophomore year of high school, because my mom was asked by the University of Minnesota to get some grad students established there. Unlike the other Westerners I met there, my family didn’t have servants, and we used the ultra-crowded public buses called “matatus” to get around. I spent a lot of time getting to know my neighbors who were native Kenyans; and we had Kenyan, Tanzanian, and Ethiopian family friends in the U.S. as well. Despite your stubborn, axiomatic insistence that the likes of me must have no insight to offer, I said earlier in the thread that Kenyans I had known didn’t seem like they would be down with this movie—before you linked to an article that cited two Kenyans as indeed having issues with it. > [@Miller](#): > > Yeah, in the '80s, Walt Simonson took over the book, and leaned heavily into the myth stuff. But Kirby’s “Chariots of the Gods” inflected take on the setting are still in the character’s bones. The fact that it wasn’t much used during the narrow window when you happened to be reading the book doesn’t mean it was never there. It is true that it was a narrow window, but I think the evidence I presented shows that it was a classic era when Marvel was at its peak in print and that era is the most likely to be remembered by moviegoers. And if we’re going to go back to the ‘60s, then Thor is a human transformed into a Norse god by an enchanted walking stick. Even the Kirby panels you offered are only supposedly “sci-fi” because Kirby likes to put shiny metal everywhere. But gods can have shiny metal too—and more importantly, it’s clear just from those panels that whatever Kirby was doing, the book was not being _written_ as science fiction. (If you have evidence to the contrary, by all means please share it.) > [@Miller](#): > > Okay, in what sense did you mean these characters were based on their classic versions, then? Just that their general backstories were familiar to me, whereas I have learned from Wikipedia and other sources that all kinds of retconning, character changes, and new plot developments were piled on in the ‘90s and beyond that were ignored in the movies. Which, again, seems wise since so many more comics were sold in “my day”. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk --- _[View the full topic](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/black-panther-movie/809075)._