Re: SNL, it may also be a factor of the location of the show; NYC has a heavy concentration of non-white residents, so a comedy show that doesn’t reflect that will be suspect. The same critique has been leveled at pretty much every Woody Allen movie ever.
I don’t think the Wakandans and Asgardians are comparable character sets. Wakanda has in-story reasons for being entirely black. And still, the comics introduced white characters, like the White Wolf, to give readers some sense of representation of ‘other’ when going through the story.
Asgardians in the comics are literally space aliens. There is no particular reason they all have to be white, and plenty of good reasons, grounded in real human ways of doing things, why we represented them as all being white. So i don’t see any reason to lock either aspiring or successful actors out of those parts.
Supposing the sci-fi scenario of aliens coming to dark age Norway and being proclaimed as gods were true, whatever the color of their skin, it wouldn’t be surprising at all if, in the stories passed down through mostly oral tradition, their true skin colors might be lost and they’d be assumed to look like other Scandinavians. Especially if the most significant among them (Thor and Odin and others) looked like Scandinavians. Pretty silly argument.
But Asgardians as space aliens was never even hinted at in the classic comics. And most MCU stuff seems oriented around the classic versions, not the permutations of the past 25 years.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
I’m pretty sure that Heimdall and Valkyrie (or whatever her comics name is) are light-skinned in the comics. In the movies, they’re aliens from the planet/world/plane Asgard, and their skin color is more diverse.
This doesn’t need to bother you. There’s nothing intrinsically farther about a black guy playing a Norse God than, say, a Spaniard or Greek person playing a Norse God. Imagine if there was a beautiful half-black half-Danish actor… they’d be, in terms of ancestry, much closer to Vikings than a random Italian actor, but because of the way culture and society divides black and white, many would react as you do – that it’s somehow inaccurate for a black (even a black Danish) actor to play a Norse God.
This is society and culture influencing the way you think about race (which is different than saying that you’re a racist) in an unfortunate and unnecessary way, and IMO you and me and everyone should fight against these sorts of tendencies.
Maybe SlackerInc should just stop watching Marvel movies. Problem solved, and I don’t think Disney is going to notice the loss in their billion dollar stacks of money.
I just heard an interesting theory on the Atlantic podcast that makes a lot of sense to me. It is that this movie is a parable about the Black Panther Party (formed in Oakland!) and how it faced a crossroads similar to the more famous conflict between MLK and Malcolm X. The older generation of BPP leaders were taking it in the direction of being a social-democratic type organization (distributing milk to kids and that sort of thing), while the younger ones were more militant and radical, itching to fight a guerilla war against the U.S. government.
(I actually partied with Bobby Seale in the ‘90s; too bad it was before the era of Facebook and such, or maybe I’d be in touch with him now and could get his take on this.)
Okay, time to throw another coal on the fire. Other than those two Kenyans, I don’t see anyone in the mediasphere willing to temper their praise for this movie. It’s a good movie! But it’s not a GREAT film, a masterpiece of cinema. Yet that is how every critic describes it (or pretty close). It’s so transparently a kind of cultural affirmative action: “This black film is pretty good, and most of the films we absolutely love are made by white filmmakers about white characters and that makes us feel guilty, so we will crank up the praise to 11 for this pretty good movie to try to make up for it.”
Now, this is not some kind of horribly evil motivation. It comes from a place of kindness and decency. But I oppose it for similar reason as I oppose affirmative action (and let me note that I do support reparations for slavery and Jim Crow, just not quotas or a thumb on the scale for college admission or hiring). Namely, it is unfair to the black filmmakers who create genuine masterpieces, and it makes film buffs like me jaded and sketpical after a while, reading rave reviews and assuming there’s a lot of “grade inflation” there due to it being a black project.
Now, admittedly I’m a pretty tough grader. Although I’m quite fond of movies like “Boyz N the Hood” and “Menace II Society”, there was until a few months ago only one film by a black filmmaker that I regarded as a masterpiece: Spike Lee’s “Do the Right Thing”. So when I started hearing all the hype for “Moonlight”, I kind of rolled my eyes and thought “here we go again”. But after it won Best Picture (in memorable fashion), I thought I ought to check it out. And I was blown away. That movie is legitimately powerful, a clearly deserving member of the “masterpiece” class of cinema, no question. But all this crying wolf from critics had led me to be very dubious about the likelihood of the film being worth my time, and that’s a shame.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Maybe it’s just a matter of eye of the beholder. Don’t let it give you an easy excuse to assume that critics are blowing smoke up black film-makers butts; maybe they genuinely like these movies more than you do.
Maybe SlackerInc should just stop watching Marvel movies. Problem solved, and I don’t think Disney is going to notice the loss in their billion dollar stacks of money.
They may well like them more than I do, but in praising them all at “11”, they don’t leave themselves any room to make distinctions. And I don’t believe for a second most of them actually think “Black Panther” (or “Get Out”, for that matter—which I have not yet seen) is as good as “Moonlight”.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Have any of them said so? If that’s how you take it, then I’ll offer that you’re not reading it correctly. If reviewers say Black Panther is amazing, I take it that they mean it’s an amazing comic book movie, and possibly one of the best ever. That doesn’t mean it’s one of the best films ever, or even this year. It means it’s amazing for what it is – a comic book movie from a perspective that hasn’t been used before.
That’s just flat out wrong. The look for the MCU draws predominantly from the Ultimate universe - Sam Jackson as Nick Fury being the most obvious example, but also consider the lack of wings on the heads of Thor and Captain America. Or the lack of this in Hawkeye’s wardrobe, or this in the Scarlet Witch’s. Hell, they didn’t even bother to glue a purple ski mask to Baron Zemo’s face!
So, saw it last night, and it was as great as I’d heard. I loved it. The only thing about it I didn’t like was the same thing I didn’t like about the comic, anyway (Wakanda is just *too *eclectic with the modern or distant African influences). Otherwise, it’s now my second-favourite Marvel movie (it’'d take a *lot *to unseat GotG I, but BP came this close.)
I had a thought, and you might have some insight on this: it seems to me that a movie like The Lion King is kind of White America’s mythologized Africa, whereas Black Panther is much more Black America’s mythologized Africa. That would explain why this movie is such a touchstone for many African Americans, but is met with more hesitation and criticism from folks in Kenya (and, I suspect, other African nations).
I have no authority whatsoever on the subject, but Trevor Noah, who kinda does, seems to have greatly enjoyed it, and says that people back home did as well.
Had T’Challa on Thursday, and was complimenting not just him, but all the actors in the movie on their accents, I took that as a high mark of approval.
This is just anecdotal, but my wife is from a West African country (and didn’t leave until college), and she absolutely adored the movie, and in particular loved that it included cultural influences from all over the continent.
Big fan of the movie, watching my nephews react to a black superhero was enough to justify shelling out cash for Disney. Personally, as an African/black man, I’m more in tune with Killmonger than T’chilla for obvious reasons, he emphasized the reality rather than the fantasy element of the black condition around the globe. African/black Unity in the “Here and Now” is such a simple concept but when you explore it throughout history, its profound significance and what it could mean for the future generations of African descendants becomes crystal clear.
LHOD, your hypothesis makes sense to me. Which presumably means you’ll want to abandon it posthaste.
I actually meant in the early to mid-‘80s when I was buying comics. I assumed you wouldn’t take me as talking about 50+ years ago, given that I said “as opposed to the past 25 years”.
Per Wiki, it’s the Bronze Age of comics: Bronze Age of Comic Books - Wikipedia Which makes sense, because particularly when the MCU started, people my age were sort of the prime real estate, a compromise between Silver and Modern age readers. With a little more research, I learn that this was the “Jim Shooter era” that included “several classic runs” at Marvel and the peak circulation over the past 50 years (after which came the abandonment of continuity, bankruptcy, and massively declining sales). Homepage - zak-site
So actually I would say that while it may seem awfully coincidental that this happened to be the time I came of age, the evidence shows that it would be foolish for them to base the movies on any other era.
But I did look at all of your links, and I don’t see the sci-fi except in the “robot” mention in the last one, which seems intended to be a humorously ignorant comment. I do wonder now how the battle with the Hulk ended up!
It’s silly to try to advance any argument by showing comic panels where the costumes were more elaborate or outlandish than in the movies. That’s just pretty much always the case—and the rare cases when it’s not, like “X-Men: Apocalypse”, are the exception that proves the rule, because it looks ridiculous on screen.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
I mean, sure, you’re an arrogant, off-putting twerp with delusions of adequacy who stinks up any thread he’s in, but that doesn’t mean you taint my opinions by agreeing with them. Mostly your thoughts are just irrelevant on the subject; I’m way more interested in what folks from Africa are saying (in this thread or on The Daily Show, for example).
