I’ve never seen the whole Lion King movie, so I can’t fully comment, but yeah, that whole “Plains of the Serengeti, Circle of Life” stuff is very much the Western (not just American) view of Africa (Attenborough, much as I love him, probably contributed to this)
Black Panther does dip fairly deeply into some AA Hotepness, which is always amusing to Africans.
AFAIK, it’s only a few Africans this is not a hit with, though. It’s certainly a huge hit here with urban blacks - you can tell by all the laughter at the Xhosa jokes, just microseconds before the subtitles catch up. The crowd demographics were totally unlike any other Marvel movie I’ve been to, for sure.
ETA: IMO, even Afrocentrists and Hoteps don’t usually have such a relentlessly Sci-Fi Afrofuturist vision as BP shows, it’s always seemed more like Coming To America/Golden Ghana-style kingdoms they covet when they say “We were Kings in Africa”. I’d say *BP *is only the mythology of a very few African Americans.
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?
Even if you have some genuine claim to being from Kenya, not just a happenstance of birth for a thoroughgoing American, you’re still an arrogant jackass, but it’ll be interesting to hear how you explain this one.
This, on the other hand, is helpful perspective; thanks! If I’m understanding correctly, this movie does come across as the AA myth of Africa, but a lot of black folks from Africa find that amusing more than they find it frustrating. Yeah?
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.
Okay, in what sense did you mean these characters were based on their classic versions, then?
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.
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.)
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”.
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Very few of the audience for the MCU will have *any *familiarity with the actual comics, regardless of what era they’re from. They mostly don’t give a shit, and they’re who Marvel wants to sell to.
That’s one theory. I think if it were true, superhero films not based on a beloved character from print comics (like Will Smith’s Hancock) would do better. Think about not only how well the MCU films do, but how much other studios pay to license other Marvel properties like the X-Men and Spider-Man. Why pay those huge sums, before they even pay the costs of making and promoting a tentpole movie, if this audience you refer to doesn’t care?
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As I thought: you continue to be an insufferable twit who relies on things like your French teacher’s approval to convince others of your intelligence instead of, y’know, saying smart things. And you think that being an infant in a nation and spending part of a sophomore year there makes you offer valuable insight.
The MCU films do well because they pulled a bunch of talent and spent a whole bunch of money to give them extremely high quality production values. The actual subject matter is almost secondary to being able to present the subject matter well.
Just picture him in a beret and a small patch of facial hair, sitting at a sidewalk cafe, puffing a Gitane and sipping absinthe, explaining life to all the ignorant plebeians passing by.
They’ve built up a movie brand/franchise with very high (unusually high, especially for the genre) quality control. I think the actual comic book readers are a part of that, but only a part, and probably not more than a pretty small fraction (maybe ~20% for casual fans like me who occasionally read comic books as an adolescent, and only about 5% or so for the really hardcore comic book fans). But critically, the hardcore comic fans are necessary for “authenticity” for the fanbase – if they signal a movie character is unacceptable, then that could damage the brand. Based on my reading of various online fandoms, they haven’t done so for any of the MCU movies – the hardcore fans are extremely pleased, in general, by my reading.
LHOD, like I said, it’s stubbornly axiomatic with you. Despite your general unpleasantness, I give you credit when it’s due. You are characterologically incapable of doing the same, no matter what evidence is offered. You not only dismiss evidence and logic, but contort yourself into embracing Trumpian notions of citizenship and national identity when it supports this narrow goal.
Unless (and this might be interesting to explore) you have a consistent double standard here, akin to the Asgard vs. Wakanda thing: predominantly white countries are morally obligated to treat anyone of any ancestry and upbringing as one of their own if they were born in that country; but if it’s a white person born in a predominantly black country, it’s perfectly valid to interrogate their legitimacy, how fully they have absorbed the dominant culture. Is that a paradigm you are willing to stand up for? It’s an incredibly blatant double standard, but it looks like it may be your only option—given your implacable insistence on stoking the fires, in every possible thread, of a grudge whose origins are shrouded in mystery (at least for me; maybe you have forgotten too, but you have obsessively maintained a death grip on the grudge itself).
It’s like, Dude: just take a fucking chill pill. Y’know? We’re just dicking around on a message board here. You remind me of the people Dave Chappelle complains about (hilariously) on his latest Netflix special. Waayyy too uptight, chips on their shoulders, carrying a grudge until the end of time. Sheesh!
Again, set aside the MCU: why pay Marvel billions to license the X-Men characters and Spider-Man? It’s clear that no one in Hollywood shares your perspective, as the ruling paradigm is “established IP”. A TV show like the S.W.A.T. reboot gets greenlit because it is a familiar touchstone. A cop show with the same cast, same scripts, directors, etc. would not make the cut.
Which doesn’t necessarily mean you’re wrong! But it does mean that if you are right, hundreds of Hollywood bigshots are making multibillion dollar mistakes. And that qualifies as the kind of extraordinary claim that requires a higher standard of proof.
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This strikes me as a very plausible hypothesis. But the hardcore fans don’t seem to mind the movies not being up to date with the latest iterations as long as they are recognizably accurate to an earlier continuity. Whereas I think the 15% you and I represent would be turned off by the mystifyingly bizarre 21st century versions of those characters.
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What self-serving nonsense. If someone from China were born in the US, left when they were an infant, visited again for a few months when they were a teenager, and then left, of course I wouldn’t call that fool an American–except possibly in a legalistic sense. I would have no interest in their perspective as an American on cultural issues.
“Visited”. I lived there, went to school there. When I went back to Minnesota, I had to transfer in to my old high school like a brand new student. Then there’s my growing up with parents who lived there for several years (met there, married there, had their firstborn there) and studied the country and its social norms on a deep level. Plus the Kenyan family friends, and my being the only one to predict a negative reaction which at that point was nowhere in evidence until you provided a link (thanks for that at least). But no, I have no more insight to offer than the average American bear. :rolleyes:
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Goddamn you want me to think you’re special, don’t you? You gotta say something interesting if you want that, not just brag on yourself and claim some cultural background you clearly don’t have.
Au contraire: Dave speaks, I believe, for what one might call “the silent plurality” of people who are not down with Trump at all, or other Republicans for that matter—but who are so over the whiny bleating of hypersensitive PC ninnies, but have been keeping their heads down and holding their tongues for fear of “triggering” this (mostly) online lynch mob to turn its sights on them.
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