#EnemyPropaganda I finally got around to seeing the Black Panther movie Tuesday. I’ve been black nearly seven decades. My blackness does not require affirmation from the Disney/Marvel Comics Universe, where Tony Stark is a greedy Pentagon contractor, where Captain America is a genetically modified organism, where the Wakandan king and the wannabe king both work with/for the CIA, and where Daredevil’s pals (season 1 episode 4) note that investigative reporting on “teachers union scandals” is as personally perilous as crossing the Mafia.
For those of us aiming to build a better world, this movie is nothing short of enemy propaganda.
#GetMeTheHellOutaWakanda
In the Black Panther movie, all the Wakandan players are royalty, their counselors, their advisors or their rivals. All the strikingly beautiful and capable Wakandan women take orders from men. The only unambiguous good guy is the Frodo looking CIA agent. The homicidal Killmonger character is calculated to sully the very notion of black rebellion against unjust authority, while Pan Africanism and humanism are defecated upon from multiple angles. Cinematic bar fights, car chases and battle scenes are a dime a dozen, and worst of all Wakanda isn’t even rendered in any visually inspiring way.
#TheThirstIsReal
The movie disrespects its audience and is a standing insult to science fiction and afro futurism. As Dr. Jared Ball points out, we can’t just go make and market another movie to compete with this one. Disney/Marvel Studios put tens of millions into the promotion of this thing alone, and for now millions of people are buying their message. That’s called cultural hegemony.
Those who would drink from this nasty water for “affirmation” and “black joy” must be deeply desperately thirsty. And evidently thirst confuses before it kills.
The only good thing I got from this movie was the motivation to look for and find some real, respectful, challenging and innovative science fiction and afro-futurism, preferably written by some black women to wash the rancid taste of Marvel’s superhero industrial complex from the inside of my head.
#EmailISDarkSocialMedia
I wasn’t going to record this commentary for Black Agenda Radio. Originally it was a Facebook post, but it generated such a response that it deserved a life outside of corporate social media.
Because Black Agenda Report is equally critical of Republicans and Democrats, because as black leftists we consistently oppose capital, patriarchy, empire, the black political class and the bipartisan war machine we are the only black oriented media outfit alleged by the Washington Post and Prop Or Not to be under the evil influence of the Russians. Google and other corporate social media have targeted Black Agenda Report in order to restrict your access to our content. If I, Glen Ford or Margaret Kimberley or Ajamu Baraka or Black Agenda Report was temporarily or permanently banned from Facebook all our posts and their comments would disappear. Facebook claims all posts as its private property. And even if they don’t ban us, it can be extremely difficult to find a Facebook post or a Tweet more than a day or two old.
So I’m posting this at BlackAgendaReport.Com and at Black Agenda Radio Commentaries on SoundCloud where you can easily find it from now on. Please follow and share our stuff from those places on all your favorite social media. And please visit BlackAgendaReport.Com to subscribe to our direct and free weekly email of each week’s new content. Email is called dark social media because Google, Facebook, Twitter cannot track or block it.
Special thanks to Dr. Johanna Fernandez for the title #GetMeOutaWakanda.
For Black Agenda Radio I’m Bruce Dixon.
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization claims the African continent as its "neighborhood." NATO is certainly not the defensive organization that it claims to be. Expanding imperialism is always its…
Black politics in Pennsylvania and the mid-term elections, the Play Cousins Collective serves Black families in Louisville, Kentucky, and in New York City, Dr. Al-Fatah Stewart fights for justice and…
Dr. Anthony Monteiro is a Duboisian scholar and founder of the Saturday Free School for Philosophy and Black Liberation, which recently celebrated its 10th anniversary. He joins us from Philadelphia…
Kristen Williams is Executive Director of the Louisville, Kentucky based Play Cousins Collective. Play Cousins Collective develops and facilitates programing and curriculum centering Black children's…
Dr. Al-Fatah Stewart has been held in the Rikers Island correctional facility in New York City for the last 43 months without trial. He recorded this message from Rikers Island in October 2022. His…
