The Black Panther movies have effectively changed the worldview on Africa
Image courtesy of Alicia Quan via Unsplash
A few weeks ago, the newest Marvel movie, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, premiered in theaters worldwide and rapidly became a sensation. Following the massive support for the first Black Panther film in 2018, the number sixth highest grossing Marvel film at $1.33 billion, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever has grossed over $600 million globally, and continues a strong theatrical run three weeks after its initial release.
The success of these movies vastly changed the perspective on sub-Saharan Africa. The Black Panther movies show an Africa that is not traditionally represented in media: one rich with resources and an effective governing structure. While some viewers may have perceived this as being a portrayal of a fictional African country, many viewers recognized that several aspects of Wakanda are representative of modern day African politics, economics, cultures, and societies, different from past understandings.
A Washington Post article written about Black Panther directly after its release in 2018 raised interesting questions that pertains to Westerners' shock in what they saw of Africa in the movie versus what they had heard about Africa prior to that: What if African countries had never been conquered and subjected to colonial rule? What if the global slave trade had never stolen 18 million Africans for export to other regions? These two questions highlight how much the West has had an impact on African countries, but it ignores how this physical Western intervention has caused stereotypes and prejudices among the populations of Western nations that have continued to hurt sub-Saharan Africa, even long after physical intervention has ended.
Prior to the release of the Black Panther movies, the general consensus on sub-Saharan Africa was very stereotypical, based on Western prejudices created during slavery and European colonization. As European powers spread their hegemonies across the globe, it would only recognize entities that followed their model for statehood: the Westphalia system. The ideal model was perpetuated by Europeans, who used it to justify colonizing non-Western people in order to make them more “civilized.” Legitimized by the mandate and trusteeship systems of the League of Nations and United Nations respectfully and by the concepts of first, second, and third world countries, sub-Saharan Africa became fully under the influence of Western ideas of statehood. All of sub-Saharan Africa was labeled as impoverished, corrupt, disease-ridden, and lacking in contributions to the rest of the world.
However, these stereotypes could not be further from the truth. While there is significant wealth inequality and many people are impoverished, many of the countries are resource-rich and have grown wealthy due to exporting commodities, such as crude oil and minerals. Government corruption in Africa is well-known, but not all African leaders are like Idi Amin, the former dictator of Uganda who got the nickname, “the Butcher of Uganda,” for his brutal actions as President of Uganda. Some of the great statesmen of the world have also come out of Africa, such as former South African President and anti-apartheid activist Nelson Mandela and the first women President of Liberia Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, who won the Nobel Peace Prize and the Presidential Medal of Freedom for her work promoting freedom and democracy, as well as women’s empowerment in Liberia.
The Black Panther movies, with the original comics created with the goal of introducing black characters into the world of comic books and with the backdrop of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement in the United States, were able to shift some of the perspectives away from the usual stereotypes about Africa in the Western world. They painted African Indigenous culture in a positive light by presenting the beauty behind African traditions, having a positive political leader in the character King T’Challa, and showcasing an African country’s vast wealth gained through its natural resources, in this case, the fictional element vibranium. Beyond simply having a diverse cast and an African setting, the Black Panther movies allow audiences to view the region in a different light, helping to garner increased attention towards it. By embracing the culture of Africa and taking elements of the sub-Saharan African reality Black Panther showed Africa through a very different lens, revealing the truth about the continent for the entire world. Its effects on the Western world showed searches for “Wakanda” and places with Wakanda in the name, spiked from February 2017 to February 2018, with Wakanda Park in Wisconsin having 55 percent increase in search rates in that time period. There was also a major increase in tourism to sub-Saharan Africa from 2017 to 2018, increasing by approximately 3,000,000 tourists versus the 1,000,000 tourist increase from 2016 to 2017. Demand for sub-Saharan African comic books increased, while travel blogs began posting about places inspired from the movie.
Although some of the stars of the Black Panther movies have disagreed with the belief that the film changed the worldview towards sub-Saharan Africa, best shown with Danai Gurira’s statement that “it was Africa that impacted Black Panther,” the general consensus among Africans themselves was that they were grateful for its positive portrayals, especially in the wake of political discrimination by former U.S. President Donald Trump, when he used an expletive to describe many African nations. Furthermore, they felt that the film did a good job showing off African heritage to a global audience. One thing is clear when looking at the success of the film and the reactions among Westerners and Africans alike: the Black Panther movies thoroughly represented African culture in a positive way, and changed the outlook on sub-Saharan Africa for the better.
The Black Panther movies tackling these stereotypes and prejudices is a very good step in the right direction to dismantling these stereotypes, and they also pave the way for movies and other forms of art to dismantle Western stereotypes about other regions of the world. The Black Panther movies and their effectiveness proved that movies and art, when done correctly, can be a very useful tool in destroying prejudices, and now that they have done so, all that is left is to continue to use this tool in a positive way.
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