Killmonger and what he represents by John Fleming https://padlet.com/jfleming84/j70wpksfz4twg9v3 What is the author's purpose? en-us 2021-04-14 13:25:24 UTC 2021-06-09 14:39:05 UTC hello@padlet.com Why does the author connect Killmonger to the void to Pan Africanism? jfleming84 https://padlet.com/jfleming84/j70wpksfz4twg9v3/wish/1576863495 Black Panther is about a highly advanced African kingdom, yes, but its core theme is Pan-Africanism, a belief that no matter how seemingly distant black people’s lives and struggles are from each other, we are in a sense “cousins” who bear a responsibility to help one another escape oppression. And so the director Ryan Coogler asks, if an African superpower like Wakanda existed, with all its power, its monopoly on the invaluable sci-fi metal vibranium, and its advanced technology, how could it have remained silent, remained still, as millions of Africans were devoured by The Void?]]> 2021-06-01 16:27:45 UTC https://padlet.com/jfleming84/j70wpksfz4twg9v3/wish/1576863495 Why does the author discuss the different goals of Black Panther and Killmonger? jfleming84 https://padlet.com/jfleming84/j70wpksfz4twg9v3/wish/1576866888 “In the end, all comes down to a contest between T’Challa and Killmonger that can only be read one way,” writes Christopher Lebron in a well-argued piece in Boston Review, “in a world marked by racism, a man of African nobility must fight his own blood relative whose goal is the global liberation of blacks.”]]> 2021-06-01 16:28:49 UTC https://padlet.com/jfleming84/j70wpksfz4twg9v3/wish/1576866888 Why does the author connect Killmonger to America's foreign policy? jfleming84 https://padlet.com/jfleming84/j70wpksfz4twg9v3/wish/1576870932 It is remarkable that many viewers seem to have taken the “liberation” part at face value, and ignored the “empire” part, which Jordan delivers perfectly. They are equally important. Killmonger’s plan for “black liberation,” arming insurgencies all over the world, is an American policy that has backfired and led to unforeseen disasters perhaps every single time it has been deployed; it is somewhat bizarre to see people endorse a comic-book version of George W. Bush’s foreign policy and sign up for the Project for the New Wakandan Century as long as the words “black liberation” are used instead of “democracy promotion.” Killmonger’s assault begins in London, New York, and Hong Kong; China is not typically known as a particularly good example of white Western hegemony in need of overthrow.]]> 2021-06-01 16:29:55 UTC https://padlet.com/jfleming84/j70wpksfz4twg9v3/wish/1576870932 Ultimately, what is the author's argument about imperialism and liberation? jfleming84 https://padlet.com/jfleming84/j70wpksfz4twg9v3/wish/1576885826 “You want to see us become just like the people you hate so much,” T’Challa tells Killmonger during their climactic battle. “I learn from my enemies,” Killmonger retorts. “You have become them,” T’Challa responds. That the climactic battle in Black Panther is a bloodbath between Wakandan factions is no accident; it is Killmonger putting the never-colonized Wakanda through a taste of colonialism in microcosm. In one of many sly references to the Black Panther Party, it is Wakanda’s women—Nakia, Danai Gurira’s General Okoye, Letitia Wright’s Princess Shuri, Angela Bassett’s Queen-Mother Ramonda—who sustain Wakanda through its darkest moments. Where T’Challa cannot survive or triumph without Okoye, Shuri, or Ramonda, Killmonger is alone. His African American mother is absent from the story; Killmonger kills his own lover the moment her body stands between him and his ideological ambitions.

The following distinction is crucial: Black Panther does not render a verdict that violence is an unacceptable tool of black liberation—to the contrary, that is precisely how Wakanda is liberated. It renders a verdict on imperialism as a tool of black liberation, to say that the master’s tools cannot dismantle the master’s house.

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