Snowman_McK posted:

The issue of princes returning to Africa and trying to distribute superweapons?

K. Waste posted:

Arist posted:

Neoliberal = bad person who opposes revolutions (and nothing else) I guess, lol

The real answer is that it's a bad take

Snowman_McK posted:

The film never criticises him for his methods, it criticises his goals. Again, there is a scene when the heroic CIA agent says 'this is what we always do' that passes by uncommented on.

well why not posted:

I was wondering how CD felt about the lengths the design of this film went to - obviously, the costumes and architecture totally own (lip disc guy in particular was my favorite) but I really felt kind of uncomfortable concerning some of the design choices - I feel like they were prioritising African stuff over practicality. I don't mean this in a 'tactical realism' way, but more that the design was kind of problematic and pretty backwards.

For example, T'Challa's ship being shaped like a ceremonial mask is odd - that to me felt really unreal, like having futuristic Swiss people making a spaceship modelled after a cuckoo clock. They just wouldn't. They'd just build an ordinary spaceship. The Avengers' space car isn't shaped like a 50's hotrod. Weird choice.

Another weird part was seeing the streets of Wakanda. They were kinda upjumped marketplaces, but considering that Wakanda is a utopia without compare, it's strange to see basket merchants on the main street of a 'modern' city. Is the implication that, given infinite resource, African streets would still be dusty Medinas?

Lastly, the weaponised rhinoceros. They have cars. They have flying cars. This is a weird choice. Just because they're an african country doesn't mean they would still (crulely) use animals in combat. I know police horses are real, still, but they'd surely be ditched for hoverbikes.

Liked the movie a lot, great everything else, but I feel like these little things left me scratching my head. I guess the above is ultimately forgivable in a pro-monarchy, anti-revolutionary movie where the CIA is kind of good, but I wanted to see what others though.

i am the bird posted:

This is where (African) American(s) v. African(s) perspectives comes into play, which is complicated.

For some African Americans (but not all because ‘African American’ is a wiiiide demographic net that rarely takes into account geography, ethnicity/nation of origin, immigration status, economics, etc.), Africa is constructed as a historical land of magical realism. White slavers stole lives, ancestry, and history, and the reclamation project for that historical identity can sometimes lead to problematic claims and unfortunate monolothic depictions of the continent. There are plenty of African critiques of how African Americans view the continent. There are also critiques that point out that this perception of Africa straddles a line between resisting white supremacy while also codifying blackness as intrinsically real, which also complicates a bunch of poo poo — it’s meant to be a positive, uplifting narrative for personal and communal identity but it has some troubling implications if you dig deeper into that idea.

As a result, you get wildly different interpretations of what an Afrofuturist, non-colonized African country might look like. It’s not entirely surprising that a popular (mostly) American/English perspective is that of Wakanda, an amalgam of all kinds of African cultures and myths that don’t necessarily make any sense when jammed together. This isn’t a critique so much as a reality of perspective: you’d get different ideas from all over the continent because it’s a loving massive place with many, many different cultures.

The same western approach that gives us the culture of Wakanda also gives us the politics of Wakanda. A postcolonialist imagination of Wakanda and this story would look wildly different.

Disclaimer: these are broad strokes based on popular syntheses of major ideas and obviously do not represent everyone’s perspective.

i am the bird posted:

Right and as such has complicated depictions of European problems, including issues of war and racism. I’m not saying the movie shouldn’t be made or that it’s bad for having these complications. It’s just one part of the explanation for why that mix exists. Edit: the movie also kind of gets at this with the debate between Erik (with one American perspective) and T’Challa but also the interdebate among Wakandans with T’Challa, Nakia, and W’kabi all representing different arguments (not to mention the impact of elders like T’Chaka and Zuri).

Also, what I didn’t say and should’ve been in there is that white people also had their hands in the making of this movie.

sexpig by night posted:

both of those IPs are very scrutinized

HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:

Imagine if at the end of Episode I, Darth Maul apologizes to Qui-Gon Jinn while lying there cut in half. That's this movie.

Kurzon posted:

You guys shouldn't overanalyze Killmonger's secondary plan too much because it was obviously shoehorned in by the screenwriters to put innocent lives at stake. At some point in pre-production, the screenwriters realized that T'Challa was fighting to secure his own wealth and status, so they came up with this half-baked idea that Killmonger also wanted to engage in global terrorism for some dumb reason and T'Challa would be a hero for stopping that. It reminds me of Thor and Iron Man 2, where the innocent-lives-in-jeopardy felt like a afterthought.

YOLOsubmarine posted:

If black kids in Oakland just know about Wakanda maybe police won’t shoot them for no reason.

YOLOsubmarine posted:

Multiple characters talk about police brutality against blacks and the director made a movie about police shooting an unarmed black man, I’d say it’s a topic of interest.

What do you think the movie is saying specifically about the plight of black kids in Oakland, which is where it both begins and ends?

Snowman_McK posted:

Except that the villain's plan was to take down the man and upend the global order.

YOLOsubmarine posted:

This is an extremely silly take.

KVeezy3 posted:

The entire concept of Wakanda is a fantasy about not being oppressed. It's pretty difficult to make a movie more about oppression than that.

i am the bird posted:

Why did Erik dream about going to Wakanda?

Snowman_McK posted:

Really? When he wanted to export weapons to the black diaspora and have them conquer their oppressors , it was more complicated than wanting to export weapons to the black diaspora and have them conquer their oppressors? And having black people conquer their oppressors was not the point of a plan where that is the explicit end goal?

Snowman_McK posted:

The film where a guy wants to arm the world's black populace to overthrow their oppressors isn't about opposing oppression.

Okay.

Are you aware of what you're actually arguing at this point? It feels like you may have lost it a while back.

KVeezy3 posted:

I'm not talking about the movie as if it's a documentary about a real place. Wakanda is a fantasy about not being oppressed, but the immediate enjoyment of its static reality is structured around and mediated by oppression. A fantasy is nothing more than what it blocks out.

Snowman_McK posted:

Because the primary agent of oppression in the world looks a lot like Tony Stark. And guys who sound a lot like Captain America work for him.

Because this is a film where 'fighting oppression' is what the villain wants to do, and he can't succeed.

Sorry, was that supposed to be rhetorical? I mean, I've got more, but if it was supposed to be rhetorical, I'll leave it.


Except that he ships out weapons first, and says that this is to overthrow oppression. This is the explicit text of the film.

A thing that he never says he'll do and takes no steps to do is, according to you, the point of the movie.

i am the bird posted:

Whiteness and blackness don’t exist without oppression, so I’m not sure I follow this train of thought at all.

Snowman_McK posted:

Does a point to all this exist?

Can you actually say what the gently caress your point is instead of obliquely hinting at it?

KVeezy3 posted:

Yes, they use ideas of blackness to disguise and hide from the rest of the world.

Snowman_McK posted:

Oh good. We can stop then.