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Is Black Panther actually insulting? A Chinese review

S.P.Requiem said:
I see Black Panther as a sad power fantasy for black people.
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Hooo boy.

S.P.Requiem said:
Kinda like those Chinese kung fu movies where the protagonist kicks the shit out of a huge white boxer 50kg heavier than him.
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So three thousand years ago, there was a story told about the King of a newly formed country and his youth. Once upon a time, there were two armies standing off against each other. The enemy would send out a champion each day, who would hurl insults and demand duels. He was a literal giant of a man, over two meters tall. He wore armor so heavy no blow could penetrate it and wielded a sword so mighty that it cut anyone who stood before him in twain. He was effectively invulnerable and would shout blasphemies at our good people and kill anyone who dared try to stop him.

One day a simple shepherd steps out and says "Fuck this guy". He disdains armor, he disdains sword. He faces him with a simple sling and some rocks he found in the river. He goes forth to challenge this monster of a man.

*WHAP*

He knocks him out, walks over and beheads him with his own sword, demoralizing the enemy into a total disastrous rout.

Three thousand years ago.

I don't know if it's the first time off hand but it's certainly proved universal. It's just good storytelling really, because there should always be something to overcome. I myself like seeing a much smaller opponent beat a larger person with skill and training.
 
S.P.Requiem said:
I see Black Panther as a sad power fantasy for black people.
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Ugh, black people engaging in power fantasy about their strength and resilience in the face of centuries of oppression. How sad. Pathetic.

Unlike my power fantasies. I fantasize about being a billionaire playboy philanthropist who shoots aliens with me robot dick gun and don't afraid of anything because I have dignity.

Also, what is the disdain some lovely people have for the concept of a weaker person overcoming a stronger one? Like, what is that. This comes up all the time when it comes to female characters beating up big guys. Like, ah, how dare you write about the weak overcoming the strong! The strong must dominate their lessers! Is that it? Is it a Sith kinda thing?
 
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You know what? I aint even mad. OP is either too ignorant to realize just how racist of a person they are, or they're racist and deliberately trying to get a rise out of us. Either way, getting mad at them for being so wrong and offensive doesn't do anyone any good.
 
S.P.Requiem said:
Second is because the mainland audiences' taste are still kinda lagging behind more developed countries. Just look Transformers' Chinese box office.
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Lol fucking really? "Oh mainland Chinese are uncultured swine"

I mean, it's not as if the Transformers movies were an immense financial success basically everywhere in the world... and it's not as if you can't simultaneously enjoy all sorts of entertainment, whether refined or crude, right?

Is this thread going to be "SP Requiem tries to offend as many people as he possibly can in the process of dying on the hill that Black Panther is actually offensive?"
 
Furthermore, rather than stating that Asians have no place in conversations about minority representation (They do, they absolutely do in the west, it's just that the conversation shouldn't be them putting down every other minority out of ingrained racism in east asia towards people of latin American or African descent), I'm just going to say Wakanda Forever.
 
The difference is that it was made by the audience it was created for. The cast and crew set out to make a movie for themselves and black people in general. There's less a patronizing tone and more a faithful attempt at conveying African culture to people who are ethnically African but had their culture separated pretty uniformly save for some like New Orleans where the Vodun religion was changed but remained in some forms.

My problem with Black Panther is that I found every character besides Killmonger mind-numbingly boring.
 
S.P.Requiem said:
But when it's purely made in mainland and targeted mainland audiences, it's rarely any good.
First reason is because of the government's censorship, only films like Wolf Warriors that are "wholesome and patriot" can pass.
Second is because the mainland audiences' taste are still kinda lagging behind more developed countries. Just look Transformers' Chinese box office.
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The irony of a Chinese mainlander trashtalking Chinese cinema while a dumbass white-bread laowai like me has consistently enjoyed their time at the cinema and watching TV whenever I ended up in China is something, lemme tell you. :V

No offense, my dude, but without even touching the idea of calling Black Panther a "sad power fantasy for black people", I cannot help but think that you're full of shit.
 
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S.P.Requiem said:
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The greatest benefit the people of Wakanda gained from their vibranium, is the isolation it permitted them to preserve. The idea being that, left to their own devices, Africans can flourish. It's an indictment of western's colonialism, not the basis of any patronizing statement.

The flaws of Wakanda's political system is exposed and treated in the movie itself : the confrontation between Okoye and Nakia, the former wanting to cleave to the laws of the land, and the latter willing to challenge them when they are exploited by an immoral individual, deals with that very issue. It wouldn't be surprising to see in the next BP some changes at this level. In the comic books currently there is a kind of democratic revolution and T'Challa is going toward something akin to a constitutional monarchy for example.
 
Is Black Panther racist?

Well, my answer to that is I wish there was a Native version of Wakanda.

Wakanda forever motherfuckers!
 
Fernandel said:
The irony of a Chinese mainlander trashtalking Chinese cinema
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Pretty sure OP is Taiwanese.

But yeah like, this thread went places. Sheesh OP, I know you laid out your perspective and how you couldn't tell others' perspectives in the first post and all, but you didn't even bother taking the time to grok our points even when we laid them out pretty straight.
 
Rule 2: Don't be Hateful
Aloysius said:
The greatest benefit the people of Wakanda gained from their vibranium, is the isolation it permitted them to preserve. The idea being that, left to their own devices, Africans can flourish. It's an indictment of western's colonialism, not the basis of any patronizing statement.

The flaws of Wakanda's political system is exposed and treated in the movie itself : the confrontation between Okoye and Nakia, the former wanting to cleave to the laws of the land, and the latter willing to challenge them when they are exploited by an immoral individual, deals with that very issue. It wouldn't be surprising to see in the next BP some changes at this level. In the comic books currently there is a kind of democratic revolution and T'Challa is going toward something akin to a constitutional monarchy for example.
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The movie blatantly said the vibranium meteor gave the living beings around it enhanced qualities. That's how the magical flowers that can give you Black Panther power were created, and they're not the only species that's affected by the meteor. I think that means Wakandans are special even without the flower juice? I don't know how it's depicted in the comics though.
I believe magical powers were clearly at play since such a small isolated population with such a primitive social structure couldn't possibly became so advanced on their own.
Also Ethiopia wasn't colonized until near WW2 so the idea that "no colonization = super advanced utopia" is clearly wrong even with larger population and better social structure (I don't think the Abyssinian empire select their emperors through combat). But I know it's just a movie so I'll let that slide.

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And come on, I enjoyed the first Transformers movie too, but we all know it went downhill since then. And by episode 3 and further they're very dependent on Chinese box office.
Take episode 5 for example. Its Chinese box office was 37% of its world wide box office, and nearly double that of the US box office.
And I have many Chinese friends that would agree even louder than me, that "statistically" mainlanders have bad taste in movies.
I mean we watched Wolf Warrior 2 together for crying out loud, and it's pretty shit, filled with blatant propaganda even. The fight scenes were decent though. Also we experienced first hand of the tightening restrictions of Chinese authorities and the dumbing down of its entertainment since Xi the Pooh took power, so I think I have more saying about the situation than most westerners on this forum.
I'll admit many of my understandings about African culture were completely wrong though, as I have very little of that in the first place, and I'm happy to learn where I was wrong. That's why I asked questions on a western forum like this in the first place. Although I expected more level headed responses instead of some people throwing the racist cards like how Michael Bay handles his explosives, so that's a mild downside.
 
S.P.Requiem said:
The movie blatantly said the vibranium meteor gave the living beings around it enhanced qualities. That's how the magical flowers that can give you Black Panther power were created, and they're not the only species that's affected by the meteor. I think that means Wakandans are special even without the flower juice? I don't know how it's depicted in the comics though.
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As opposed to Peter Parker getting bitten by a radioactive spider. Or Superman being an alien. Or Batman being rich. Or people being Force sensitive in Star Wars.

But a fictional African country getting special resources by a fictional set of circumstances? That just breaks my suspension of disbelief.

S.P.Requiem said:
I believe magical powers were clearly at play since such a small isolated population with such a primitive social structure couldn't possibly became so advanced on their own.
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Whew lad.
 
S.P.Requiem said:
I believe magical powers were clearly at play since such a small isolated population with such a primitive social structure couldn't possibly became so advanced on their own.
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To answer the question in the OP: So far the only thing people agree is insulting to black people is yourself.

Please though, elaborate: what makes you think they can't produce this technology?
 
S.P.Requiem said:
I believe magical powers were clearly at play since such a small isolated population with such a primitive social structure couldn't possibly became so advanced on their own.
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I can't believe an island of provincials with no unique resources, ruled mostly by a monarch, happened to conquer a quarter of the world at it's greatest expansion. Sounds like something out of a CK II quest.
And yet it happened.


South Korea was essentially a military dictatorship for decades, and was ruled a couple years ago by the daughter of a former president. Singapore has been effectively a one-party state since 1959. Taiwan was a one-party state for almost four decades, and ruled by one man and his son during that time.

None of those forms of government prevented their industrialization. So why exactly do you think a monarchy would?
 
Particularly when the "Monarchy" of Wakanda is really more of a presidency of a federation of semi independent tribes, with individual tribal leaders selected by their own people by other, non bloodsport means handling the majority of the day to day governance. The Black Panther's job is mostly to set broad national policy initiatives and act as a one man special forces team.
 
S.P.Requiem said:
The movie blatantly said the vibranium meteor gave the living beings around it enhanced qualities. That's how the magical flowers that can give you Black Panther power were created, and they're not the only species that's affected by the meteor. I think that means Wakandans are special even without the flower juice? I don't know how it's depicted in the comics though.
I believe magical powers were clearly at play since such a small isolated population with such a primitive social structure couldn't possibly became so advanced on their own.
Also Ethiopia wasn't colonized until near WW2 so the idea that "no colonization = super advanced utopia" is clearly wrong even with larger population and better social structure (I don't think the Abyssinian empire select their emperors through combat). But I know it's just a movie so I'll let that slide.
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The movie doesn't make a thesis statement such as: no colonization = utopia, it builds a scenario denouncing allegorically the harm done to Africa by western colonization and its after effects. It's the whole point of the SF genre to permit that type of criticism through narrative thoughts experiments, often based on idealized pictures of various elements of our world - it's their main link to utopia literature.

I'm kind of losing faith in your good faith here.
 
Trying to be charitable:
The statement "such a small country couldn't be so advanced" seems like it makes sense. Inventing everything we consider necessary for modern society (and the Wakandans have) took people from all over the world centuries. Everything wasn't invented by a few English people on their tiny island, no matter what the supremacists may want you to think. So it seems unlikely for a tiny, isolated country to have that many geniuses to equal the whole rest of the world out together. BUT Wakanda isn't in space or anything. They must have had some contact with outsiders occasionally, and so probably got some outsider technology. And then they seem to have a good education system and enough clever people and resources to produce their own unique supertech and develop their country, so clearly they invented a lot of stuff themselves! That's part of the Afrofuturism "look at what we could do if not for colonisation" thing, and an important theme of the film.

Furthermore, they know stuff about the outside world. So even if we agree that their sociopolitical system should stop them from developing, they'd be aware of this "technology" thing foreigners have (and are using to conquer the continent) and would therefore be incentivized to invent/reinvent anything that they might not have come up with: so even though "convergent tech development" seems unlikely, the existence of some contact probably helped it along.

Tl;dr: My position is "sure it seems like a tiny isolated country should not be so technologically developed, or at the very least should not have so much similar tech. But think about it! The Wakandans are clever and educated and there seems to be political will towards technological advancement, and assuming some peripheral contact (if only to provide occasional inspiration in the rare cases where it would be necessary) then it doesn't seem improbable. And Afrofuturism is a huge theme in the film."
Oh, and of course: "this is a superhero movie, and you're complaining about realism? Tony Stark's tech in insane! And Captain America's super-serum is still unrealistic, let alone during WW2 !" :p

You're sounding a little racist OP, bringing up this succession of terrible nitpicks as if you were looking for a reason to hate the film. Or is it simple "I have to be against something popular" edge? In that case it's easier to hate Marvel films!

An aside about France, @Aloysius. You said some stuff about representation there earlier in the thread that I found curious:
Aloysius said:
But I could also be biased since, comparing it to what goes on in France, where the diversity in the media sphere (only 10% of non-white people, 16% when we add American TV shows) is a disgrace considering the actual make up of the population, Hollywood seems sometimes a bastion of progressive thoughts. So I often give more leeway than is perhaps fair to American productions.
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Wait, France gets a 10% representation? Where did you get that number? I'm genuinely curious.
If so, then France is actually doing really at representation. Now there are no ethnic statistics in France of course, but apparently 19% of the population are immigrants or descended from immigrants (like me!). Of those 11.8 million people, 5 million are from Europe (according to my uni classes, mostly Italians and Portuguese people and not eastern Europeans despite the far-right fearmongering). The remaining 6.8 million people of non-european descent represent about 11% of the population. Now assuming that these figures are a half-decent approximation of France's non-white population, then we would be doing quite well when it comes to representation! Accuracy, nous voilà!

Of course there remains a lot of progress to be made when it comes to the nature of this representation. Keeping people in ethnically stereotyped and derogatory roles sucks, and we should move beyond that!

But if your numbers are correct, then proportion-wise we're doing quite well.

In my experience as a French person, the suburbs of major cities are very ethnically diverse, but most of France really isn't. It's easy to forget it when living near Paris, but most of France is overwhelmingly white. This isn't America where they literally imported massive amounts of Africans ;)

I know rural folks who are weirded out by Paris ads (you know, the ones with a white man, an mixed woman, an Arabic guy with a perfect beard and a skinny black woman all standing together and smiling under a logo for some app?) because they pretty much never see anyone who isn't white. Maybe a black dude as a security guard when they drive out to a major shopping center, but that's about it.
 
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TalonofAnathrax said:
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I got my numbers from the CSA, they make a survey concerning representation and diversity issues in the media each year since 2009 that is also accessible to the public and whose content is often relayed in the news (I saw the one from 2017 and 2018 in the Monde for example), you shouldn't have any trouble finding it online. I know that France remain majorly white, trust me I'm often reminded of that fact when I see my family from the side of my mother in a little village in the Sartre where me and my sister are basically the only brown people. With that said, it was 10 percent across all media (without counting the foreign productions, especially the American ones), and admittedly I had more in mind the type of representation we have in fiction rather than the number, the percentage struck me because it echoed my experience when watching French works of fictions : basically, we're mostly cantoned to stereotypical roles, and outside Omar Sy I don't think there is any black man getting any main roles in the business. Unless he's a comedian, perhaps. It's even worse for women. It's not much better for others minorities for that matter.
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Vibranium and it's magic properties. A bit on the history of Africa-

Africa has a lot of natural resources.

This often was used against them when colonists marched in with large armies to take said resources.

Vibranium, specifically, is an allegory for "What if an African country was able to use it's resources for itself, to stay independent and strong?"

There is a very strong historical resonance there and why Wakanda having a unique natural resource it was able to keep matters.
 
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    S.P.Requiem said:
    BP/RD sort of paints a picture that African/Chinese people on their own, are primitive and helpless, and the only way they could become advanced was through some magical alien meteor, and even then their social, political and economic structures are still laughably primitive.
    I see Black Panther as a sad power fantasy for black people.
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    Your post here argues that it is hateful to depict a 'foreign' society as capable of success only through magical outside intervention.

    S.P.Requiem said:
    I believe magical powers were clearly at play since such a small isolated population with such a primitive social structure couldn't possibly became so advanced on their own.
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    In your immediate next post you argue the opposite point, that a 'primitive population' could not succeed without magical intervention. Particularly in conjunction, these are neither respectful nor mindful. This second post demeans Wakandans on the basis of being African alone.

    Take 25 points and a 3 day threadban.

    S.P.Requiem said:
    Here's the original article (in Chinese): 大误 · 看完《黑豹》之后

    Translation
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    Additionally, while this is a translation, the News and Politics rules regarding article length limits still apply. I've edited your translation down to 250 words to meet those requirements. No further action is being taken at this time, however further breaches of this policy will lead to infractions.
     
  • Staff Post
    • Fernandel said:
    The irony of a Chinese mainlander trashtalking Chinese cinema while a dumbass white-bread laowai like me has consistently enjoyed their time at the cinema and watching TV whenever I ended up in China is something, lemme tell you. :V
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    Eh, I have an issue with chinese cinema.

    But that's because they stick a 10 minute propaganda ad bragging about how one of their studios brings government approved messages and cultural propaganda to the unwashed western masses (i may be paraphasing the ad a bit) everytime I go and watch a foriegn film at a cinema. Which would be understandable (almost) if they were advertising before chinese language film, but I generally only see Japanese things.

    I like the actual films, I just hate having to sit through ten minutes of badly subtitled propaganda.
     
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