Verisimilitude? What the hell happened to “Diversity” now that the shoe’s on the other non-white celebration foot?
Marvel Comics’s Black Panther was originally conceived in 1966 by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, two very white, very Jewish, non-black New Yorkers, and set in a fictional land, Wakanda. The movie is not based on and should not be concused with the Black Panther Party a revolutionary socialist organization founded by Bobby Seale and Huey Newton in October 1966 that included Mumia Abu Jamal, H. Rap Brown Hyet Newtoin and Stokeley Carmichael . ,
When the date of the premiere was announced, people began posting pictures of what might be called African-Americana, a kitsch version of an older generation’s pride touchstones — kente cloth du-rags, candy-colored nine-button suits, King Jaffe Joffer from “Coming to America” with his lion-hide sash — alongside captions like “This is how I’ma show up to the Black Panther premiere.”
“Black Panther” is steeped very specifically, solely and purposefully in its blackness. “It’s the first time in a very long time that we’re seeing a film with centered black people, where we have a lot of agency,” says Jamie Broadnax, the founder of Black Girl Nerds, a pop-culture site focused on sci-fi and comic-book fandoms. These characters, she notes, “are rulers of a kingdom, inventors and creators of advanced technology. We’re not dealing with black pain, and black suffering, and black poverty” — the usual topics of acclaimed movies about the black experience.
Black Panther is about a metal, Vibranium, like “Reardon Metal” as conceived by Ayn Rand in “Atlas Shrugged” in 1957. She conceived “Galt’s Gulch” as an isolated community just as Wakanda is isolated in Black Panther.
The theme of Atlas Shrugged, as Rand described it, is “the role of man’s mind in existence”. The book explores a number of philosophical themes. Panther is about the role of violence in solving problems.
Friom WIKI: “The history of the Black Panther Party is controversial. Scholars have characterized the Black Panther Party as the most influential black movement organization of the late 1960s, and “the strongest link between the domestic Black Liberation Struggle and global opponents of American imperialism”.[22] Other commentators have described the Party as more criminal than political, characterized by “defiant posturing over substance”
“Black Panther” is steeped very specifically, solely and purposefully in its blackness. “It’s the first time in a very long time that we’re seeing a film with centered black people, where we have a lot of agency,” says Jamie Broadnax, the founder of Black Girl Nerds, a pop-culture site focused on sci-fi and comic-book fandoms. These characters, she notes, “are rulers of a kingdom, inventors and creators of advanced technology. We’re not dealing with black pain, and black suffering, and black poverty” — the usual topics of acclaimed movies about the black experience.
Black Panther is about a metal, Vibranium, like “Reardon Metal” as conceived by Ayn Rand in “Atlas Shrugged” in 1957. She conceived “Galt’s Gulch” as an isolated community just as Wakanda is isolated in Black Panther.
The theme of Atlas Shrugged, as Rand described it, is “the role of man’s mind in existence”. The book explores a number of philosophical themes. Panther is about the role of violence in solving problems.
BLACK POWER SALUTE
At the 1968 Summer Olympics, Tommie Smith and John Carlos, two American medalists, gave the black power salute during the playing of the American national anthem.
Hollywood celebrity Jane Fonda publicly supported Huey Newton and the Black Panthers during the early 1970s. She actually ended up informally adopting the daughter of two Black Panther members, Mary Luana Williams. Fonda and other Hollywood celebrities became involved in the Panthers’ leftist programs. The Panthers attracted a wide variety of left-wing revolutionaries and political activists and proved another example of do as I do.
So with the race celebrations going on with “Black Panther”, now that the shoe’s on the other foot it’s OK to celebrate race?
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