[Few pop culture
texts have exploded
into our collective consciousness more than Ryan
Coogler’s film adaptation of Black Panther. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy
this film phenomenon, starting with an older post on the comic and moving into
a handful of other contexts and connections!]
On the
fascinating debate over and layers to the film’s most American character.
To say that Erik
“Killmonger” Stevens, the Black
Panther villain played
to complex perfection by Ryan Coogler’s longtime collaborator (and to this
AmericanStudier forever The Wire’s lovable and tragic Wallace) Michael
B. Jordan, has inspired
debate and controversy would be to severely understate the case. In my
experience, comic book and film supervillains are hardly ever particularly
sympathetic, and their plans even less so; that is, even if a supervillain has
a backstory that makes us understand their rage or pain (such as Spiderman
2’s Doc Ock), they tend to turn
those emotions into plans for world destruction that are designed to produce
audience opposition just as much as superheroic resistance. Yet with Killmonger
it’s the exact opposite—while the character himself is pretty unlikable, his
political perspective and plans are not only understandable and sympathetic,
but for
many progressives feel far more in line with racial and global realities than
does the perspective of the film’s superhero protagonist T’Challa (at least
for the majority of the story).
It seems quite
likely to me that at least some of that agreement stems from Killmonger’s
status as the film’s
most American character (rivaled only by CIA agent Everett Ross, on whom
more tomorrow). Long before he became Killmonger, young Erik was an
African-American kid growing up on the streets of Ryan
Coogler’s own hometown, Oakland in the early 1990s. Although we only see a
couple brief moments of that childhood, Coogler’s own prior films, among many
other cultural sources (such as the aforementioned link of Jordan to the character
of Wallace, a young man just as smart and charismatic as Erik Stevens) and
historical contexts, give viewers—especially American viewers—plenty of ways to
imagine and understand the broader contours of that setting and those
experiences. I’m not suggesting that Erik necessarily or at least solely has to
be defined in relationship to the American cultural archetype of a boy
in the hood, but I’m not sure there’s any way that a culturally literature
viewer could entirely separate him from that longstanding pop culture type and
trope. And unless that viewer is a racist, such an association makes it almost
inevitable that he or she will sympathize with Erik’s perspective and
worldview.
Yet that’s only
the first of two ways in which Erik Stevens can be defined as particularly
American, and the second significantly shifts the narrative and our sympathies.
The nickname of Killmonger, as T’Challa and the audience eventually learn from
CIA agent Ross, originated from Stevens’ extensive and especially brutal
service in the Black Ops special forces, where, as he himself puts it, “I
trained, I lied, I killed just to get here. I killed in America, Afghanistan,
Iraq … I took life from my own brothers and sisters right here on this
continent [Africa]!” This global record of killing might make clear Stevens’
propensity and even preference for violence (certainly his actions in the film
reflect such a preference), but it also marks him as profoundly American. And
not primarily in villainous ways—the current crop of TV shows about Seal
Team Six and other special forces units are only the latest in a long line
of cultural celebrations of this particular brand of American abroad. What
those special forces do, however, most consistently and purposefully, is kill,
in settings and ways that lay bare the limits of international law or human
rights concerns when it comes to protecting American interests. Which means if
Erik Stevens is an American villain, he’s one complicatedly connected to some
of our most celebrated national heroes.
Next Panther
post tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you
think? Takes on the film or its contexts?
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