This article is tagged as #School. It was previously published on a different website as a part of Stephanie Pichardo's Senior Comprehensive Assignment.
In early 2018, everywhere you looked online on every social media platform, everyone was talking about the then-upcoming Marvel film “Black Panther”.
Of course, anytime there is a Marvel film hitting theatres soon, fans can not stop tweeting and posting about it. That reaction was seen these past few weeks with the highly anticipated Avengers: Infinity War.
What makes Black Panther so special then?
Intersectionality. Looking at it from a critic’s point of view, all the elements Black Panther had, invites the film to fall under the definition.
The word Intersectionality, according to the oxford dictionary, “The interconnected nature of social categorizations such as race, class, and gender as they apply to a given individual or group, regarded as creating overlapping and interdependent systems of discrimination or disadvantage.”
In an easier explanation, it’s inclusive to everyone.
Anne Cohen, movie critic for Refinery29 argues that Black Panther is basically “the poster child for intersectionality, a public shaming of a Hollywood industry that has long defended its male-centric projects by claiming that audiences could only handle rooting for one group, and then only in one movie, at a time. There are no token female sidekicks here.”
The film is one of the few to have the success it did with the amount of diversity in it.
Stephanie Zacharek writes for TIME, “One of Black Panther’s attributes, clear from its inception, is its many roles for actors of color. From the early to mid–20th century, there was a small but important industry of films made especially for black audiences... These weren’t extravagant pictures, but they offered both escapism and a view of life that wasn’t exclusively white. They reassured black Americans—and it’s a tragedy by itself that such reassurance would be necessary—that they too were America.”
Many people on platforms such as twitter took it upon themselves to promote the movie not because it is Marvel, which has a huge fanbase, but because it is important for people to support a movie with that many roles of people being actors of color.
A hashtag #WhatBlackPantherMeansToMe allowed for twitter users to express the importance of the film for blacks.
One user says “When I was a kid, movies and TV shows were full of black characters that were pimps, drug dealers, and slaves. Even Black Lighting (from the Super Friends) was LAME. T'Challa is a King, a genius, and a badass superhero.”
Another says “It's less about what it means to me and more what it means to our little ones. Young black boys and girls seeing themselves widely represented as the heroes.”
People were so excited for the representation on the big screen that on premiere night, many of them dressed up in traditional African clothing or Wakandan (fictional African nation in Black Panther) inspired outfits.
Destiny Malone, Psychology Major at Hofstra University says “It was really refreshing to see people that look like me on the big screen. (Especially because one of the actresses, Letitia wright is from my home country Guyana) I hope for there to be more representation in the future so little boys and girls around the world can see people like them.”
Black Panther’s success allowed for the film to gross over 1 billion dollars in worldwide revenue.
The film opened doors for future films including large casts with people of color to have the same success Black Panther did.