African Futures, American Legacies: An Africana Perspective on Marvel’s Black Panther and Luke Cage

I attended the lecture given by Professor Shakes last Thursday. The title of the lecture was “African Futures, American Legacies: An Africana Perspective on Marvel’s Black Panther and Luke Cage.” The lecture focused on, as the title implies, the film Black Panther, which I have seen, and the Netflix Original Luke Cage, which I have not. Throughout the lecture Professor Shakes focused on how the popular culture portrays black people, largely focusing on the characterization from the film and show. I found her characterization very interesting because it was a topic I was not as familiar with.

 

One of the points that Professor Shakes made was that Black Panther shows what African countries may have been like if not for slavery and colonialism, but Luke Cage shows what it was like because of those factors. I found this interesting because these are two somewhat different representations of black culture but they both come from the same place, that white people largely affected the path and future of African and black culture. Black Panther features a fictional African country which has a huge technological advantages which are hidden from the rest of the world. Luke Cage focuses on warring black families in Harlem. The similarities between the two different portrayals may not have been evident without the comparison coming from Professor Shakes.

She also mentioned how various characters in Black Panther felt different connections to other black people around the world. Some felt the need to provide financial aid to poor people, of any race, while others thought it was better to help only specifically black people and to supply them with weapons so they could start a race war. However, Professor Shakes pointed out that the plot was not allowed to reach that conclusion and perhaps wished it had. She supplied that she thought the creators did not include this in order to maintain their white audience, as they may have been uncomfortable with a race war. I will admit I originally found the topic uncomfortable but as she continued the discussion I understood the merit of what she was saying. Overall, I found her perspective and insight on this topic very interesting and learned a lot from this lecture.

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