![]() ![]() She's dealing with the death of her brother who was her first friend and her first protector. Early in the film, we see that Shuri is having an existential crisis of sorts. It morphed from grief into rage and that rage could be a conflagration that would consume her. That was the threat that grief posed to Shuri. And if you just push it away, it has the power to grow and consume you in the process. It conveys that, in dealing with grief, there comes a point where you must confront it. The film is profound in the way that it communicates the experience of grief. So, while I’m not fully certain whether Marvel meant to reference the Kemet, at the very least the gesture is something that is meant to unite people together in a universal symbol.” On the film’s theme of grief Some scholars of the Ancient African civilization of Kemet have noticed that there are various references to similar gestures in their hieroglyphics. Various historians have looked to see if there’s significance in the Wakandan hand gesture but I haven’t seen a consensus. That they could lose a beloved leader like T’Challa and still persevere forward and fulfill the promise that their civilization will be here tomorrow and the day after that. “ Wakanda Forever is more than a phrase, it’s a promise that a civilization can go forward in the face of unspeakable hardship and inescapable grief. That kind of representation is vital in order to shift the narrative of what Africa is and can be.” On the meaning of the ‘Wakanda Forever’ phrase and hand gesture But the films take these cultural influences and then also imagine what these civilizations could look like in the future. In a historical sense, both Black Panther films allude to real cultures and traditions from Kemet, Ethiopia, Mali, Ghana and Songhai. They’re not props to advance storylines or secondary ancillary characters. One that stands out to me is that the women are fully actualized people. ![]() What we do see is this broader sense of humanity acknowledged and affirmed, and we see that in a variety of ways. For example, we don’t see patriarchy or sexism or racism in Wakanda. It’s a society that’s free of disease, free of poverty, free of the ‘isms’ that plague other civilizations across the globe. Wakanda is this technologically advanced society, a kingdom that has never been conquered. In some ways it’s the Afrofuturist imagination of what Africa could be. Wakanda represents Africa in its fullest glory. If you consider stories like Tarzan, Zulu, Jungle Jitters from Looney Toons, they depicted Africa in very primitive and debased ways as if it was a land teeming with savages who were eating each other and living in the Dark Ages. “This representation of Wakanda defies the past representation of Africa that happened throughout modern pop culture. This article contains spoilers for Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.Įric Lovett, Joe Schreiber, Ashleigh DeLuca On what the country of Wakanda represents In this article, he breaks down the symbolism, themes and deeper meanings that can be found in Wakanda Forever, and what we can expect to see in the next Black Panther stories from Marvel. ![]() With the release of the Black Panther sequel Wakanda Forever, Welbeck sees clear reflections of our world’s experience of grief, resilience, political division and long-lasting impact of colonialism. So when Marvel Studios released the first Black Panther movie in 2018, he was understandably elated by the meticulous depictions of the film, writing for WHYY that “the magnificence of Black Panther is in its reimagining of Africa.” Comic books may still be an underappreciated genre of literature, but Welbeck knew transforming them into films would allow society to start doing the same kind of processing of our real-world issues, particularly regarding race. To Welbeck, comic books are a mirrored version of our world where there is freedom to explore and analyze the issues that plague us in the real world. But as an assistant professor who is constantly encouraging his students to look at things more deeply, he feels many are missing out on the magic that lies just beneath the surface of those neat rows of comic panels. Welbeck is quick to acknowledge that people still, just as they did when he was a child, dismiss comic books as a lowbrow leisure activity. When Timothy Welbeck is not teaching Africology and African American studies at Temple University, leading the development of the university’s new Center for Anti-Racism, meeting with students, or grading papers, he finds refuge from his busy academic life within the colorful pages of comic books. ![]()
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