• Flyberius [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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        29 days ago

        Am I the only person who thought the giant forcefield protecting Wakanda being activated/deactivated by a tribal drumming routine a bit iffy? To me that would be like MI6 Q labs being unlocked by a Morris dancer troop.

        • FlakesBongler [they/them]@hexbear.net
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          29 days ago

          I’m still mad they kept the weird “We pick kings through ritual combat” angle

          Which, you know, making the technologically advanced nation governmentally regressive is still really racist

          • SevenSkalls [he/him]@hexbear.net
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            28 days ago

            Let’s be honest, if they didn’t do that they would’ve made the African king picked through a western-style bourgeois liberal democracy, which would’ve been worse lol

            • FlakesBongler [they/them]@hexbear.net
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              28 days ago

              So, the fun thing about it is that in the comics, there is a story arc where M’Baku (at the time, still using the moniker of the Man-Ape, which… yeah) is the one who manages to fight King T’Chaka and kill him to assume the role of King of Wakanda

              This story arc was considered so out-of-touch and racist, that Marvel immediately went out of their way to hire a series of Black authors to helm the title

              Some of them went out of their way to establish Wakandan politics as being more of a Council Democracy where the 12 tribes of Wakanda voted for their tribal leader and then the tribal leaders voted for the King

              The position of King was essentially just picking the Black Panther (Wakanda’s strongest protector) and representing Wakanda on the world stage

              To see them deliberately going back to ritual combat is definitely Disney making a Statement

              Especially with the sequel where they tried to force a similar thing with making Atlantis a mish-mash of Pre-Columbian cultures and saying that Namor’s name came from the conquistadors saying “No Amor” which, what the fuck?

              • bigbrowncommie69 [any]@hexbear.net
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                24 days ago

                Idk about this cause the ritual combat thing has come back frequently in recent history including during the Reginald Hudlin run, which has informed most contemporary takes on the character, and in some of the cartoons as well like Avengers: EMH.

                I will say I like what Coogler did with Man-Ape, made him a much more balanced and nuanced character.

      • Sinister [none/use name, comrade/them]@hexbear.netB
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        29 days ago

        It was created by a white person for a white audience as he imagined black americans would like to be seen.

        Thats why wakanda is more like black americans cosplaying as native africans and they somehow speak xhosa near the great lakes of africa lol

      • LeZero [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        29 days ago

        Sure but at least it was pretty niche before that, Black Panther wasn’t really Spider-man or the X-men and US comic book sales had been slowly dropping over time.

        Now I have to see some Zionist racist compare Liberia to Wakanda

      • SadArtemis [she/her]@hexbear.net
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        28 days ago

        Even wypipo would ideally know better than to have “the world’s friendliest CIA agent” among the supporting cast of heroes in the movie. Or so I’d like to think… though then again, “CIA killing/torturing/drugging Anglo wypipo = bad, CIA killing/torturing/drugging anyone else = good” probably is the logic