- Title
- Liberatory violence or the gift: paths to decoloniality in Black Panther
- Creator
- Mabasa, Xiletelo
- Creator
- Boshoff, Priscilla A
- Subject
- To be catalogued
- Date Issued
- 2022
- Date
- 2022
- Type
- text
- Type
- article
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/10962/455509
- Identifier
- vital:75435
- Identifier
- http://dx.doi.org/10.17159/2617-3255/2022/n36a7
- Description
- Black Panther's (Coogler 2018) popularity amongst its black audiences in part stems from its foregrounding of the persistent social injustices engendered by colonialism and slavery (what Aníbal Quijano (2000: 533) terms' coloniality') and black people's struggles to overcome them. As a representational tactic in approaching this theme, the Hollywood blockbuster draws on the imaginings of Afrofuturism, which variously endorses radical or more conciliatory approaches to decoloniality. This southern theoretical approach and the critique of coloniality offered by Afrofuturism frame our exploration of how the film positions the hero, T'Challa and the villain, Erik Killmonger, as embodiments of contrasting approaches to emancipation from colonialism's entrenched legacy. Us-ing a structuralist approach that draws on the narrative models of Tsvetan Todorov, Vladimir Propp and Claude Levi-Strauss, we analyse the film's approach to decoloniality by examining the relationship be-tween T'Challa and Killmonger as the protagonist and antagonist re-spectively. The analysis reveals the limitations of the film's construction of the hero's and villain's understandings of the path to liberation. Ra-ther than offering a revolutionary remedy for the injustices of colonial-ism and its aftermath, the film embraces a liberal standpoint that re-mains palatable to the white establishment, both within Hollywood and the broader socio-political milieu.
- Format
- 21 pages
- Format
- Language
- English
- Relation
- Image and Text
- Relation
- Mabasa, X. and Boshoff, P., 2022. Liberatory violence or the gift: paths to decoloniality in Black Panther. Image and Text, (36), pp.1-21
- Relation
- Image and Text volume 36 number 1 1 21 2022 2617-3255
- Rights
- Publisher
- Rights
- Use of this resource is governed by the terms and conditions of the Image and Text Statement (https://www.imageandtext.up.ac.za/imageandtext/about)
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Boshoff, Priscilla A (Associate Prof)
RU School of Journalism and Media Studies
| Thumbnail | File | Description | Size | Format | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| View Details Download | SOURCE1 | Liberatory violence or the gift.pdf | 1 MB | Adobe Acrobat PDF | View Details Download |