Importance of Black Panther Movie

The “Black Panther” is a very important comic movie for people of african descent especially the young generation of today. Throughout the years in the comic industry, there hasn’t been any big comic movie out there that consisted of a more than 50% black actors and actresses to my knowing. I haven’t been a big fun of comic movies to begin with, simply for the facts that I could not see myself in the characters being played and/or the actors in the movie. In my perspective, comic movies for children are supposed to motivate them to strive to be whoever they want to be and be whoever they want with their infinite imaginations. However that can very quite hard for some especially for me when you can’t see characters who look like your skin color. A lot of people don’t like movies when skin colors of people are the main focus of the movie including the casting. The western culture has always been very close-minded with african culture and made it seem as the “other” or “abnormal”. What got me excited to go watch Black Panthers over this weekend as my first time going to the theaters for a comic movie was the cultural and tribal references embedded in the movie. I gasped out of excitement when I saw the protagonist, T’Challa, in a Kente scarf. That was my first time seeing an american movie have such references such that. When I got back to my dorm, I called my mom immediately about what I saw and told her to send me a kente scarf. I became very curious about Michael B. Jordan tribal marking on his skin and where that came from and it turns, it is from Mursi and Tribal tribes of Ethiopia. I would have forgotten or never known such cultural. The Indebele neck rings that was on Shuri and Dora Milaje in the movie were from Zimbabwe and South African which symbolized a sign of wealth and status. I wouldn’t have known that. The people involved carefully took their time to research and execute this movie. I loved how they didn’t shy away from technology such as luxury cars and sci-fi planes to show the influence of the western culture too. I really encourage everyone regardless if you have no connection to Africa to watch the movie and do some research on the cultural/tribal references! Aside from the cultural references in the movie, it really warmed my heart when i saw a video trending online of two young children saying in front of the movie poster at a theater debating about who they are in the movie. They were trying to emulating their new found superheroes.