Image & TextPub Date : 2022-05-13DOI: 10.17159/2617-3255/2022/n36a3
Melusi Mntungwa
{"title":"The Invisibilities of an Afrofuturistic utopia - the erasure of Black queer bodies in Black Panther","authors":"Melusi Mntungwa","doi":"10.17159/2617-3255/2022/n36a3","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.17159/2617-3255/2022/n36a3","url":null,"abstract":"Although Black Panther (Coogler 2018) has been revered as a cultural text that presents an Afrofuturistic way Black people could imagine and see themselves, it is not void of societal prejudices. Such prejudices include the treatment of Black queer people in the film's narrative. Much like the society in which Black queer people find themselves, the kingdom of Wakanda in Black Panther fails to acknowledge and depict their humanity and existence. As such, this article interrogates Black Panther's erasure of Black queer individuals from its plot and narrative. It explores the complicated position that Black queer individuals find themselves in, in a society where they are in constant danger of violent erasure from the public discourse. Drawing on a close reading of the Black Panther's narrative, this article argues that, as a cultural text, Black Panther fails to employ ubuntu in its treatment of all identities. At the core of my reading of Black Panther is a critique of how the Afrofuturistic kingdom of Wakanda as a symbol of affirmative Black identity mirrors the same prejudices of present society by not recognising the existence of Black queer identities, erasing them from reality. I ultimately argue that Black Panther's potential to be reflective and inclusive is not optimally reached.","PeriodicalId":288281,"journal":{"name":"Image & Text","volume":"3 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-05-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128624517","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Image & TextPub Date : 2022-05-05DOI: 10.17159/2617-3255/2022/n36a2
J. Viljoen
{"title":"Re-forming Hollywood's imagination: beyond the box office and into the boardroom","authors":"J. Viljoen","doi":"10.17159/2617-3255/2022/n36a2","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.17159/2617-3255/2022/n36a2","url":null,"abstract":"Despite the commercial success of Black Panther (Coogler 2018) and its ostensible achievement of making Hollywood more representative of black people and \"their\" narratives, the film is limited in terms of the progress on inclusion it can achieve. This is because, as a Hollywood superhero film, its success is predicated upon perpetuating the colonisation of the imagination of its (still largely white) spectators and it does not represent black people on their own terms. A close focus on form exposes the film as retaining the spectacular and action-orientated visual language of Hollywood that engenders cinema as fundamentally voyeuristic and imperial. In this way, a close examination of Black Panther supports the examination of limits of what the commercial structure of an industry established upon the colonial gaze of spectacle is currently able to produce. This paper goes further and also argues that decolonisation in cinema should involve a more radical confrontation of Hollywood aesthetics and the formal language of Hollywood's gaze itself, so that the embodied visual languages of global cinema and New Black cinema may be more widely employed to reveal the world of those colonised by Hollywood as materially different, on their own terms. It is only by going beyond the success of films like Black Panther in the box office and through a radical investigation of form and haptic visuality that the considerably unequal structure of the Hollywood boardroom - which produces such films in the first place - may be transformed.","PeriodicalId":288281,"journal":{"name":"Image & Text","volume":"55 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-05-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116483413","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Image & TextPub Date : 2022-05-05DOI: 10.17159/2617-3255/2022/n36a1
Terry Westby-Nunn
{"title":"Complications and concessions: ecofeminism in Black Panther","authors":"Terry Westby-Nunn","doi":"10.17159/2617-3255/2022/n36a1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.17159/2617-3255/2022/n36a1","url":null,"abstract":"Ecofeminism is an interdisciplinary movement which dissects unhealthy power relations. Assessing the science fiction film Black Panther (Coogler 2018) through an ecofeminist lens offers up fruitful and complicated explorations. Ecofeminism focusses on the impacts of toxic hegemonies, and the paper evaluates representations of power in Black Panther. As the vibranium meteor gives Wakanda an advantage, vibranium functions as a speculative symbol for privilege, and the responsibilities that come with the power of privileged positioning are interrogated. An analysis of the representations of culture and nature in Black Panther potentially indicates that Wakanda is not as severed from nature as our contemporary global neoliberal culture - although, arguably, much of the imagery is idealised, and what is excluded from our view is as important as what is included. An uninvited ecofeminist observation suggests that Wakanda's isolation goes against the grain of contemporary globalised neoliberalism and posits that self-reliance and self-subsistence can be a powerful alternative force. In our neoliberal system, where deregulated global trade is driving the Anthropocene, there is potentially a lesson in Wakanda's self-sufficiency. Finally, a discussion of the heart-shaped herb reveals it to be a speculative symbol of ecofeminist connectivity through uniting humanity, nature, technology, and consciousness.","PeriodicalId":288281,"journal":{"name":"Image & Text","volume":"60 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-05-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126156545","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"[Un]performing voice: Simnikiwe Buhlungu/Euridice Zaituna Kala","authors":"Katja Gentric","doi":"10.18452/21083","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.18452/21083","url":null,"abstract":"Two unspectacular interventions, performed in central Johannesburg by Simnikiwe Buhlungu and Euridice Zaituna Kala, evidence the performativity of voice in public space. Addressing the unheard in contemporary society, they operate a shift in the way language is put to use (Cassin 2018). In paradoxical reciprocity, the action of [un]hearing comes to signify a fine-tuned form of informed and involved listening capable of bringing to the fore that which ordinarily goes by unheard or remains stifled. An \"accented\" way of speaking for example is inflected, shows situatedness, indicates individuated thought patterns (Coetzee 2013). This form of speech carries the legacy of historical exchange between languages and the power relations involved. It bears recognition of the multiple languages involved in the totality of any act of speech. Given current global concerns, it seems indispensable to caution that language identity cuts two ways: it is simultaneously a marker of belonging and a means of singling out those who do not belong. Side-stepping identity-politics, protesting discriminations based on language proficiency, the two interventions suggest self-transforming labour where the reader or listener may potentially perform an activist interruption of the [un]heard.","PeriodicalId":288281,"journal":{"name":"Image & Text","volume":"8 3","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-01-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"113958257","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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