The geography of Panther

Africa - the land of unlimited riches, from diamonds to minerals, from gold to rare metals, and yet the region beset by every Darwinian nightmare involving a combination of struggle, survival and success. Colonized by the outsiders, plundered by the insiders, the region continues to get trampled under the weight of its potential and the greed of its reality. Rwanda, Somalia, Sudan, Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Congo, Libya, the list could go on, but the story remains pretty much the same - outsiders trying to get a piece of vast resources that haven't been unearthed yet, befriending the ones in power for the plum resource contracts or fomenting trouble by aiding the dissent and abetting illegal trade, all this while the locals are caught in the crosshairs of their misery and someone else's opportunism. It is a true wonder, more wondrous than many of the geographical marvels the continent has been known for, that the region is practically the poorest in the world despite sitting on some of the richest tracts known to mankind.

And so Wakanda, the African El Dorado, becomes the epitome of self-realization, a place that knows its potential and consequently grows the caution to not expose its prosperity to the outside world, because as the geography of Africa has shown many a time, it is not the power, but the potential, that truly corrupts. The collective uproar of the locals in the recent times to Chinese takeover/co-opting of the African lands, luring the government/rebels in charge with vasts sums of easy money and infrastructure building in return for the perpetual rights over its mines, ores and resources of the lands, also plays into the Wakanda's lore that the region is yet to see a benevolent beneficial partner who cares as much about the development of the region as the profits and bottomlines, and hence takes the hard decision to shut itself off from the rest of the world. Call it Vibranium or Unobtanium, the past and the present amply demonstrates that the world cares more about what's underneath that land than about the ones above. Wakanda is no fiction, replace it with Sudan or Congo or Libya, the story barely changes.

The history of Panther

Africa survived and grew in its tribes and also currently being ravaged by them. While the river valley civilizations of the world built upon their agrarian foundations and prospered, the drier parts of the world, equally gifted in their natural resources, like oil and minerals, haven't followed the similar trajectory of success. Before the discovery of their hidden wealths, the tribes primarily survived at the cost of others. In-fighting and constant wars were the only ways of survival. Raids on weaker tribes, killing off the men and children, capturing and subjugating their women folk, usurping their lands and means of living, from the deserts of the Middle East to the fearsome lands of South and Western Africa (and the non-arable parts of the Scandinavian regions in the north), non-agrarian societies thrived in their mercilessness and brutality. All this before they even knew the land they were treading was their way out of this vicious cycle of mutual destruction. And once the rest of the world discovered the use of resources buried deep in the African lands, paradoxically, the in-fighting only grew. The winners became the government and the losers, rebels. From Boko Haram to the newly minted Islamic groups pledging their allegiances to Al-Qaeda or ISIS, these tribes continue to abide by the ways of the past - pillage and plunder - rejecting all calls of peace and reconcialiation, fearing the loss of the only currency at play in Africa - power.

Wakanda, the idealized vision for Africa, therefore has the tribes living in harmony, each pulling its weight in the overall development of the region, deciding on a just transition of power, paying enough deference to its past while embracing the modernity of the future. While disease, epidemic, malnutrition AND AIDS continue to act as a counterweight to the prospect, possibility and prosperity of the Africa, Wakanda makes serious advances in medicine aided by the revolutionary features of Vibranium essentially wiping out death by unnatural causes. These choices for Wakanda, while hopeful on one hand, also depict the sad reality of everyday life in sub Saharan Africa, whose images of children with distended stomachs on gaunt frames constantly beam into the living rooms of the developed world for the want of helping hands. And so, in the story, Wakanda becomes the torchbearer for science and technology to the world leading in the innovative ways of curing diseases ultimately offering to share its expertise even at the risk of exposing its IDENTITY, which forms the theme of the movie.

The culture and morality of Panther

When the story of the Persian ruler Xerxes' invasion of Greece depicted in the Battle of Thermopylae was first turned into a graphic novel and then into the movie '300', a big hue and cry was raised over it over the depiction of the Persians as brutal, uncultured and uncivilized warmongers, when truth (via history) was to the contrary. While taking offence, whenever history is trifled with as it relates to age old cultures, has become a norm nowadays, the outrage is not so much about the distortion or misappropriation of the truth as it about identity and respect. This sense of indignation is more prevalent in cultures that haven't kept up with the march of time into modernity and so whenever there is even a slightest of slights to any of their archaic ideas or ways of life, the argument turns quickly about one of respect. The Arabic culture that once was at the forefront of mathematical and scientific innovation but now languishes in the dark shadows of its tall past, the Persian civilization, which occupied an important position in ancient and medieval history but currently is in a standstill pulled in different directions by the fundamentalist, radical and progressive forces, the Eastern cultures - Indian and Chinese - that once offered spiritual and meditative paths into the inside of the psyche but now struggling to retain their relevance in the modern materialistic setting, and the mother of all, the African experience, the birthplace of humankind (and therefore the proud owner of the ultimate bragging rights), which has yet to see a revival in its fortunes right from that high point, with colonization, slavery and now the exploitation and in-fighting all shading out what should have been brightest point in the entire human existence - all rise up from the ruins of their glorious pasts demanding respect and a place for their identities in the present fast homogenizing unilateral and unicultural worlds.

'Black Panther', stripped off the superhero gimmickry, is essentially an anthropological study of the black race by the way of offering a contrast between the heady idealism of the hero and the stark reality of its villain. The core strength of the movie lies in the anti-hero role, whose righteous rage at the oppression and the marginalization of his race and his militant ways of correcting the historical wrongs finds a strong resonance in the current socio-political climate. This should be the way going forward for the superhero genre, where villains can no longer be mere token bad or just cartoon wicked. The battle should only be ideological in the ways of achieving the same ends. Compare it to the Joker's setting up of impossibility of choices for the Dark Knight, in it, when morality is stretched to the extreme, would the hero still lean towards the cause of greater good or look for self-preservation. 'Black Panther' does a similar setup with its villain. In a world that has all but relegated an entire race to the lower rungs of its the social ladder, does reclaiming the rightful position at the table of peers through violent means, if necessary, run in opposition to the morality of its mission. History accords the title of "revolutionary" if the mission succeeds or "terrorist", should it fail, as though to say, the means never mattered as long as the ends were met. Villain? Anti-hero? More like Revisionist.

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