https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=fML7iZ62u8M
Baba? Yes, my son? Tell me a story. Which one? The story of home. The exchange with which this movie Black Panther begins encompasses most of what the movie is about. Connection to the father as the past, tradition, identity, strength, as well as the guarding of a home, a secret precious place, the home as mother, sister, wife that feed us, give us the resources and matter to maintain our identity. Black Panther shows us the possibility and dangers of identity. This is Jonathan Peugeot. Welcome to the symbolic world. As usual, there is quite a lot to deal with in Black Panther. But hopefully I can pull out a thread which will help one see the basic pattern. The movie sets up a secret city which is hidden from most people. It’s more technologically advanced than any other place on Earth, though still it maintains a deep connection to ancient traditions. The secret city as the projection of an ideal has both the futuristic tech of a science fiction movie, yet the people are still herdsmen. They live in huts and fulfill our longing for being connected to nature. The contrasts lay themselves out. Spaceships in majestic waterfalls, skyscrapers overlooking markets where people buy baskets, and the technology they have is also portrayed as a form of magic, a food which can bring about mystical experiences and superpowers. I think it’s precisely the joining of all these extremes and seeming contradictions, a union of hope for the future, a nostalgia for the past, a union of technical skill with spiritual connection. All of this is what makes Wakanda a place of dreams where the impossible is possible. And I think it’s all of this which also made the idea of Wakanda so attractive to the viewing public. So we start the movie in 1992 and the brother of the king of Wakanda has been living in a foreign land in the United States. And seeing the suffering of the African Americans, he has become radicalized in plans, violent actions against the system. The leaders have been assassinated. Communities flooded with drugs and weapons. They are overly policed and incarcerated. All over the planet our people suffer because they don’t have the tools to fight back. Now, I promised myself I wouldn’t be too political in my commentary, but I think it’s important to mention one political aspect if we want to understand what the movie is about. In this first encounter, the movie Black Panther shows us that it is not about Africa in any significant manner. It’s rather about the perception and the experiences of African Americans. And this is totally fair, but I think it’s important to perceive this clearly as it will be a key to understanding the unfolding plot. The idea that the brother of the king of Wakanda would go to the United States to have an awakening to the suffering of African people is at first glance rather strange. Seeing that Wakanda is somewhere in the Great Lakes region of Africa, there would have been many things close to his doorstep to see. In 1992 is one year after the dictator Mobutu Sese Seko pushed his own military to terrorize and pillage the city of Kinshasa. One year later, a second pillaging would leave the city in a post-apocalyptic state from which it has never recovered. A little later in 1994 would occur the Rwandan genocide where 800,000 people were hacked to death in the streets. The genocide would lead to a series of reprisals, meddling from neighboring countries culminating in the breakdown of eastern Congo to a state of anarchy, of tribal fighting, starvation, and rape, in which it is estimated that over 5 million people have died. So at first glance when the Black Panther, whose country is right there where all of this is still happening now in 2018, would glibly announce that he is opening up Wakanda and starting an outreach in the United States, this just clinches how the myth of Wakanda and its narrative is addressing the questions and experiences of African Americans. And it portrays Africa as an origin myth, a kind of Eden from which the African American identity has been alienated. Understanding how Wakanda is a mythic version of Africa is important because it will also help to understand the character of Killmonger and especially understand how Wakanda is presented in the movie as a kind of condensation, a culture which visually unites extremely diverse and conflicting imagery with super modern futuristic things. Everything is joined together. So the structure of Wakanda is mythical and that’s how it’s presented. And there you see that political accession is condensed into direct ritual combat, reducing political conflict to its most imagistic form, what in our world happens indirectly through debate, posturing, and insults. A notable structure in the movie is also that the king is surrounded by women, his family of course, but his personal guard are also women. And this might seem surprising to some, but in a way I found such an arrangement to be a powerful solution to the modern desire of showing strong warrior female character types. Kings and emperors have often surrounded themselves with eunuchs or else foreigners because these outsiders would be loyal to the throne rather than looking to possibly usurp the king. And so too, a guard of women protecting the king would be loyal in the same manner since they cannot access the throne directly. And this relationship to the male king with a buffer of the feminine surrounding him is also a microcosm of how all identity works. So think of the traditional image of Christ appearing in the center of his mother. And remember also even that the Virgin Mother, the Virgin Mother of God herself, is represented as a guard, as the guardian of Constantinople. Because she’s made akin to a wall or a closed gate. So the notion of a female regimen of guards has existed in several guises in ancient Africa. And even recently, General Gaddafi had his own Amazonian guard. So because Wakanda is completely closed off, it is both strong and vulnerable. Like with anything precious, Wakandans feel that they need to protect and keep their treasure, their vibranium, their technology of course, but ultimately it’s about identity. The question of identity follows through the entire movie. Who are we? What is the extent of our different identities? I mean, who should we share with? Kilmonger and his father somehow identify with all other people who share their skin color. And they think that Wakanda should extend its identity and power to all those people. But T’Challa doesn’t see it that way. His identity is limited to his royal tribe and then to Wakanda as the union of five tribes. But his fear of action, it limits itself to that border. And the problem of identity is not an easy question to answer. I mean, how do we know what the shape and limits of our identities are? How do we define us? When does this us get activated? I mean, most people would pitch in and help a nearby family if their house burned down. But there are houses burning down all the time all over the world. I mean, why don’t we pitch in when a house burns down in Kyrgyzstan? The question of identity plays itself out as a series of embedded microcosms. So within Wakanda there is one tribe which is excluded from the city. Yet it’s still considered in a way the margin of Wakanda. In the same manner Kilmonger has been excluded from the city as well. He is half Wakandan, yet he demands to be let in. And finally the question arises of whether people of all African descent sufficiently share the Wakandan identity in order to be somehow included in that identity or in relationship with that identity. It is not our way to be judge, jury and executioner for people who are not our own. Not wrong. But didn’t life start right here on this continent? So ain’t all people your people? I am not king of all people. I am king of Wakanda. These questions of identity are all images of each other. So what is ambiguous comes to pose a challenge and a threat to the authority. The challenge spouted is mostly a question. The question is, what about me? I mean, do I have access to the center? How do I participate in this common identity? And so this question repeats itself over and over in the challenge of Mbaku, who is in the margin of Wakanda, in the question of T’Challa’s ex-girlfriend Nakia, who is a spy in a foreign land. And this culminates in the challenge posed by Kilmonger, who is the most ambiguous of all, a half Wakandan orphan without a father, who is presented as this abandoned lost sheep, which Wakanda has failed to bring in. What happened to Kilmonger, his alienation from Wakanda, is also presented through a series of complex analogies to the African-American experience of fatherlessness, and also as being sold into slavery. Just bury me in the ocean with my ancestors that jumped from the ships, because they knew death was better than bondage. So the sudden appearance on the edge of Wakanda of Kilmonger as this ambiguous figure, as this thing which does not fit into a clear inside or outside, puts in question the stability and truth of the established order. Quite appropriately, this is shown as revealing the secret sin of the father. Since the appearance of Kilmonger exposes that the old king killed his brother and abandoned the boy in order to, as they say themselves, maintain the lie. In the Bible we speak of uncovering nakedness. There is this story of Noah after the flood who gets drunk in his tent and takes off his clothes. His son Ham sees the nakedness and informs his brothers. Ham’s punishment is to be exiled from the family. So here in the movie we have the same structure, but let’s say moving back in. This ambiguous foreigner comes to reveal the nakedness of T’Challa’s father, his insufficiency. And this doubt makes T’Challa question the pristine authority which he had perceived in the past, questions the actions of his father, questions also the legitimacy of his own identity. His world is no longer stable. And so in a manner it is this doubt in T’Challa which makes him lose the battle with Kilmonger, makes him lose his kingship and be plunged into chaos. He falls into death and finds himself in the underworld, represented by the cave-dwelling ape-like marginal tribe of M’Baku. Because Kilmonger is the victim of the old king because he has been completely segregated from Wakanda and also because he is motivated by resentment. How do you think your ancestors got these? You think they paid a fair price or did they take it like they took everything else? It would have been very difficult for him to return to Wakanda and simply enter as a normal Wakandan. It was almost impossible for him to be accepted normally. The only way for him to become Wakandan is to take the throne and reshape Wakanda into his own image. Ultimately, he hates Wakanda. What he really wants is to burn it to the ground and use whatever power he can get from it to fuel his own resentment and revolutionary agenda. As T’Challa enters the grave, he is tended by the women linked to his identity, his mother, his sister, and his future wife, Nekia. And if in the first ritual of death he faced his father and was connected to his father, now he faces his father’s sin. And that’s where his father calls him to stay in death. But T’Challa knows that he cannot let this stand. He must fix the situation. He must recover, redress his father. And so once he awakens, we have a more complete resurrection of T’Challa. We always have to remember that the margin, the animal part of us, the body, and ultimately death, is also potentiality. It is the potential into which I can grow, which can be changed into glory. And so as T’Challa goes into death, if M’Baku was the margin, the challenger to his authority, T’Challa is able to gather that periphery to himself. And as he returns to reclaim his throne, he will have been able to turn M’Baku’s tribe into a weapon to help him stop a more dangerous foreigner who wished to burn down the whole world. This image can help us to understand this notion of turning death against death, this notion of the monster as a defender against bigger and badder monsters. So having been able to ally himself with his former challenger, T’Challa’s kingship is not only restored, but it has in fact increased when he finally is able to recover his throne. So out of the Old King had come two Black Panthers, two sons you could say, one which is the clear continuation of identity and stability, and one which is the accidental result of a lie and of killing his brother. You see, as the uncle of the boy, the Old King would have replaced his father, would have been his guardian. So even though T’Challa understands that his father is also the unwitting cause of Killmonger’s situation, he must still face his double, he must still face this dark reflection in order to restore balance. This is also why though T’Challa kills Killmonger, he also retains a sense of kinship and compassion for his cousin. Finally, having seen his father’s sin, his excessive desire to isolate Wakanda, T’Challa is also made more complete, understanding that Wakanda cannot be completely isolated from the rest of the world, but has to remain connected to the outside in order to prevent other similar events. This is what prompts him to open up Wakanda to the rest of the world. Now I have to admit that the last speech made by the King to the UN is a bit problematic, because rather than finding a kind of balance in a manner that we would have hoped, he seems now to go to the other extreme, and he speaks of any division as being an illusion, of all humanity being like one tribe. He says that the wise build bridges, not barriers, which of course is a very strange thing to say for a king who will still have to protect a treasure, which is the most valuable resource in the entire world. The truth is that we always need both, we need bridges and barriers, we need stable identities as well as places of hospitality and generosity for us to fully thrive. So I hope you enjoyed my analysis of Black Panther. There’s a lot of things happening. First of all, I really want to thank the people that have been supporting me on Patreon. You’re really pushing me further and further, and it’s very exciting. I put a number to kind of signal to me that I need to take this to the next level. It was $2,000 a month, and we’re almost there, and so I decided I’m just going to go ahead and push through. And so I’ve already put up the first episode of a podcast version of these YouTube videos, and I will be trying to put them out regularly, put out all the videos, those that can be put into podcast form. Hopefully we’ll catch up, and at some point I might even be producing podcasts exclusively and then also videos on the other side so that there’ll be all of that happening at the same time. And then in the near future I will be putting out a website where all of this information can come together and be putting out transcripts and possibly even maybe having some original blog posts being posted there. And I’m slowly going to phase down my icon carving. I still have quite a few orders ahead of me, but I will probably actually stop taking orders until I settle all of this and try to get it to make sense, let’s say. I’m also excited that in the last few days I noticed and someone pointed me to a new Facebook group which has been started to discuss the symbolic world and the videos that we’re doing. So you can check that out. I’ll put the link in the description. And there’s also a subreddit which was started by someone, and so you can check that out as well. I told the people on Reddit that if they can get organized and if they get about 50 people, let’s say, that I would be willing to do and ask me anything on Reddit. And so go ahead and find that and we’ll see how far that goes. So I’m excited to see what’s happening. There are more videos being prepared as we speak. And so I’ll see all of you soon.