Maximo Martinez, “Black Panter Is Not the Movie We Deserve”, By Christopher Lebron

One of Lebron’s main points from his criticism about the Marvel movie “Black Panter”, was that is racist to portray the main villian as a black man. He states that “They (the movie) safeguard virtue and goodness against the threat not of white Americans or Europeans, but a black American man, the most dangerous person in the world.”, showing his dissapointment towards the fact that the villain in this movie, wasn’t a white, but in fact that having a “black man whose father was murdered by his own family and who is left by family and nation to languish in poverty. That’s racist”. This shows how not only he doesn’t like the main villain to be a black man, but to also for him to have such a tragic background story, is “racist”. In addition he claims that the movie shows that “black lives doesn’t matter”. He says this because other “villains—even those far more destructive than Killmonger—die infrequently”, then he adds on by putting Loki as an example of how he “gets multiple, unearned chances to redeem himself no matter what damage he has done”. Which is true since he have done things like almost kill his brother, causing the apocalypse in his homeland, almost killing his brother multiple times, and causing a massacre in NY. So with this Lebron, goes on saying that his “claim that Killmonger’s black life does not matter is not hyperbole.” Since not only other villians get second chances, but also because in the scene where Killmonger dies “Black Panther does not flinch. There is no reconciliation”.

One of the major things that confuses me, is that I don’t know if he realizes or not the fact that when he talks about Killmonger wanting to “liberate” black men around the world by using WEAPONS, he understands that is going to lead to the mass murder of white people around the world. Another thing that confused me was the fact that he doesn’t like the idea of the main villian to be a black man, where after all the movie is based on an African country where ALL habitants are black. And one last thing that also confused me was that in Lebron’s last paragraph he says that “Why not take the case to the United Nations and charge the United States with crimes against humanity……?”, So I would like to know why would he make such a ramdom question like that?, I would like to know what are such “crimes against humanities” that the US have committed?

Comments ( 3 )

  1. jenncy mejia
    I like the organization of your post. I also agree with many of your confusions, I mostly do understand at all what is racist about the movie.
  2. Ruben Genao
    You did a good job of debunking all of the criticism of the movie and also convinced me in a lot of things. I agree that the criticism of the movie is incorrect mainly because of intentions of kill monger to carry out a genocide of white people using the vibranium but you also presented several new solid points one being about why a person of African descent was portrayed as a villain, since the setting of the movie is based in an African country specifically in a village. In this case, since the majority of that area is composed of black people it's improbable to have a villain outside of that race.
  3. Edward Mendoza
    Your point of view was very interesting, as I agree with all the points that you made pointing out the flaws of the original article. You made very strong points in your argument for your point of view, like how discussing that killmongerer wasn't made to be a villain because he was black, but because he sought after an extremely radicalized and twisted answer to the injustices that he witnessed growing up.

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