Black Panther and the Alt-right: networks of racial ideology

Abstract

This essay analyzes how far-right paratexts enunciate and circulate frameworks of interpretation that situate the film, Black Panther, as a Trumpian homage. Such rubrics travel through an interconnected media ecosystem and use the film to promote the views of the far-right, adoration for Donald Trump, and a postracial, neoliberal worldview. Analysis of these paratexts demonstrates how white supremacy relies on a wealth of circulated logics that can be deployed thru novel texts and considers the implications of contemporary media environments for ideological formations.

Representation of Anti-racism and Reconstruction of Black Identity in Black Panther

“…Giving an African tribe advanced technology and making them sing monkey chants is not an excellent way to represent the meaning of anti-racism. Varda and Hahner (2020) regarded Black Panther as a Trumpian homage, which supports the Trumpian anti-immigration, isolation, ethno-nationalist and pro-wall ideologies. They thought these conservative paratexts naturalise White supremacy and entrench support for Trump’s ethnonationalism.…”

Wakanda Forever

“…Black power advocates loved it, as did liberals who liked the "education and aid, not struggle" conclusion to the film's exploration of options for racial justice. And right-wing commentators found in the nationalist refrain "Wakanda Forever" a version of Trump's isolationist "America First" (see Faramelli, 2019;Varda & Hahner, 2020).…”

“…While it offers "a rich embodiment of African culture,… [Black Panther] is surprisingly removed from the reality of today's African social issues and its politics" (Garside, 2018, p. 109;see Faramelli, 2019;Zizek, 2018). The film's use of other African countries as foils to Wakanda has been criticized as Western stereotyping, and its solution to the question of Wakanda's responsibility to Black people has been found to be, variously, and relatedly, neoliberal and Western development-oriented (Hanchey, 2020;Johnson & Hoerl, 2020;Varda & Hahner, 2020). Varda and Hahner (2020) argue that representational diversity alone is not enough to guarantee revolutionary representation, and Johnson and Hoerl (2020) accuse the film of maintaining whiteness despite its centering of Black bodies.…”

Black Panther in widescreen: cross-disciplinary perspectives on a pioneering, paradoxical film

“…Nowhere is Black Panther's compatibility with whiteness more apparent than in what Scott J. Varda and Leslie A. Hahner term the alt-right and far-right's "matrix of interpretation" utilized to appropriate the film as a Trumpian homage. 51 While auteurs and actors certainly cannot control interpretations or appropriations of their work, the WDC's (un)conscious allegiance to white supremacy throughout its history and political economy render its productions vulnerable to all forms of discursive whiteness-even those the corporation itself may deem abhorrent.…”