Black Panther’s Circle of Hype
By Armond White
February 16, 2018 4:00 AM
This banal comic-book blockbuster follows Democratic-party ‘politricks.’
The Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) first infantilizes its audience, then banalizes it, and, finally, controls it through marketing.
This commercial strategy, geared toward adolescents of all ages, resembles the Democratic party’s political manipulation of black Americans, targeting that audience through its insecurities about heritage, social prestige, and empowerment. So Marvel’s new, instant blockbuster Black Panther appeals to adolescent fantasies about birthright and ethnic invincibility — dishing up the routine super-heroics of T’Challa (Chadwick Boseman), a black version of Batman who fights crime dressed as a panther. He’s a recent addition to the Marvel Avengers series and the new king of Wakanda, a fictitious African nation devised by two of Marvel’s pseudo–social scientists, writer Stan Lee and illustrator Jack Kirby.
The Black Panther film and its hype are inseparable.
What motivates their methods of racial exploitation are confirmed by this week’s Time magazine: Its cover features Boseman, Black Panther’s star, handsomely replacing Time’s infamously racist, darkened O. J. cover, to prove that the publication has abandoned journalism to become a social-justice-warrior pamphlet. Combining youth and black exploitation is an effective propaganda tactic when audiences don’t recognize how they’re being manipulated; they’re simply flattered by it.
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https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/02/ ... e-fantasy/Haven't seen the movie yet.
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