From South Africa : Black Panther and the values of Wakanda

From my friend Steve in South Africa.  His review of a black movie.

Black Panther and the values of Wakanda

18 MAY 2018

tags: Black Panther, film reviews, films, superheroes, virtue signalling, Wakanda

This morning at TGIF Nduluma Mwaba led us in a discussion of the values of Wakanda, as seen in the film Black Panther. Wakanda is a fictitious country somewhere in Africa, and Black Panther is a comic book superhero who is the alter ego of the king of Wakanda.

We hadn’t seen the film, so thought we had better see it before this morning’s talk, so we rushed off to see it yesterday afternoon.

The talk was billed as Nduluma Mwaba speaking on The Wisdom of Wakanda, and the blurb read:

“Black Panther” has smashed box office records. And while it has been seen
largely as a black movie (whatever that means considering that films with
predominantly white actors aren’t punted as “white movies”), the
philosophical tapestry and ideological themes in this movie are universal
and common to our humanity.

Nduluma Mwaba will examine some of these themes and ask some pertinent
questions around our humanity, our duty and our values. He will seek to
“tap into the wisdom of Wakanda” – the fictitious country in which the
movie is set. Nduluma’s background is in Chemistry and Economics, and he
holds a keen interest in philosophy as a gateway to human freedom and
growth.

Neither of us is too keen on superhero films, so we hadn’t seen this one. We’re not great moviegoers. I think the last time we went to a sit-down movie house was in 2010, when we went to see The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (my review here). Val said she would rather see A Wrinkle in Time, which we had discussed at our neoinklings literary coffee klatsch, and so would I, but that wasn’t what was being discussed at the meeting tomorrow.

T’Challa, the recently enthroned King of Wakanda and the Black Panther

So we went searching on the Internet to see if it was still showing in Pretoria, and where, and how much it would cost (surely the price had gone up since 2010?). In the course of my search I found a review Black Panther has duped us all, which I read, and I suppose predisposed me to see the film through its spectacles. Its verdict was that Black Panther denigrated the armed struggle and promoted neo-liberal values.

Anyway, we found where the film was showing, and went to see it, and enjoyed it. Not the best film I’ve ever seen, but not the worst either. The three dominant impressions after seeing it were

• the obligatory car chase
• the CIA man comes to the rescue — after being rescued himself
• Val noted that it was one of the few American films she had seen where the chief villain spoke with an American accent and the good guys didn’t.

Warning: there may be some spoilers in what follows

So this morning went to TGIF where Nduluma Mwaba spoke about the film and some of the moral and ethical issues it raised. Only about half the people there had actually seen the film, and we were glad we had been because it would have meant far less to us if we hadn’t.

Nduluma Mwabe speaking at TGIF on “The Wisdom of Wakanda”

One of the points he raised, which had not occurred to me, was that the herb that turned the king of Wakanda into the superhero Black Panther gave him not just superhero powers but supernatural powers. That takes it a stage beyond the standard superhero model, the self-effacing Clark Kent who changes into his costume in a telephone booth to become Superman. It has connotations of divine kingship, the god-king.

Superman’s day job is a journalist. Black Panther’s is ruling a nation. The notion of divine kingship has echoes of the Roman religion of emperor worship. When we were talking about it afterwards Nduluma mentioned a recent visit to Rome, and how he felt the vibe of ancient power and ancient pagan religion that permeated the place.

Another issue he mentioned was that if you have something special, like vibranium, do you protect it or do you share it? Some saw it as an analogy for gold, and saw Wakanda as South Africa, being exploited by foreigners as the traditionalist Wakandans feared. I saw it more as an image of something like nuclear power. It’s OK to share it with favourites, like Israel, but not with Iran and North Korea.

But even more vibranium is a McGuffin, like the ring in Lord of the Rings, and represents power and its uses, and who controls its uses. This forms the theme of both Tolkien’s book and this film.

Then Nduluma mentioned the question of duty. At one point in the film the general of the king’s guard, when asked to help overthrow the usurper when the real king returns, says that her loyalty is to the throne regardless of who sits upon it. And that relates to the unwritten rule in democratic societies, that the military should be above party politics, and should serve the state regardless of which party is in power.

The appeal to her immediately made me think of the Portuguese coup of 1974, which brought about the end of the Salazar-Caetano dictatorship, and led in turn to the liberation of Mozambique and Angola from colonial rule. The image of Portuguese soldiers with flowers in their gun barrels, saying that they were no longer prepared to fight the Portuguese dictatorship’s colonial wars for it, was a powerful one, but the balance is a fine one, and which side carries the most weight? Tanya Pretorius saw the same scene from a feminist point of view — that the general was a woman, and so the scene represented patriarchy putting women in a bad light. But I didn’t see it that way; there were plenty of male villains in the film as well.

Another guy, Shingai Ngara, commented that he found the film too American, and found it rather insulting to Africans. At the end it shows the king of Wakanda going to America to do good to Americans, but not doing good to the African neighbours of Wakanda.

Nduluma also spoke of the politics of power, and said that the lion did not have its claws out all the time. It showed its claws only when it was needed. This struck me as particularly topical. Yesterday Tony McGregor had posted a link on Facebook to an article that reported Trevor Manuel as saying that Jacob Zuma’s presidency had been an unmitigated disaster. And almost all the comments on this in Facebook had been critical of Trevor Manuel for failing to do what the Americans call “virtue signalling”, and denouncing the evils of Zuma all the time, like a lion never sheathing its claws. But if he, and others who felt the same way, had done that, they would have had to leave the ANC altogether, and Zuma would still be president today, and firmly entrenched, because those who opposed him would have been neutralised. Instead they kept quiet and worked behind the scenes to recapture the captured ANC, branch by branch.

So there are two levels at which one can see Black Panther the film. One is at the level of cinematic techniques. There are the cliches, like the car chase, the casino scene, the battle scenes. The last, in particular, revealed the comic book origins of the story, with the BLAM! and KERPOW! of the speech bubbles being translated into visual effects.

And then there is the more expansive level of the moral issues and dilemmas faced by the characters. Vera Marbach commented that there is nothing in a film that is not intended to be there, and pointed out that there was a cameo role for the head honcho of Marvel Comics, where the King of Wakanda wins at the casino, and leaves, leaving his winnings behind on the table. And this character gathers up all the king’s chips and says “I’ll take care of these.” Very telling.

But is everything intended? I’m not sure.

I return to the CIA man.

On the surface, it seems a transparent attempt by Hollywood to plug the CIA as the good guys, apparently opposed to the usurper king, Killermonger, who wants to solve all problems in the world, or at least those that affect black people, by military means. In real life, of course, that is the role of the CIA, fomenting wars and engineering coups all over the world. Instead of being a last resort, the US, in particular, seems to look very quickly for a military solution.

But, if one looks below the surface, could there be satire behind it? In the last battle, the CIA man is pictured as a drone pilot, shooting down aircraft that presumably belong to the Wakandan air force, by remote control. That’s got to be satire, hasn’t it?

And at another level, too, could it be satire on the US policy of using surrogates that it controls to fight its battles for it, the “good guy” rebels that it arms and supports to bring about regime change in countries that do not jump to its commands.

Is it satire at this level?

Or is it just naive realism?

Steve Hayes and Billy Graham in black and white

From The Editor of this blog:

Steve Hayes is my oldest internet friend going back to when we only had email to communicate. Steve lives in South Africa and is a cleric in the Serbian Orthodox Church. I highly commend his blog. Steve is a fount of wisdom.

New post on Khanya Billy Graham in black and white by Steve The death of Billy Graham was followed by a flood of posts on social media, some praising him to the heavens as more honourable than the cherubim and more glorious beyond compare than the seraphim, and others damning him as a would be war criminal who urged US President Richard Nixon to kill a million people in Vietnam. I thought I would steer clear of all the hype, and not read any of it, pro or con, until a few internet friends posted things that I thought worth paying attention to. First was Jim Forest of the Orthodox Peace Fellowship, who met Billy Graham in 1988 when he visited the USSR at the invitation of the Russian Orthodox Church, on the occasion of the celebration of a millennium of Christianity in Russia: At the airport waiting for our flight to Kiev, I asked Graham what had led him to undertake his first trip to the USSR in 1982 despite advice from Vice President Bush not to go. "I had been briefed at the Pentagon about what would happen if there was a nuclear war," he replied. "I had been to Auschwitz and seen how limitless is our capacity for evil. And I was thinking about Paul saying in his first letter to the Corinthians that he was called to be all things to all people. I realized I had closed myself to the people in the Soviet Union. So I felt I had to say yes to the invitation I received from the Russian Orthodox Church inviting me to take part in a peace conference they were preparing in Moscow." Speaking in Kiev, he gave a vintage Graham sermon: "My grandfather never dreamed of the changes that have happened in our world -- space travel, color television, travel from continent to continent in a few hours by jet airplane. But some things never change. Interest in religion never changes. The nature of God never changes." He spoke about God's love for each person, a love we cannot damage by our sins. Graham recalled a Moscow lady who told him, "I am a great sinner." He responded, "I too am a great sinner, but we have a great savior." He recalled Prince Vladimir and his conversion. "He turned away from idols and destroyed them, opening a new path in life not only for himself but for millions of others right down to our own time. God never changes, but you and I must change just as Prince Vladimir changed a thousand years ago." He ended his sermon saying, "In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit."  (see Jim Forest's book Religion in the new Russia). The second was Irving Hexham who posted a link on Facebook to a sermon preached by Billy Graham in South Africa in 1973, in which he said that Jesus was not white. I was there. I heard it. I also heard John Gatu of Kenya, who preached immediately before him, who in my opinion preached much better. I said as much in response to Irving's Facebook post, but that is not the full story. Facebook lends itself to the visual equivalent of sound bites -- one-liners that never tell the full story. That is why I prefer mailing lists and possibly blogs for discussing such things. And there was a story behind that sermon that deserves to be told again. The rally at which Billy Graham was the main speaker was the culmination of a 10-day conference, the South African Congress on Mission and Evangelism. The conference was organised by the South African Council of Churches and African Enterprise, an evangelistic (and Evangelical) organisation. The organisers wanted to make the conference as widely representative of South African Christianity as possible, and, in particular, to bring "Evangelicals" and "Ecumenicals" together (they weren't too bothered, at that stage, about the Roman Catholics and the Orthodox, whose presence would probably be even more scary to Evangelicals than the Ecumenicals). SA Congress on Mission and Evangelism Rally at Kings Park stadium, Durban, at which Billy Graham preached. 17 March 1973. And if anything was going to bring the Evangelicals in, it was Billy Graham, who was a hero to most of them. So he was there as bait. The Evangelicals would come to hear Billy Graham, they wouldn't come to hear John Gatu, no matter how well he preached. And the bait worked. Billy Graham Rally at Kings Park, 17 March 1973 Many Evangelicals remained suspicious, and shied away from the Ecumenicals, whom they regarded as "political" (if anyone deserves that epithet today, it's Evangelicals, especially American ones) and too focused on the "social gospel". But many overcame their suspicions and joined in. I heard Billy Graham preach on one other occasion, at Earls Court in London in 1966. On that occasion I and those with me handed out pamphlets critical of some of Billy Graham's comments on the Vietnam War. The pamphlets were produced by the Christian Committee of 100, of which I had become a hanger-on. Billy Graham rally at Kings Park, Durban I had been told by several Anglican clergy that they did not approve of Billy Graham, because they did not like "emotionalism". The way they described it, it sounded as though he had an almost hypnotic effect on the crowd, getting them all worked up.  But I was disappointed. I was less than impressed with his preaching on that occasion. Far from being emotional, it was rather dull and boring, and there was no appeal to the emotions at all. But on both occasions it clearly worked for some people, who went forward to commit their lives to Jesus Christ as Saviour. For some of them it may have been a recommitment. I've seen many people respond to such "altar calls" again and again. An Anglican monk once told me that he did at a Billy Graham crusade. As he got up to go forward, the ushers stopped him, and said "Not you." "Why not?" he asked "It's for those who have committed their lives to Christ." "But I have." "No, it's for those who have committed their lives to Christ today." "But I do, every day." So the Evangelical ritual of the "altar call" is not necessarily well understood outside Evangelical circles, but Billy Graham's preaching nevertheless influenced a lot of people and, I believe, brought many closer to Christ. He was certainly the best-known itinerant evangelist of the 20th century. So what Billy Graham said in South Africa that day may have helped some white Evangelicals to see that racism wasn't OK for Christians, and thus he may have planted some seeds that germinated and helped in some way to end apartheid 20 years later. But at the time it was a huge disappointment. It could have done with a bit of "emotionalism". There were 50000 Christians there, of all races (the government had demanded that they be segregated, but they weren't, people sat anywhere they liked). They were expecting something to happen, but it didn't. John Gatu preached a far more stirring sermon, and perhaps he should have spoken last, and sent out the crowd as manic street preachers, and they probably would have done it. Billy Graham started off well -- saying that though we all come from different cultures and ethnic backgrounds, we are all one in Christ, and waved his arm round the packed stadium and said "This is the church". And then he proceeded to preach a sermon full of bad cliches and mediocre pulpit jokes. If he had taken up the consciousness of unity that was beginning to emerge, and expounded on it, something might have happened. It was ready to happen. Fifty thousand black and white Christians gathered together, of all races, all classes, sitting together. There might have been a mighty outpouring of the Holy Spirit. We could have prayed and sang and exchanged the kiss of peace, and it would have been great, but it fell flat. About a fifth of them came forward for the appeal at the end. For the rest of us, there was nothing more. We could leave, so leave we did. A great anticlimax. The third piece is from Brenton Dickieson, who writes in his blog about Billy Graham, C.S. Lewis, and Me | A Pilgrim in Narnia. I think he comes closer to giving a balanced assessment of Billy Graham than many when he writes: Graham leveraged early superstardom to do very specific things that shaped American Christianity for the next three generations. In particular, Graham’s insistent and consistent ecumenism, his global interest, and his unapologetic views of racial integration—even going so far as to bail Martin Luther King, Jr. out of jail—are imprinted upon post-WWII American Christianity. In particular, it was Billy Graham who shaped what is now known as evangelicalism, distinct from and overlapping with both fundamentalism and mainstream liberalism. With all the things we may quibble about, for millions of people around the world, Graham made faith personal. Brenton Dickieson is a student of C.S. Lewis, who, like Billy Graham, influenced many Christians, not through his preaching, but through his writing. In his blog he describes how Lewis met Billy Graham, and their impressions of each other. It really is worth a read. Steve | 23 February 2018 at 8:10 pm | Tags: Billy Graham, evangelicalism, evangelicals, evangelism, evangelists | Categories: Christianity, people, religion | URL: https://wp.me/p3gtp-2KT

A Serbian Orthodox Pentecost at the Monastery of the Descent of the Holy Spirit at Gerardville, Gauteng, South Africa.

My oldest internet friend is Steve Hayes. 

 Steve, formerly an Anglican,

is a Deacon in the Serbian Orthodox Church in South Africa.  

Here is a post from his blog, Khanya.

~~~~~~~~~~

Pentecost at Gerardville by Steve On the Monday of Pentecost Archbishop Damaskinos of Johannesburg and Pretoria visited the Monastery of the Descent of the Holy Spirit at Gerardville, on the western edge of the City of Tshwane, in Gauteng province, South Africa. Since the death of Father Nazarius (Pribojan) in 2008 there have been no monks living there permanently. Archbishop Damaskinos had not visited before, but came to see, and to discuss Fr Elias Palmos's plans to revive the monastery and develop the site (of 25 hectares) as a mission centre. The clergy with Archbishop Damaskinos after the Divine Liturgy in St Demetrius Church. Deacon Stephen Hayes, Fr Elias Palmos, Archbishop Damaskinos, Fr George Cocotos, Archimandrite Athanasius Akunda Fr Elias inherited some money from his father, and set up a trust to buy the land to be used for the church, and the Holy Community of New Sion to administer the centre on behalf of the church, with provision for the revival of the monastery, and future plans for a theological school, a mission centre, and a parish of the Archdiocese, using St Demetrius Church, the biggest church on the site. The congregation at St Demetrius on Pentecost Monday, 2014, with Archbishop Damaskinos The Feast of the Descent of the Holy Spirit seems an appropriate occasion to pray for the Holy Spirit to breathe new life into the place and those who are living there now, and will, we hope, with the blessing of Archbishop Damaskinos, do so in future. The monastery site is on a portion of the farm Vlakplaas, and in the past another part of the farm was used as a place of torture and murder. We hope that the prayers of the people here will cleanse the land of its ugly past. Archbishop Damaskinos has a tour of the monastery site. There is enough land at the site for many different kinds of activities without disturbing the peace of the monastery. Some of the celibate clergy are hoping to live there soon, to restart the monastic life, and help develop the centre. There is room for several different expressions of monastic life, including male and female monasteries, but for the immediate future we hope there will be enough people to reestablish the monastic life in one community. Archbishop Damaskinos giving ikon cards to some of the children who were at the service The parish of St Demetrius has been in existence for some time, and serves those those live to the south and west pf Pretoria, including those at the children's home in Atteridgeville. Eventually it is hoped to build a church in Atteridgeville too, and indeed the foundations have been laid, but in the mean time the congregation in Atteridgeville has readers services, and are brought to St Demetrius by taxi for the Divine Liturgy. With the possibility of more priests living at the monastery, it will also be possible to have more regular services at the parish church of St Demetrius. It is also hoped, with the blessing of Archbishop Damaskinos, to have youth gatherings, to bring together young peoiple from different parishes, and have some teaching on the Orthodox Christiasn faith. It wouold also be a place for people of all ages from different parishes to come together, and Archbishop Damaskinos spoke of the possibility of holding such a celebration later this year. When the Most High came down and confused the tongues He divided the nations but when He distributed the tongues of fire He called all to unity therefore with one voice we glorify the all-holy Spirit (Kontakion for Pentecost) The Monastery of the Descent of the Holy Spirit is a place for people of all nations, and it was fitting that on the feast of the Descnet of the Holy Spirit people of several different nationas and languages gathered. St Demetrius Church, the biggest church at the monastery Please pray for the Archbishop and the Archdiocese of Johannesburg and Pretoria, and for the Holy Community of New Sion, that through their efforts, guided by the Holy Spirit, Orthodox monasticism may be established in southern Africa.