Wakanda, the Fidgeting Island

On August 28th, 2020- the world lost Chadwick Boseman to his four year battle against cancer; but the Black Panther continues to live. While the first comic book appearance of the Black Panther was in 1966, it was only in 2018 that it was popularized to a mainstream audience by the Marvel Cinematic Universe. To many of us, Chadwick Boseman became Black Panther. His courage and elegance, spirit and strength, resilience and gentleness, and most importantly-his ideas, gave life to the fictional character. This piece is an ode to the legacy he left for us through his art, his striking grace and in his persistent fight against racism and colonialism. 

Boseman was deeply inspired by the Black Panther Comics from the time when he was attending college at Howard University, and working at an African bookstore in that duration. While his history in theatre, entry into Hollywood, other popular cinemas and his fight against cancer deserve an essay of their own, this comic book influence carried forward through all of this and to his time at the MCU. He vigorously led the movement to ensure indigenous communities, African culture, and gender-just ways were represented in an anti-racist, anti-colonial cinematic depiction. 

I re-watched Black Panther the day after Boseman's passing. In the re-wake of the Black Lives Matter Movement this year, the film multiplied in its meanings. It was around the same time that I had read Kei Miller's 'The Cartographer Tries to Map a Way to Zion'. In his book, Miller's poem "What the Mapmaker Ought to Know" seamlessly invokes images of Wakanda to one's mind: 

"On this island things fidget.

Even history.

The landscape does not sit

willingly

as if behind an easel

holding pose

waiting on

someone

to pencil

its lines, compose

its best features

or unruly contours.

Landmarks shift,

become unfixed

by earthquake

by landslide

by utter spite.

Whole places will slip

out from your grip." 

For those who have not read the comics or seen the film yet, Wakanda is the fictional country situated in the continent of Africa where the primary events of the Black Panther film take center. It empowers the idea of what our countries might have been like, had we not been colonized. The Wakandans were rich in their indigenous culture comprising of five distinct tribes and were also rich in their resources, for their land was built on the abundance of vibranium, an extremely powerful metal of extra-terrestrial origin which had hit the country's fields through a meteorite crash. Wakandan ancestors realized that the war-waging world and the  global colonial conquest would not spare them, and built a mirage to protect themselves and their land from being stolen and violated. To the outside world, they were the ideal image of an African country as a euro-centric mind would picture it: poor, in need of aid and "primitive". 

Simon Ryan in his piece "Inscribing the Emptiness: Cartography, exploration and the construction of Australia" writes about cartography and "colonial inscription" being a violent imperialist project used to expand their occupation and the resulting mass genocide of the Aboriginals in Australia. European mapping is rooted in the production of maps which begin and end with their empire, only accounting for those locations which can be "accurately" drawn and represented. This intentionally leaves out indigenous lands which do not run in accurate, mappable lines. Such lands were considered to be terra nullius or "nobody's land" translating to the ideology that they are available for occupation by the colonizers. The idea of a "blank space" available for conquest affirmatively erases the socio-political geography, culture and history of communities that are native to this land in order to make space for the European Empire. A threat to this occupation includes any imagination of myth or geography built by folklore and fiction, as it shakes the authority of what is considered "real". Wakanda as an imagined, fictional space entirely subverts the idea of this blank space. It reproduces the euro-centric imagination of the map to the European mind and fills in the blank space in the way they want to see it. Having done this, it continues to preserve itself for centuries, more "developed" than any European country can imagine and capable of providing aid to them. The "fidgeting island" in Miller's poem reminds me of Wakanda for its refusal to match the imperial gaze in its way of life and how the whole country will fall out of its violator's grip, with a conscience and activism of its own. Wakanda will fid-fidge-fidget its way out of the palms of those who desire to seize it, valiantly. It instils faith of not only what could have been, but also on what could still be. 

The 'Black Panther' film also opens up to the politics of borders and the contemporary (yet age old) omni-present question of- should the borders be opened? There is internal conflict between the Wakandans themselves as to whether they should protect their country from possibilities of invasion and continue the centuries-long legacy they had built or open their borders and share their resources, specifically with other African communities who are in dire need of them. A powerful character in the film is Nakia, played by the brilliant Lupita Nyong'o. She is part of the Central Intelligence Force of Wakanda known as War Dogs and is away from the country constantly embarking on different missions where she encounters people of African descent facing hardships across the world. From the commencement of the film, she insists to T'Challa, the Black Panther and King of Wakanda (played by our beloved Boseman) that Wakanda needs to open its borders, share its resources and take in refugees. She says "I've seen too many in need just to turn a blind eye. I can't be happy here knowing that there's people out there who have nothing." When her points are contested on the basis of how they will defend themselves and protect their borders, she emphasizes that Wakanda has sufficient resources to do both effectively. Even T'Challa's rival, Erik Killmonger, is not villainized. His vision is from the perspective of a character who knows the scope of Wakanda, but has been ousted from it since his birth. His rage towards his people is that there are so many like him who suffer, and Wakanda was not doing what they could do about it. Killmonger, ably played by Michael B. Jordan who also shared an extremely close friendship with Boseman, had a vision that was more violent due to the hardships that he had faced and the systemic racism that was imposed on him. He wished to arm all the oppressed people in the world with vibranium so they could defend themselves. Ultimately, upon his death and T'Challa reflecting on Wakanda's stance and history, Killmonger's vision unites with that of Nakia's and Wakanda's borders are opened. We see the climax of the film with Chadwick Boseman as T'Challa, King of Wakanda, standing at the United Nations and declaring that the "wise build bridges, fools build barriers". In that moment, we had an ancient empire standing amongst modern nation states, offering them aid. 

The Pan-African ideology running through the film was not too distant from Boseman's own beliefs. During his time in New York in theatre, he directed various plays that were influenced by pan-african theology. Pan-Africanism is built on the shared solidarity between all people of African descent across the world who stood on the grounds of anti-imperialist and self-reliant ideologies. The film contributed to that movement in its own ways, for it gave African people the energy, representation and inspiration that they wanted. 

At a time when borders are being closed off in most countries and fascist regimes are pervading our nations, Boseman's legacy is something to hold on to and keep fighting for. In this film, Wakanda's borders were opened to the world; and through this film, Chadwick Boseman opened the borders of Wakanda to all of us, and thereby opened borders to songs of black power and black strength that will continue to reverberate in our spirits, for in Wakandan culture, "death is not the end". 

Wakanda Forever!