To say that the Black Panther was a success would be putting it lightly. Marvel's first African superhero film, was categorized by many polls as the best film produced by Marvel Cinematic Universe, surpassing The Iron Man, Spider-Man and Captain America. The critic's consensus on Rotten Tomatoes Websites, a review aggregation website gave the film a score of 97%. In the year it was released, Black Panther was qualified as the highest-grossing film in the US and it also received numerous other accolades. Now the question which may easily be answered is, what made the film incredulously successful? The answer to this question is simple and straight forward, Black Panther is the first film with an African American cast, which celebrates indigenous African culture. Beyond this, it is evident that the producers and creators of the film did an excellent job of researching the indigenous African culture. The futuristic film predominantly relies on African history and culture for its content but imagines a future where Africa does not exist in dystopia. As a matter of fact, I argue in this review that the film's content is rooted in Yoruba cosmology and history.

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Film Review: The Black Panther

By

Omotoyosi E. Odukomaiya

To say that the Black Panther was a success would be putting it lightly. Marvel's first

African superhero film, was categorized by many polls as the best film produced by Marvel

Cinematic Universe, surpassing The Iron Man, Spider-Man and Captain America. The critic's

consensus on Rotten Tomatoes Websites, a review aggregation website gave the film a score of

97%. In the year it was released, Black Panther was qualified as the highest-grossing film in the

US and it also received numerous other accolades. Now the question which may easily be

answered is, what made the film incredulously successful? The answer to this question is simple

and straight forward, Black Panther is the first film with an African American cast, which

celebrates indigenous African culture. Beyond this, it is evident that the producers and creators

of the film did an excellent job of researching the indigenous African culture. The futuristic film

predominantly relies on African history and culture for its content but imagines a future where

Africa does not exist in dystopia. As a matter of fact, I argue in this review that the film's content

is rooted in Yoruba cosmology and history.

Great parallels exist between Black Panther's Wakanda and the Yoruba society.

Historians report that the Yoruba country, as it was called prior to the European partitioning of

Africa, was known for its Edenic/urbanistic features and as such was classified as the most

urbanized "country" in Africa at the time. As with Wakanda in the world of the film was

empowered by vibranium, the Yoruba land between the 11th and the 15th century was renowned

for its terracotta and Nok art, which quite replicates the vibranium technology in fictional

Wakanda. Anthropologists have concluded that the quality of the Yoruba artifacts meant that the

Yoruba kingdoms had stable societies and undoubtedly thriving economies. Evidently, from this,

we can assert that the inspiration for Wakanda's innovative advancements came from the pre-

colonial Yoruba society.

It is important to mention that the believers of the Yoruba traditional religion and culture

are spread across the Americas and even in some parts of the USA, making the Yoruba religion

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the closest African religion within proximity to America. The exportation of the Yoruba cultural

belief system was largely resulting from the slave trade era as many slaves of Yoruba origin were

kept in Haiti, Cuba, Jamaica, and Brazil. While the Yoruba slaves were in the minority,

Historians affirmed that the Yoruba resilience and cultural belief system was highly influential

on the African slaves. The Haiti revolution also led to many African slaves resettling in Southern

US (Louisiana, South and North Carolina, Maryland and Georgia). For this reason, it makes

sense that Ryan Coogler, the director of the film would have been influenced by the closest

African tradition to his immediate environment.

The Wakandan cosmology is undeniably an adaptation of the Yoruba religious belief

system for a couple of reasons. Ancestral veneration is at a core of the Yoruba cosmology and it

is for this reason that an Ifa priest must be consulted before a king (oba) is chosen in the Yoruba

kingdom, who then must consult Olodumare (God) and ancestors in the spiritual realm. Beyond

this, the Yoruba people in general reverence the power of ancestors (dead family member) in

their daily lives and Black Panther alludes to this belief system. In the film, Zuri the Wakandan

priest played by Forest Whitaker represents the Yoruba Ifa priest markedly by his purple Agbada

costume (Agbada is an attire worn by noble Yoruba men). It is important to mention here that the

Ifa priest is known for wearing white garments close to the Agbada style. During the

enthronement ceremony of T'challa, Zuri offers the new king some potion which restores his

supernatural strength after which he is buried and sent on an ancestral plane to seek counsel from

his father on how to lead the Wakandan nation. This scene is the most blatant adaptation of the

Yoruba cosmology in the Black Panther thus lending credence to the influence of the Yoruba

system on the film.

That the Black Panther film is rooted in Yoruba history cannot be overemphasized

particularly because of the film's portrayal of women. The precolonial history of the Yoruba

society reveals that women occupied prominent positions. There are numerous female warriors

in Yoruba history who fought and won battles, and some of these women eventually became

deified. In the same vein, there were instances of female kings (Oba) who ruled some kingdoms

in the Yoruba land. The women in Wakanda are indeed forerunners of the Wakanda society,

occupying similar positions like the Yoruba women. From T'challa's sister, Princess Shuri, who

is incredibly intelligent, to Nakia, T'challa's love interest and Okoye, a strong, gutsy female

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character, it is obvious that the Wakandan women contribute immensely to the Wakandan nation.

Also, the empowered women warriors of the Wakandan kingdom are an exact replica of the

Dahomean amazons of the Dahomey kingdom, one of the kingdoms of the Oyo Empire. Lupita

Ngoyo, who plays the role of Nakia, reaffirms in an Instagram post that Wakanda's all-female

army, the Dora Milaje was an inspiration from the Dahomey amazons.

The Black Panther is a great film that shows the great possibilities that exist for the

African continent. As an afrofuturistic film, it redefines afrofuturism in the sense that, Black

Panther not only attempts to rewrite history but as a matter of fact, it draws inspiration from the

glorious past of pre-colonial Yoruba history. The film easily dismisses the binaries of a

traditional Africa and a modern new European world set by colonialists as the Wakandans

represent the notion that Africans can be both traditional and technologically forward.

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