(Update 8/31: Thank you again Batocchio for the link to Crooks&Liars Mike's Blog Round-Up! Please do click on the link below to John Lewis' eulogy as well, thank ye)
2020 is starting to suck in ways that even 2016 never thought of.
T'Challa died! (well, the actor):
...(Chadwick) Boseman is well known in our realm for playing T’Challa the Black Panther in the Marvel Cinematic Universe but famously also played Jackie Robinson in 42, along with roles in Draft Day, Gods of Egypt, Marshall, and more...
I just wrote this last month, covering the passing of Civil Rights icon John Lewis:
There's a saying in pop culture: Representation matters. It's why little girls look up to giant posters of Wonder Woman and cry when running into Gal Gadot (it's why getting a Wonder Woman movie made period since the superhero movie boom of the late 1980s was a big f-cking deal). It's why not just African-Americans but Africans looked to Black Panther as a role model since the 1960s when Lee and Kirby created his character. It's why the push for Asian heroes to get introduced into the next phase of the Marvel Cinematic Universe is front-page news.
After Black Panther movie came out, there were serious efforts to get the Wakandan salute done properly in the real world:
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| photo from Jose Luis Magana (AP Photo) |
Comic books, it should be noted, is a place where legends are formed and cultures shaped. The best tales, the best heroes, become larger-than-life figures who can inspire and motivate. It's not that Superman can lift cars over his head, it's that Superman can show up on a ledge next to a teenage girl and talk her down from suicide. It's that Captain Marvel can stand up after all these men knock her down with the awareness she doesn't have to prove a damn thing to them. It's that Black Panther can defend an African nation - all of Africa in some stories - from the scars and damage of colonization to build a better future.
This is a huge passing. Boseman was poised to carry the Marvel Cinematic franchise into the 2020s, playing a character whose legendary status is on par with Wonder Woman, Spider-Man, in some places even Superman. Representation matters. Black Panther is a global hero, and the actor playing him helps build that identity in ways that any replacement actor will struggle to achieve (look to how hard it is to find someone to fill Christopher Reeve's iconic take on Superman, or filling Leonard Nimoy's role as Spock).
Also lost in this passing is a good person, who had been fighting colon cancer (stage 3, which is serious) while starring in a string of movies - not just Black Panther and the Avengers movies, but played Thurgood Marshall in a biopic and in a Spike Lee Da 5 Bloods Vietnam War tale - since 2016. Boseman was an actor with range, pathos, and wit.
If anything, Boseman helped confirmed the folly of white people and potato salad forever:
"Ah Hell Naw, Karen, keep your bland-ass potato salad to yourself!" "In the face!"
/crying
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