Super Comic

So let me get this straight - Black Panther is a celebration of the best of American cinema and American diversity?

In no way am I trying to denigrate or diminish the success of the first movie to feature a black comic-book superhero and a mostly black cast.  Nor am I in any way diminishing the importance of black audiences appreciating the opportunity to see so many black faces in a big-production movie.  But, in the end, it's still a popcorn movie.  I'm sure it's a great popcorn movie.  But it's still a popcorn movie.

I've never had a problem with movies about comic-book superheroes, and I've even seen a few of them.  But I've never gotten why my fellow Americans take them seriously as Citizen Kane or Save the Tiger. When the first Batman movie came out in 1989, there were all of these "intellectual" discussions about the psychological ramifications of the battle between Batman and the Joker and  whether Michael Keaton was right for the title role, and I was thinking . . . It's a comic-book movie!  Why are you taking it so seriously?? 

Are black audiences taking Black Panther seriously?  Yes, and in the context of popcorn movies, they should take it seriously, as popcorn movies made by and for blacks are rare.  Should they take it as seriously as people took Batman or any of its sequels seriously - as a major work of art?  Clearly, the answer is no.  They shouldn't celebrate it as some sort of cultural event like one of those movies that get screened at Cannes or Sundance, because comic-book movies are not high art.  They're not even middlebrow art, like all of those Sydney Pollack movies that appealed to Middle America.  And that's the trouble.  Hollywood has made too many of these blockbuster movies, laden with special effects and loud noises at the expense of stories and character development (except the Star Wars saga, which does take story and characters seriously, and kudos to Disney for realizing, after it took over the series, that Lando Calrissian isn't the only black guy in that far, far-away galaxy).  The days when movies that appealed to grown-ups, with deep, thoughtful stories and complex characters, are long gone, and as long as Hollywood keeps appealing to moviegoers with an appetite for the big, loud blockbuster (a worldwide audience, though Americans are the primary target), those days are not going to come back.

We don't need any more black blockbuster movies any more than we need more white blockbuster movies.  We need more black movies with quiet, character-driven stories.  We need more black Truffauts, Bergmans, Scorseses.  Heck, we need more non-black directors like that!  

And while we're on the subject of diversity, a movie with a cast mostly comprised of black actors is no more diverse than a a movie with a cast mostly comprised of white actors.  Here's a crazy idea - how about movies with casts as diverse as the country?  Even if whites, blacks, Hispanics and Asians don't necessarily live in the same towns or neighborhoods, they still interact with each other on a regular basis.  

And speaking of Hispanics and Asians, no more Hispanic characters who are either the maid or the gardener.  And Asians are capable of movie roles other than marital artists.

Which brings me back to popcorn flicks . . .

So let me re-iterate.  American cinema in general and black American cinema in particular both need to get back to the character-driven artistic movies that Hollywood used to make.  I hope I have made myself clear.