Social Issues In Black Panther

The name “Black Panther” holds a different connotation to it depending on who you ask. For some it may be more literal and referring to the actual animal, for others it harkens back to the civil rights group formed in the 1960s. Now however, people are familiar with the term because of the superhero movie released on February 16th of this year. The movie tells the story of T’Challa, King of the fictional African country Wakanda, who returns back to his home country to find that he has a challenger who wants his throne. Yet, boiling Black Panther down to just another “superhero movie” feels disingenuous because the film provides so much more than fighting scenes, action shots, and an obnoxious villain. Black Panther is a movie riddled with social issues, from women empowerment and feminism, to racism and xenophobia. However, the …show more content…
To have a mainstream superhero movie that has strong female characters, an all-black main cast with a white “sidekick” character, and a message to the audience that reminds them that social inequality still exists is refreshing to say the least. As of March 24th, Black Panther is the top-grossing superhero film of all time globally earning $1.237 billion in ticket sales (McClintock), which means that mass amounts of people are seeing this movie and its message. Weaving current social issues into popular art culture, like movies, gets these social issues into a broader audience, to an audience that may have not known about these social issues beforehand. It is vital that the world keeps creating these forms of media that includes various social issues in them because the implications are that they will reach a more vast audience that may be able to fight back against these social issues. Because in the end, Black Panther is “just another superhero movie” and cannot end social inequality on its own, but it can be a jumping-off point for the generation that