Representation, or why I'm insanely excited about the Black Panther movie!

-
Black Panther is releasing on my birthday. I'll actually try to watch it on that day.

I'm easily excited about movies, but I think this may be the most I've been looking forward to a movie in a long, long time. I've been watching the trailer twice with my son each night before putting him to bed for the last week.

And it's also the first time I remember I've been watching out for early reviews and being relieved it was a good movie. (Phew, looks like it's really, really good - I'm not allowing myself to read the reviews yet).

Now, obviously there's a cinematic argument.
  • The Black Panther is a great character - and was so well introduced in the Civil War movie.
  • The trailers look really good.
  • the soundtrack is probably most interesting I've heard in a long, long time 
  • ..and the guy who directed Creed is going to direct a superhero movie!!!! Come on!!
But here's a much simpler reason, I'm rooting so hard for this movie - how it represents Africa and Africans.

I was born in Tanzania, and lived there and then mostly in Nigeria till I was 15. My parents then returned to Tanzania, so I continued to visit often. For a large part of my life, I've thought of it as home.

So of course, stereotypes of the place annoyed me... and I'm Indian, so growing up I'd have some people asking me if there are elephants on the road in India and then Indian asking me if there were lions walking around the streets in Africa. Stupid, even if well-intentioned, questions about Africa feel personal and annoying.

So a universe where African aren't caricatures set in a country that's incredibly futuristic, is one that I'm incredibly excited to see.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A short love letter to ~8 years on Google Search - 8 things I’m grateful for.

-
  After a few weeks off, I started a new gig within Google yesterday and it hit me that for the first time in almost eight years I won’t be working on some part of Google Search. Eight years ago, I told the team when I was interviewing that I was “looking for a place to call home for a while and grow there”. My experiences here more than met that need.  I used to write a regular “10 things about…” listy column for a while at a college newspaper. So in that style here’s 8 things (one for each year) I feel grateful to have experienced/learned in this time. Also, like that column which I banged out the night before it was due, this post is something that I don’t need to do, yet I feel somehow compelled to do (and so it’ll likely be longer and less crisp than it should be :-))    It actually is awesome to work on something so many people use and love, and that positively touches people’s lives. There’s a talk I give externally about Search and a line I often end up ...
Read more

Why don't you love Chocos, America?

-
Image
A few days ago I had the following conversation with a customs agent at San Francisco airport - as an Indian returning from India I get sent to the customs line even when I check "No food" on the customs form. :-) Agent: "Any food?" Me: "No" Agent: "Sure? No jira or cadipatta ? Me : "No....     well actually I do have a box of cereal." Agent: "Huh. What? Really?" Me: "Yes. Its a brand you don't get here." Agent: "Seriously. Even in the Indian stores? I've never heard that before." Me: "Ummm....yeah." I love reading local customization stories, particularly about how international chains tailor their offerings to local markets - the food industry has the best examples of these - check out this McDonald's story about the McPaneer , or how KFC is incredibly successful in China . But I seem to have missed that the customization extended to breakfast cereal. Turns out the ...
Read more

What might Twitter and/or Facebook have cost us if they were invented earlier (or should some things stay deliberately un-social?)

-
Image
So I was reading an ebook last week, and came across a quote that I liked. My first thought wasn't "I should write this down" , it was "I want to tweet this." My ebook reading software wasn't equipped for it, and it wasn't trivial to do so I didn't, but I expect most ebook reading software will be updated to do this in the next couple of releases and probably encourage me to as well. Why should reading be left behind? Twitter is already saving live TV . As I look back on the last week watching the Cricket World Cup , a huge part of it for me was watching my Twitter and Facebook feeds for reactions and being part of them. My parents were the only ones that actually called me during the match, but I felt connected to so many more people through FB and the Big T . Wether you're shopping, eating out, playing games, even searching ... apparently "everything gets better with social." We all have a very human, internal urge to express ours...
Read more