Episode 533 WAKANDA FOREVER
Is this really episode 533? Does a progression of numbers mean anything anymore? What is time?
POP CULTURE SPIRIT WOW
Actor Chadwick Boseman died over the weekend. Boseman had made a career of playing real-life figures, most of them heroes – Thurgood Marshall, Jackie Robinson, James Brown. Then he played T’Challa, King of Wakanda and just took the world.
The New York Times has a great piece on him this weekend. Actually there’s a lot of great pieces, which is a testament to the impact he had on people.
Here’s a quote from the Times piece:
He was in his way a historian — of other people’s magnetism and volition. Excellence and leadership spoke to and sparked him. They had to. No one approximates this much greatness without a considerable reserve of greatness himself.
I was thinking back to seeing him in Captain America: Winter Soldier. God he was good in that film. (Actually God, that’s a good film. The best Marvel movie, probably.) It was his first Marvel film and he’s just a supporting character, but he stole every scene he was in. You couldn’t wait for Black Panther, he was so good.
Looking back I was wondering, what was it about him in that film and then again in Black Panther that made him seem so special, so different in a way from everyone else.
And I think it’s that his take on leadership was in many ways about listening. Kings, presidents – even the good ones tend to blather on. (From a “number of words spoken” point of view there’s usually not a lot of difference between leaders and villains.) But T’Challa is a profoundly quiet character. Uncomfortably so, even.
And in his silence he was deeply invested in trying to perceive the reality of the world in front of him.
You think about how beloved Michael B. Jordan’s Erik Kilmonger was. Some of that comes down to Jordan’s fantastic performance. But even so, as someone pointed out to me recently, the main victims of his violence during the film are unarmed women. This is not a guy to look up to or idolize.
I think the reason we leave the film liking him as much as we do is because in the end T’Challa has been open to learning from him. He has takes on board how Erik was abandoned and the rough Oakland he grew up and allows it to change the way he thinks about himself and the mission of his country.
T’Challa is certainly not the only Marvel character who learns or who listens. But I think he’s the only one for whom that is actually his super power. And I so admire that having the chance to play a character that was meant to represent our best selves, Boseman chose to think of him like that.
When people say Wakanda Forever, I think they mean a lot of different things. For me, it means that no amount of hardship can erase the essential goodness and potential of the human spirit.
I think we can all agree at this point that 2020 is garbage. This cat, for instance, was photographed like this in 2019, having just awoken from a vision of what was to come. Cats, as I’m sure we’re all aware, can see the future. But even with that ability 2020 was a shock for Lord Reginald Fluffybottom.
Having said that, I do love some of the things that it’s led to. For instance, given the fact that there is no cinema to speak of, and won’t be in the United States until probably 2021*, we have people looking back on old movies, like Vulture’s weekly interviews with performers about films they love. (This week they had Catherine O’Hara and Eugene Levy on Best in Show.)
* Please please please don’t go see New Mutants, Tenet, or Bill & Ted. It’s just not worth the risk. If you’re tempted and need to be talked down email me and I will help you.
For who knows what reason someone at Polygon, which I’ve always seen as mostly a video game news and review site, went back to the red carpet photos from the original Pirates of the Caribbean and used it to talk about the absurd fashion styles of 2003 and also the crazy assortment of people who were somehow all at the Disneyland premiere, which yes, does include Gary Busey, I did say it was 2003.
In Bleeding Cool, a comic book gossip website largely hated by comic book creators for leaking stories and misrepresenting situations, out of nowhere there’s a brilliant piece on how Mad Men is really one long Twilight Zone episode.
Musical legend/Our Broadway Mom Liz Callaway keeps getting in her car and helping me feel things that are far richer than anything I can get from the news.
And this man and his wife pretty much captured what all our parents are doing when we’re not there.
So yeah. 2020 might be a refuse dump of hot awful (and offal). But it inspires me to see people still insisting there are things to celebrate and we gonna do that, too.
I’m going to be taking the next three weeks off. At least, that’s the plan. You never know. I might get crazy and drop something on you. But I’m hoping to take a breather.
In the meantime, if you’re someone who is connected to a school or has kids in school I wish you safety and all good things right now. Be gentle with yourselves. And as the election starts to get closer, I’m trying to think about how I can pitch in and help make sure the next four years are not like the last four. If you’re doing anything to try and accomplish the same I’d love to hear what you’re up to.
Celebrate the good things where you find them. And look after yourself.
See you in a few weeks.
