Erik Killmonger, the villain in "Black Panther," is one of the greatest political thinkers ever to appear in a blockbuster movie.
And that is about as far as I can go without delving into spoilers. If you're reading this and haven't seen "Black Panther," stop what you're doing and go watch the movie. It's worth it and this article can wait.
Now back to my point about the political philosopher Killmonger.
He may not be the greatest superhero villain, period (I still believe that distinction belongs to Heath Ledger's Joker in "The Dark Knight"), but even antagonists in this genre who have been outwardly political pre-"Black Panther" haven't done so as directly or brilliantly as Michael B. Jordan's character. Magneto from the X-Men films may have been fighting for the rights of the oppressed, but he was still doing so for a fictional group (mutants). The political conflicts at the heart of "Captain America: The Winter Soldier" and "Captain America: Civil War," though intelligently depicted, likewise focused on analogies to real-world problems rather than the genuine articles. And while The Joker in "The Dark Knight" and Bane in "The Dark Knight Rises" may have embodied various strains of anarchistic nihilism, the former has evolved into an all-purpose cultural icon rather than a specifically political symbol, while the latter was too silly to ever be taken entirely seriously.
Killmonger, on the other hand, is such a compelling political philosopher that many viewers aren't even convinced he is the story's real villain.
"He’s a Wakandan who was raised in Oakland around the time of the LA riots. He’s experienced the hardship and structural disadvantage experienced by racial minorities in America, and he wants to use Wakanda’s resources to liberate oppressed peoples around the world," writes Osman Faruqi in Junkee. "It’s an extremely sympathetic position, yet the film keeps reminding us that he’s the bad guy — he ruthlessly murders his own accomplices and he dethrones T’Challa, nearly killing him in the process."
Yet Faruqi protests the fact that the movie insists on vilifying Killmonger, pointing out that the violence that Killmonger advocates isn't necessarily worse than the real-world violence that Wakanda has allowed. "Wakanda, under T’Challa’s reign, is just choosing to ignore it. Killmonger at least wants to do something to end the oppression of subjugated people," Faruqi points out.
This point was echoed by Miles Surrey of The Ringer, who argued that the characterization of Killmonger was so strong that Marvel producers should learn from it in the future. "Don’t just make the villain’s philosophy convincing, make it seem like he’s really the hero of his own story, and let him or her affect the hero’s own ethos in a profound way," Surrey wrote before expressing sympathy with Killmonger's sharing of his murdered father's belief that "Wakanda should be spreading its futuristic wealth to disadvantaged black communities around the world, rather than keeping its resources a secret."
Author Brooke Obie also explained, in a recent article in Shadow and Act, how even Killmonger's supposedly villainous behavior can be rendered sympathetic by understanding its political context. "Yes, his desperation for revenge has twisted him into a man who loves to kill — hence the name — and who covers his entire body with self-inflicted battle scars for each person he’s ever murdered," Obie writes. "And his constant state of rage manifests in bloody action. But it’s the root of his rage that Coogler so deftly explores in 'Black Panther.'"
She adds, "Killmonger’s pain, abandonment and generational trauma touch on the rawest parts of being African American. Sure, the imprint of the continent our ancestors hailed from is embedded in our gums, but our AncestryDNA results don’t exactly lead us into the open arms of our ancestral cousins. We are a homeless people, not welcomed anywhere. If Wakanda is the Black Promised Land, then we are its forgotten children, sold away, left behind, rejected, condescended to."
Establishing that Killmonger is a thoughtful, even profound political thinker is one thing. It raises, however, an intriguing question: From what specific political traditions does he draw his inspiration?
"Killmonger seems to embody the tradition of Black Nationalism and revolutionary politics," Professor Saladin Ambar of Rutgers University told Salon. "He is more in the line of Martin Delany, Marcus Garvey, and Malcolm X than Frederick Douglass, (the early) W.E.B. Du Bois, and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. It's essentially a philosophy responsive to the intractability of white racism and supremacy — and as such, it argues for forms of racial exodus or armed struggle."
Ambar also noted that the Wakandans' isolationist philosophy, though despised by Killmonger and ultimately abandoned (or at least moderated) by Black Panther at the end of the movie, has strong historical roots.
"It's important to remember that the Wakandans' conservatism had been rooted in self-preservation and their own anti-colonialism," Ambar said. "When that policy no longer became tenable, the tactics changed, and I think this is historically important."
As an illustrative analogy, Ambar juxtaposed two of American history's most famous African-American political thinkers — King and Malcolm X.
"Dr. King, for example, is a far more radical figure in 1967 and 1968 than in 1957 and 1958," he said. "We needn't pit King against Malcolm X — just look at the evolution of both figures as a window into how broader forms of black politics change. The two views are not necessarily antithetical, but rather reflective of particular strategies and political moments. I believe the film honors this."
Just to be clear: Killmonger's tactics are far from wholly admirable. Setting aside his casual use of violence, Killmonger has a clearly dismissive attitude toward the women in his life (as brilliantly explored by Princess Weekes in The Mary Sue) and the methods that he chose to liberate oppressed people were, as Jason Johnson at The Root pointed out, utterly ridiculous.
At the same time, I derive considerable hope from the fact that a popcorn flick produced by a major corporation can inspire this kind of intelligent political deconstruction. Our popular culture has been intersecting with our politics for decades now: Just look at our reality TV star president, who was elected on a far right-wing platform made possible by a Republican Party that became uber-conservative due to a movie star president. Yet so much of those intersections have been either muddled (see the aforementioned superhero films), banal (see the countless "hail the American flag" type movies) or worse (pretty much any of the tripe churned out by Christian exploitation factories like Pure Flix).
Yet with Killmonger in "Black Panther," we get more than a political film. We get an intelligent political film. And for that — among many, many other things — fans of "Black Panther" like myself are incredibly grateful.
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