Black Panther

I think I may have finally learned my lesson. They said Wonder Woman was good, not the same old shit. And it was, for about the first half. Then it was the same old shit. Now this one has been praised to the skies so I broke my rule and gave a superhero movie one more shot. And it’s the same old shit. Putting a rubber suit over a black body doesn’t change the core brainless foolishness of these movies. Adding all the African tribal stuff struck me as more than a bit bizarre, to tell you the truth. These Wakandans were so damn advanced that they could hide a gigantic city in the middle of a jungle … and they still have duels to the death? How civilized.

I asked myself, if I were black, would this movie play differently for me? And of course there is no way to answer that, because I will never have the experience of being black with all that entails in our fucked-up society. Maybe it would make a difference. But ethnicity is obviously not the only thing that turned this latest piece of superhero crap into a $1,347,000,000-dollar (so far) franchise. Clearly, most white people loved it. It’s the superhero stupidity that knows no race, like some sinister virus that has infected the box office and turned everybody’s brain, ordinary movie-goer and critic alike, into tapioca pudding. I seem to be one of the very few people who is immune to it. It’s a lonely place to be, and I feel sure that many (maybe most) of my readers feel differently, but I feel good here. Screw Wonder Woman, Black Panther, the whole Justice League crew, the goddam X-Men, and all the rest of their hare-brained cousins.