Black Panther (2018)

Black Panther (2018), a contender for the Oscar for Best Picture this year, scores well for women’s presence and voice. Women are heroic, confident and assertive. It passes the Bechdel test (a test that serves as an indicator of the active presence of women in movies) early on. Other strengths include showing a woman working at her job (Letitia Wright is an engineer), being praised and even besting men in battle. It also contains some very uncommon inclusions: men crying, a woman shushing a man, a vegetarian man, a woman being thanked and women held in high esteem—for something other than their good looks. It even includes a man submitting to a woman (Daniel Kaluuya kneels before Danai Gurira in battle). There is a nice touch during a coronation ceremony when Wright criticizes restrictive women’s fashions by saying, “This corset is really uncomfortable, so could we all just wrap it up and go home?” Black Panther contains much less sexism than the majority of action/adventure movies. Unfortunately, it includes more violence against women (VAW) than a lot of movies: a woman is poisoned by a man and a woman; Andy Serkis holds a gun to a woman’s head; a man shoots his girlfriend; a man grabs a woman by the throat and lifts her off the ground before dropping her; a man slits a woman’s throat with a sword; a woman is kicked in the face by a man; an armed rhinoceros throws two women in the air; women are thrown through the air by a force wielded by a man; a woman is thrown through the air by a man before hitting the ground hard many metres away; and a man tries to stab a woman. Murder, attempted murder and assault is a lot of violence for a PG-13 movie but well within the norm for Hollywood. I look forward to sharing my findings about mainstream movies of the 20th and 21st centuries in my upcoming film guide for women.

© 2019 Alline Cormier