Category Archives: black girls

Don’t Freeze: Love and Vulnerability in Black Panther

Black Film, black girls, Black Panther, black women, blackness, Film, Uncategorized

I remember in the trailer for Black Panther watching the scene over and over again where Okoye tells T’challa before he descends to from the ship, not to “freeze.” And of course he says, “I never freeze” before putting on his helmet falling through a hatch release into the night.

I kept wondering it meant. In what situation would a superhero freeze or let his guard down? I couldn’t imagine the scenario and I really wanted to know.

As a bonafide movie lover, I have a collection of moments in films that I love and adore and among them is the moment when a man looks at the woman he loves, the moment when he is just openly gazing at her and time stops no matter what is happening. I love to see his openness, his vulnerability, his total surrender. But then of course he needs to be equally capable of getting it together again and carrying on his duties. LOL!

When Black Panther descends on a van of girls captured by the Boko Haram in order to save Nakia who is embedded among them on an undercover rescue mission, the aforementioned freezing begins. But not before he and Nakia stealthily dispatch of the armed men.  Then, thinking they are no longer under threat he faces her and says…hi. His mask is on so you can’t see his eyes but you can tell that he’s no longer in Black Panther mode. Okoye then appears and kills a man that neither or aware of because they’re too busy sharing a moment. LOL!

To be immediately engaged with both the vulnerability and strength of Black Panther in this initial and pivotal scene was just one of hundreds of ways in which the movie has shattered previous notions about what it has meant to be a “superhero.”

There is also no Clark Kent/Superman identity crisis conflict to deal with here. Among his people, T’challa does not hide as the Black Panther. Black Panther is not his secret identity. It is who he is. So when he looks at Nakia and freezes as Black Panther in the midst of battle or as King T’challa walking leisurely through the marketplace with her, it’s all the same man.

With Nakia, T’Challa is able to safely express his doubts about being the kind of king he feels he should be and he entrusts all the women around him, his mother, sister, general with the responsibility to support, inform, guide, strategist, and help him protect and defend Wakanda. They are all uniquely necessary and equally committed to this mission.

T’Challa’s vulnerability is his strength and he never seems to be at odds with it. I have never seen that treated with such balance and normative reverence in a superhero movie before. To feel the burden of so many of the oppressive and conditioned narratives we’re used to in movies; Whiteness, the male gaze, hyper sexuality, and more,  lift away for just a few hours is indescribably liberating. When I first saw Black Panther, I froze as well. And after the third time, time still stopped for me. And each time I see it, I come back to the world slightly different.

Sean Carter Confessionals: Family Feud

Black Film, black girls, Black Lives, black pride, Black relationships, black women, blackness, culture, family, Feminine, Film, men, mother, Revolution, women, , , ,

The wretched of the earth do not decide to become extinct, they resolve, on the contrary, to multiply; life is their weapon against life, life is all that they have.

-James Baldwin

A man who don’t take care of his family can’t be rich. I watched Godfather, I missed that whole shit…

-Jay-Z

 

The year is 2444 The home is rich and lavish. The setting is coldness, anger and betrayal. Michael B. Jordan storms angrily into the bedroom of Thandie Newtown’s characteron a particularly “important day” loudly berating her capacity to be the head of a clearly powerful family only to find her in bed with a dude played by Moonlight’s Trevante Rhodes. I notice immediately how pale Thandie, Michael B. Jordan and X are. The only colors you see are like pale blues and yellows. But the paleness of their skin tone makes me think of sickness, deficiency, greed heartlessness and death. Sure enough, before the scene is done, both men are killed, Mark by Trevante and then Trevante by Thandie’s character, Game of Thrones style, because she wants the family “Throne” for herself.

2444

Both Anthony and Trevante are both wearing clothing at the waist inspired by garb worn by men in ancient Khemit. Thandie wears a scant bandage outfit nearly identical to the one Milla Jojovich wore in the “The Fifth Element” a film set in a future that opens in an Egyptian temple and where the planet is under threat of total destruction if an essential element, which is embodied by a woman is not recovered.

Jay Z Family Feud screen grab Credit: Tidal

In the year 2148 an indigenous woman, Bird and Jacob played by Irene Bedard and Omari Hardwick are joint world leaders hailing from two great families. They respond to questions from a citizenry council about violent events that have lead to Jacob’s rise in power. Jacob recounts the legacy of his family and their struggle to uphold and maintain law and justice throughout generations. He talks about how one of his ancestors who played a major role as one of the founding mothers.

Founding Mothers

She was the primary architect of something called “The Confessional Papers” in 2050 and revised the constitution with a group of amazing women, played by Janet Mock, Neicy Nash, Mindy Khaling, Rosario Dawson and Rashida Jones just to name a few.

His ancestor, played by Susan Kelechi Watson in the year 2050 by is none other than Blue Ivy Carter.

Now we’re in Blue Ivy’s  narrational 2050 memory as she recalls her father’s words, “Nobody wins when the family feuds.”

Beyonce-family-feud

Cut to 2018 which is basically now, where there the musical narrative of the video for Jay Z’s “Family Feud” begins. Jay-Z walks a present day Blue Ivy to sit in a church pew and then walks the front to start rapping before Beyonce who Amens at him from the pulpit in royal Blue, looking like a sanctified and sexy ass Popestress. She also appears in a black mini dress and billowy white sleeves behind the screen of a confessional as Jay speaks to her from the other side. The metaphor is plain to see now. And there is still so much left to unpack. I want this to be movie or a television series!

Blu ivy FF

I’m still on the floor!

I don’t know about you but I’ve already watched this video about five times now. I know I will lose count of how many times I watch it again and of how many other pieces of symbolism I pick out of this brilliant work of art and revolution made explicitly for the culture. I also know that 4:44 is a fierce, proud and unapologetically Black call to action to each of us who are about that life if there ever was one and I couldn’t have asked for anything better to arrive as 2017 comes to an end and 2018 kicks the door and our asses in.

Here’s to a Black Ass, Woke Ass 2018!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Black Girl YA Circa 1980s

black girls, bookworm, brooklyn, inclusivity, range, reading, young adult, , , ,

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As a little Brooklyn born home-schooled vegan I was enrolled up the wazoo in extracurricular activities, from Gardening at BBG to art classes at the Brooklyn Museum to the Reading is Fundamental Book Club at the Brooklyn Public Library. I was a born bookworm. I don’t know how old I was when I learned to read but I suspect it was quick and early. I started writing poetry when I was eight.

For me, getting a card at the Brooklyn Public Library was like gaining entry to the first club ever that I ever felt I completely belonged to. I remember them typing up all the info on it, my name address, phone number and then laminating it and telling me all the rules about due dates, borrowing limits and such. Oh, it was like getting the keys to the kingdom. And I read voraciously, particularly YA, and at an age when I was neither preteen nor young adult. LOL! But if you were like me, a young brown girl with a huge reading appetite, you noticed that there was a glaring absence of Black faces in the worlds of Francine Pascal, Judy Blume, Ellen Conford, Paula Danziger, Maud Hart Lovelace and the entire Sweet Dreams series. “Rainbow Jordan” by Alice Childress stands out a lot in my mind but I was deeply irked that it was like the only book I ever saw on the shelves with a Black face on it. It appeared and reappeared but nothing else with a Brown face on it ever did. And to be honest I did try to read and just wasn’t feeling it. But there was nothing else to compare it to!

So I kept reading more authors like the ones listed above and I was an avid fan of them all. I mean like many girls White and Black alike, I came of age with these characters and they will forever remain embedded in my literary DNA with a lot of warm deluded memories. But one day while I was in line at the RIF club looking through books to take out I saw the first ever Black face I had ever seen on a Sweet Dreams paperback and I flipped out! “The Truth about me and Bobby V.” by Janetta Johns.

Oh I was soooo excited!!!! I was elated! It was about a dysfunctionally shy gangly Black girl who lived in some inner city USA. She had just adjusted to being in a new, tougher High School with the help of her tougher more outspoken BFF Bobby V. when her parents announce they will be moving the whole family to a predominantly white suburb where she dreads having to start all over again.

I read that book more times than I can remember. I’ve read it as an adult. I own a copy that I ordered on Amazon for posterity. One single Sweet Dreams book about a Black girl, Copyright 1983. Sure, she was a light skinned girl of the variety that corporations targeted for sanitary napkin commercials in the 70s and if I had to break down the whole story, I realize it doesn’t take on race relations in any radical way. But still. She was one brown face in a sea of white girls. And that was extremely important for me as a reading junkie and as a Black female and it still is now.

10/7/2014