What Mr. Costello Is Reading Right Now: Ta'Nehisi Coates and "Black Panther"

Hi MTW!



Still Black History Month!

With "Black Panther" dominating the box office in a historic way since its release, an entire generation of action movie enthusiasts and comic book lovers will have a black superhero from the genre-defining, and predominantly white, Marvel Universe lead the way for hero narratives.  Marvel's "Black Panther" release continues a paradigm shift for the way that our society has viewed "the hero" in mainstream media for the last 60-70 years or so.  Rotten Tomatoes has ranked "Black Panther" as the "Best Super Hero Movie of All Time."  DC's "Wonder Woman" is equally as important for this cultural shift at #2.

In 2015, Ta'Nehisi Coates was asked to rewrite the "Black Panther" comic universe from the 1960's and revamp the narrative for our modern climate.  The result was published by Marvel and inspired the film.  Coates discusses his writing and the challenges that come with writing for a visual medium in The Atlantic:

Comic books are absurd. At any moment, the Avengers might include a hero drawn from Norse mythology (Thor), a monstrous realization of our nuclear-age nightmares (the Hulk), a creation of science fiction (Wasp), and an allegory for the experience of minorities in human society (Beast). But the absurdities of comics are, in part, made possible by a cold-eyed approach to sentence-craft. Even when the language tips toward bombast, space is at a premium; every word has to count. This big/small approach to literature, the absurd and surreal married to the concrete and tangible, has undergirded much of my approach to writing.

 Take some time to recognize who and what creates the prevailing storylines that dominate our lives.  Coates and the "Black Panther" family deserve a lot of credit for helping to re-write our culture's "normal" for the next generation.

--C

Comments

  1. Ms. BlairFebruary 25, 2018 at 10:13 AM

    Thanks for posting, Joe. Ta-Nehisi Coates has a voice that is well worth listening to. Not sure if anyone else caught this, but he spoke recently with Krista Tippett on the On Being podcast. Here's the link: https://onbeing.org/programs/ta-nehisi-coates-imagining-a-new-america-nov2017/

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