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发帖数: 4796 | 1 最近借着黑豹的东风涌现出很多新词儿，让人迎接不暇，什么是Afrofuturism？
How the Afrofuturism behind Black Panther and Get Out combines social
justice and sci-fi
Afrofuturist ideas are at the core of both films.
In the fictional African nation of Wakanda, beads made of “vibranium” heal
bullet wounds, and a bulletproof suit absorbs and stores the energy of
hostile blows. Levitating trains cruise past vaulting skyscrapers with
thatched roofs, as saucer-shaped aircraft carve arcs in the sky.
Wakanda, a fantasy nation that serves as the setting for much of Black
Panther, is a vision of an African nation that’s not only unencumbered with
a history of colonialism but by a great margin the most technologically
advanced country in the world.
The blockbuster superhero film has broken box office records and is
predicted to rank in the top-10 grossing superhero releases ever in North
America. Black Panther also brings into the spotlight Afrofuturism, which
draws on fantastical elements to explore both the history of the African
diaspora and imagines a technologically advanced, alternative universe.
Jordan Peele’s Get Out, nominated for Best Picture and three other Oscars,
also gives a nod to Afrofuturism through a plot in which white people use
advanced medical procedures to turn black people into automatons.
For a better understanding of the cultural significance of Afrofuturism (and
Black Panther), I spoke with John Jennings, a professor in the media and
cultural studies department at the University of California Riverside and co
-founder of the Black Comic Book Festival in Harlem. Jennings teaches a
course on Afrofuturism, leaning heavily on Get Out.
Jennings, who grew up in Mississippi, was “blown away” by the film.
Our conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.
Hope Reese
The term “Afrofuturism,” according to the author Carvell Wallace, writing
in the New York Times magazine, “isn’t just the idea that black people
will exist in the future, will use technology and science, will travel deep
into space. It is the idea that we will have won the future.” How do you
define it?
John Jennings
Afrofuturism, to me, is looking to the past, trying to examine it, and try
to deal with an unresolved task around race and identity in this country, in
the diaspora. It’s also looking to the future. Both of these sides are
wrestling. Black Panther is dealing with the now. You can say Afrofuturism
is science fiction, but the setting of Black Panther is current day. It’s a
parallel universe of: What if slavery didn’t happen?
It’s a mainstream term for this latest iteration of black speculative
culture. Afrofuturism was coined in 1993 by cultural theorist Mark Dery [in
an essay called Black to the Future, part of a collection Flame Wars: The
Discourse of Cyberculture] to describe the trends of science fiction
production and other modes of Afrocentric techno-culture that were being
afforded via the burgeoning growth of the World Wide Web.
Since then, it has grown into a unifying mode of cultural production that
has seen a huge resurgence in the past 10 years and, yes, Black Panther is a
prime example of that renewed interest.
Hope Reese
How does the genre intersect with social justice?
John Jennings
The future for black people in America was supposed to be connected to only
three spaces: one, the hold of a slave ship; two, the plantation; and three,
the grave. The construction of a space of agency, joy, and true freedom has
always been the central focus of black speculative culture. As exciting as
Black Panther himself is, his light can never be brighter of the idea of
Wakanda.
The notion of a black future in our country is still a radical political
idea.
Hope Reese
In Black Panther, Wakanda appears to be all black. But in the film, other
parts of the world, like Los Angeles, experience racial violence. Is part of
Wakanda’s success due to the fact that there isn’t any racial strife
since the country is homogenous?
John Jennings
Wakanda’s success is due to the fact that it is an unconquered, uncolonized
African nation. What happens when that’s allowed to transpire? Other
countries, like Ethiopia, have not been conquered directly by European
forces — so we do have models.
I also wonder what it means about black spaces that are forced through
segregation. After Reconstruction, black towns would pop up because black
people were not allowed to mix, not allowed to be part of society. The black
towns flourished in the 1920s and then were destroyed by racist mobs.
There was the black Wall Street massacre — the destruction of one of
America’s wealthiest black neighborhoods in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in 1921. These
spaces that are either self-created, to protect borders or resources, or
forced to segregated, can flourish because they’re just dealing with
themselves, to a certain degree.
There is something to be said about sovereignty and space. Across the world,
race and space will always play off each other, they’re indexes of each
other.
Hope Reese
The Black Panther character predates the political party of the same name.
But are the two related? At one point when the Black Panther party was
gaining momentum, the character was briefly renamed “Black Leopard.”
John Jennings
Yes, the character predates the party by three months or so. The character
was originally going to be called “Coal Tiger.” So it was coincidental
that it shared the same name as the political party.
But in the film, they’re not unrelated. Coogler is from the Bay Area, where
the Black Panther party was created, and he imprints some of the party
ideologies into the film in subtle ways. For instance, the nature of how
Wakanda fights is about defense. And the party was originally the “Black
Panther Party for Self-Defense.”
The Black Panther as an animal in the wild does not ever attack directly.
But it does defend when it is attacked. If we want peace, and you come at us
, we will defend ourselves. That’s referenced in the film. Wakanda is a
peaceful nation, but it will defend itself.
There’s artwork in the film by Emory Douglas, who created artwork for the
Black Panthers. So Coogler is making a direct connection between some of the
radicalized politics around defense of the black body in the ’60s.
Hope Reese
I sympathized with Erik Killmonger, the supervillain in Black Panther. His
father was from Wakanda, but — for complicated reasons — he was born and
grew up in LA. He never really felt like he belonged anywhere. His anger and
isolation compel him to return to Wakanda to enact revenge.
John Jennings
He’s an index for African Americans. Every one of us goes to search back
and find where our ancestors come from. I just did that. Being from
Mississippi, I wondered what part of Africa my descendants were stolen from.
(I am mostly West African, but 39 percent European.)
With Killmonger, his voice is the pan-African voice of “Where do I come
from?” His body has become a battleground for these tropes. He’s angry and
disrupted because of the loss of his heritage. It’s why black Americans
say to those in Africa, “Why didn’t you come and find us? Why didn’t you
reach out to us? You knew we were over here. Why do you treat us this way?”
It’s about not having a space to call your own.
Hope Reese
You’ve said the recent uptick in horror films can be attributed to
tumultuous events in history — like World War II, 9/11, and, recently, the
election of Donald Trump. Could the appeal of Afrofuturism in Black Panther
also be linked to current events?
John Jennings
There’s a tension between what you’re told you are and who you know
yourself to be. People who were descended from slaves are not immigrants.
Your culture, your language, your storytelling — everything is taken from
you. You have to figure out a way to negotiate that thing, and Afrofuturism
gives us a space for negotiation. Between the unresolved past and the
impending, potentially bright, future.
Hope Reese
You teach a course on Afrofuturism using the film Get Out. Get Out ends on a
fake-out: You think that the protagonist Chris Washington is going to get
arrested by the police for the murder of a white character who tried to kill
him — but he ends up being fine. But what if Get Out had ended with the
police arresting Chris? Does Afrofuturism always have a happy ending?
John Jennings
It’s funny that you mention that — they did shoot that ending. In the
director’s cut of Get Out, there’s a version where Washington, [the
protagonist, played by Daniel Kaluuya], goes to jail. He strangles [his
girlfriend] Rose until she dies. The reason [the director doesn’t choose
this ending], of course, is because then Washington becomes what they say he
is — the animalistic brute.
I don’t think Afrofuturist stories always have a happy ending. They’re a
mode of storytelling that helps us work through issues around race and the
technologies of race. Does any story have to have a happy ending? Just
because the word “future” is part of “Afrofuturism” doesn’t mean that
black people have any notions that the future won’t have bad things
occurring. I think that “happy” is very subjective — it’s a joyous
notion that an Afrocentricstory even exists at all.
Hope Reese
In Morgan Jerkins’s new collection, This Will Be My Undoing, she makes a
compelling case that narratives about black Americans don’t often show a
full range of humanity. For instance, slaves are universally depicted as
passive victims — we hardly ever think of them as laughing. How does Black
Panther challenge assumptions about race?
John Jennings
The interiority of those slave narratives — she’s absolutely right. One of
the narratives of the slave body is [that they are not human]. That’s what
made a Christian nation even capable of having slaves. They abstracted the
body, pulled the soul out of the body. “This is a beast, this isn’t a
person.” “I need to help this thing.”
It’s very complex, the way we have constructed the ideas, visually, around
race. At the end of the day, we’re just talking about a certain amount of
melanin in one’s skin.
The women in Black Panther — those beautiful, beautiful, dark-skinned black
women — that particular spectrum of beauty is something that’s [not
universally accepted] in Africa, in India, in China. People are bleaching
their skin to become whiter. It’s very telling that the first millionaire
who was a black woman made her money from hair straightening products.
In Black Panther, the optics alone are groundbreaking. This is the kind of
stuff we need to fight against on a day-to-day basis.
Hope Reese is a journalist in Louisville, Kentucky. Her writing has appeared
in the Atlantic, the Boston Globe, the Chicago Tribune, Playboy, Vox, and
other publications. Find her on Twitter **@hopereese**_.
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【在 W*****B 的大作中提到】
: 最近借着黑豹的东风涌现出很多新词儿，让人迎接不暇，什么是Afrofuturism？
: How the Afrofuturism behind Black Panther and Get Out combines social
: justice and sci-fi
: Afrofuturist ideas are at the core of both films.
: In the fictional African nation of Wakanda, beads made of “vibranium” heal
: bullet wounds, and a bulletproof suit absorbs and stores the energy of
: hostile blows. Levitating trains cruise past vaulting skyscrapers with
: thatched roofs, as saucer-shaped aircraft carve arcs in the sky.
: Wakanda, a fantasy nation that serves as the setting for much of Black
: Panther, is a vision of an African nation that’s not only unencumbered with
| Y***i
发帖数: 1932 | |
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