Black Panther: a reception analysis

Abstract

Since first screenings, Ryan Coogler's Black Panther (2018) generated a host of celebratory and circumspect literature. The author performed a scoping approach in order to delineate the thematic concentrations (forthcoming). Of significance was the lack of audience reception apart from a Brazilian study (see Burocco 2019) and reflections on watching the film (see Washington 2019). Afrofuturism was deemed a suitable lens through which to view Black Panther as a film contesting political economic bondage of neoliberal globalisation. Avery Rose Everhart (2016) proposes useful categories of displacement, interruption, and disruption as potentially generative for Afrofuturistic thinking. While Black Panther was commemorated, Jalondra Alicia Davis's (2017) caution holds well in terms of scrutinising the structures that inscribe Black success and progress. A reception analysis was therefore conducted to look at how young, Black viewers received the film. The first and third group of respondents consisted of dominantly female university students who live in the suburbs of Ethekwini in South Africa. The second group of respondents were dominantly male youth who live in an informal settlement in the Ethekwini region. The paper chronicles the respondents' reception of the film through an Afrofuturist lens.