BW Media Spotlight

When I saw the #RecastTChalla hashtag was trending again on X-Twitter (this week, Elon Musk moved it over to the “x.com” URL because apparently he’s officially going with this unnecessary name change), I did what any blogger who has a bad track record of self-promotion would do, and link to my old article from the first time this hashtag trended. “Weighing In On #RecastTchalla” was the third article I put up after the rather stupid decision to not recast the Black Panther after the death of Chadwick Boseman, despite his family stating he wouldn’t want to leave the character uncast. Instead Marvel Studios, now entering their “comic sux, we do bettar” phase, instead took the opportunity to replace the king of Wakanda with Shuri, despite T’Challa still being Black Panther in the comics. Critics claim it was to replace the male hero with the female hero, and we’ll probably get into that. Short version: branded representation versus actual representation. Being there isn’t enough, the NAME is all that matters.

I’ve done this before, even though I rarely care about trends, but this topic is apparently big. I actually got buzz on X-Twitter. Surprised me. It’s a very touchy subject for both the black community and the current racial/culture war as well as for actual comic fans who read the comics or saw the cartoons and knew about Black Panther long before that. Note that few of these champions ever went to buy the comics, according to sales figures at the time. Having the black hero (not the first black hero when Spawn, The Meteor Man, Blankman–and those are just the title heroes–already hit movie screens and we can discuss TV as well) finally show up in the MCU unless you count War Machine, Falcon, and frankly Goliath deserved to be more than a retired old man is a big deal. Comic fans have waited longer for a live-action Black Panther and while it’s still on my Finally Watched list (my backlog is incredible, but look what I’ve been through in the past decade) I hear good things about it. I did see him in the Avengers movies and liked him. My “Civil War” Marvel embargo is still in place so I missed his debut.

One interesting responder was a YouTuber who refers to himself as a Black Panther historian, so I’m assuming he’s checked out the comics and cartoons. He even talked about it Monday on his “Mornings In Wakanda” podcast, which is linked below and I will be responding to. I tried to cue up to where we get to the examination of my article, which I linked to in the first paragraph so you can read along with him. You can check out the full show if you want, but be prepared to hear political views contrary to your own, possibly during the “important” part as I’m going to write as I watch. The starting point is around the 25 minute mark. The host, Theo B on YouTube, goes over my article and is fair enough to it. I just want to take the chance to elaborate on a few points I made in the original article. This was recorded live, while I was waking up to the usual Morning Nonsense podcast so I caught this after the fact and couldn’t respond then. I can now. I have a website!

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