Black Panther: Interrogating a Cultural Phenomenon
Nov 2021 · Univ. Press of Mississippi
Ebook
254
Pages
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About this ebook
Named a Nonfiction Book Awards Gold Winner by the Nonfiction Authors Association
Gold Winner of the 2022 eLit Book Award for Popular Culture
Winner of a National Indie Excellence Award in the category of “Movies & TV”
Book of the Year 2021 in African Studies awarded by CESTAF
Winner of the 2022 Best Book Award in the category of “Performing Arts”
Black Panther is one of the most financially successful and culturally impactful films to emerge from the American film industry in recent years. When it was released in 2018 it broke numerous records and resonated with audiences all around the world in ways that transcended the dimensions of the superhero film. In Black Panther: Interrogating a Cultural Phenomenon, author Terence McSweeney explores the film from a diverse range of perspectives, seeing it as not only a comic book adaptation and a superhero film, but also a dynamic contribution to the discourse of both African and African American studies.
McSweeney argues that Black Panther is one of the defining American films of the last decade and the most remarkable title in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (2008–). The MCU has become the largest film franchise in the history of the medium and has even shaped the contours of the contemporary blockbuster, but the narratives within it have almost exclusively perpetuated largely unambiguous fantasies of American heroism and exceptionalism. In contrast, Black Panther complicates this by engaging in an entirely different mythos in its portrayal of an African nation—never colonized by Europe—as the most powerful and technologically advanced in the world. McSweeney charts how and why Black Panther became a cultural phenomenon and also a battleground on which a war of meaning was waged at a very particular time in American history.
Gold Winner of the 2022 eLit Book Award for Popular Culture
Winner of a National Indie Excellence Award in the category of “Movies & TV”
Book of the Year 2021 in African Studies awarded by CESTAF
Winner of the 2022 Best Book Award in the category of “Performing Arts”
Black Panther is one of the most financially successful and culturally impactful films to emerge from the American film industry in recent years. When it was released in 2018 it broke numerous records and resonated with audiences all around the world in ways that transcended the dimensions of the superhero film. In Black Panther: Interrogating a Cultural Phenomenon, author Terence McSweeney explores the film from a diverse range of perspectives, seeing it as not only a comic book adaptation and a superhero film, but also a dynamic contribution to the discourse of both African and African American studies.
McSweeney argues that Black Panther is one of the defining American films of the last decade and the most remarkable title in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (2008–). The MCU has become the largest film franchise in the history of the medium and has even shaped the contours of the contemporary blockbuster, but the narratives within it have almost exclusively perpetuated largely unambiguous fantasies of American heroism and exceptionalism. In contrast, Black Panther complicates this by engaging in an entirely different mythos in its portrayal of an African nation—never colonized by Europe—as the most powerful and technologically advanced in the world. McSweeney charts how and why Black Panther became a cultural phenomenon and also a battleground on which a war of meaning was waged at a very particular time in American history.
About the author
Terence McSweeney is senior lecturer in film and television studies at Solent University. He is author of The "War on Terror" and American Film: 9/11 Frames Per Second; Avengers Assemble! Critical Perspectives on the Marvel Cinematic Universe; and The Contemporary Superhero Film: Projections of Power and Identity. He was named Author of the Year 2021 in African Studies by the Centre for African Studies of Babeş-Bolyai University Cluj-Napoca for his book, Black Panther: Interrogating a Cultural Phenomenon, published by University Press of Mississippi.
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