Supplemental Post 2 - Giuliana Petrocelli

In my supplemental post this week, I wanted to draw the discussion to modern media as we just experienced a historical box office weekend with Black Panther. On Thursday, I had the pleasure of seeing the film in Film Symposium, accompanied by a Q&A with the producer Nate Moore and writer Joe Robert Cole. The weekend box office is now at $242 million, landing as the second largest 4-day gross ever (http://www.boxofficemojo.com/news/?id=4372&p=.htm).

Black Panther shows the rising interest in diverse stories and strong casts. While watching the film myself, I was strongly moved. We have never seen an African American superhero onscreen like this before, and it was powerful to see Ryan Coogler draw on his background growing up in Oakland to inspire the film. The box office numbers show that this type of storytelling is long overdue.

Furthermore, I found the portrayal of male and female characters to be extremely progressive. The writer, Cole, spoke about how they purposefully created believable and strong female characters for the film. The female characters are warriors and scientific geniuses, all with their own points of view. Torn between fighting for their own beliefs or their country, the female characters don't always agree with each other or with the male characters and hold their own in the film. Furthermore, the male characters show virtues of patience, knowledge, and empathy in addition to strength and aggression. With a more even and real distribution of traits and values, I see Black Panther as redefining male and female roles as portrayed by the media today.

The images in Black Panther are drastically different than what we see historically in a movie like Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, which in my eyes in a good sign.