I guess I do want to see Black Panther when it comes out. The social media hype has been thick for at least two years now, and from the early reviews by those who attended the premiere in LA, it’s supposed to “change the superhero genre forever.”
But one thing I thought about today is the possibility of queer representation in the fictional country of Wakanda. If Wakanda is a country which was never colonized by another country, and also a country in which the majority religions are the Heliopolitan cults brought there from ancient Egypt (assuming that neither Christianity nor Islam have made a dent), then maybe – just maybe – it is a country where sexuality, sexual orientation and gender identity are held much more maturely discussed by citizens and government compared to their surrounding ex-colonized neighbors.
What would life be like for a same-gender-loving and/or gender-nonconforming Wakandan? Would they not have to live in fear of their parents or the royal government drumming up violent mobs or secret police to drag them out of their homes, beat them senseless and torture them to death? Would they not live under the hostility of those who proclaim that the sexual and gender minorities are “committing the sin of Lut/Sodom and Gomorrah” and “deliberately infecting people with AIDS?” Would they not live under such lies, or lies like “they’re pedophiles” or “they’re practicing an un-African lifestyle” or “they’re threats to our civilization”?
How would the Hieropolitan cults view sexual and gender minorities? How would the royal government view them or treat them? How would the Wakandan language and literature (writing system?) describe them? And would Wakandan culture describe SOGI minorities in different linguistic frames than how even LGBT-friendly Westerners frame them?
Dare I imagine: same-sex marriage in Wakanda? Lesbian warriors in the Dora Milaje?
Wakanda is a symbol of imagined, alternate-history “uncolonized Africas”, ones in which science and technology advanced without the dominant intervention of European or Asian actors. I want to imagine that, in such a fictional African country, that LGBT Wakandans not only exist, but go through their own struggles and live their own stories in a more mature, less sexually-draconian regime than most real-life African countries. If not in the movie, if not in the comics, then maybe in my thoughts – “headcanon”, if you will.
Perhaps Wakanda would still have a great deal of patriarchy going on, even with the semi-egalitarian politics within the film. But, in the face of a non-Abrahamic patriarchy, perhaps same-gender love and trans identity could still be entertained and accommodated without hysterics or fear. I know that this more “liberal” approach to sexuality would be “letting down” the boisterous gender-essentialist “kings-and-queens” black nationalism that, no doubt, finds desperate refuge in the Wakanda idea.
I say all of this as a gay black man and a sci-fi/fantasy fan. But I also write this as a fan of black love, in which we feel comfortable enough in our skin and color to embrace each other and manifest our variety of love for each other and our authentic selves.
I want to believe that Wakandans, in such a different environment, can be a bit more understanding toward people who don’t fit heterosexual, cisgender molds.
EDIT: io9 on Marvel’s missed opportunity for queer representation in superhero film.
