To Be Known

Now that I’ve had a few more days, and gotten over some sickness, I have even more feels that I can articulate. More clearly and directly this time! They build off my first post!

Make no mistake – T’Challa is the Villain for the first three quarters of the film! As I was watching, Erik was the most relatable character. In many other movies he’d be the hero, because he’s coming from such a realistic place. Erik’s from a broken family, split apart as a result of geopolitics, physical distance acting as a barrier, and (T’Chaka’s) secret keeping.

He represents everything we do not have, while T’Challa represents everything we want and desire and should have. Erik takes that reality into his own hands, becomes the best in a profession capable of bringing those barriers down. He allows rage well deep inside of him as a result of the injustice he experiences and acts on it.

Erik only desires one thing – to be known. To be recognized, included, and given a rightful place. He’s dogmatic in a way T’Challa is not – to follow in his father’s footsteps and make right injustice and moral failures (of T’Chaka/T’Challa).

In a similar way to T’Challa being a Christ figure in his death and resurrection, Erik is an inverted Peter. Three times he says “Ask me who I am,” and three times T’Challa rejects him. This scene was heartbreaking for me – to walk into your mother country and not only be rejected, but be brought into the presence of the king in the same way slaves were brought in the presence of their colonizers.

In this sense too, T’Challa parallels the colonizer figure that Erik stands so firmly against – to the point of losing his entire identity to it’s dismantling. What I mean is, Erik has dedicated his whole life to disrupting how black people across the globe have had their future stripped away by colonialism, to the point of losing his personhood to become the perfect revolutionary. He enters his mother country with a hope of restoration – of his peoples (his half Wakandan, half African American), of himself (to his father’s homeland), and of ideology (global racial-capialism and Wakandan isolationism). He leaves with a sword in his chest and an unreconciled identity – he never becomes Wakandan, fully embracing his slave ancestry and choosing to be buried with them.

Who is Erik without his war? Nobody, but T’Challa fails to offer him the alternative. He fails to bring Erik into the fold of his nationhood and ancestry, into the tapestry the he rightfully belongs to. He fails to recognize Erik as N’Jadaka. Because that’s what good, kind kings do, and T’Challa doesn’t become one until he faces T’Chaka in the ancestral plane the second time and understands the pain of keeping family secrets, and by then it’s too late.

Who’s Anger is Righteous?

Another analysis comes by way of righteousness. That is, both Erik and T’Challa carry anger, but only one is righteous. In the film Erik’s anger is constant, but T’Challa grows into a deeper understanding of his indignation. For 3/4 of the movie Erik carries righteousness – up until the moment T’Challa, in front of every past king of Wakanda in the ancestral plane, rejects death in favor of bringing his father’s secrets to the light in the world of the living. This moment is pivotal because T’Challa can empathize with Erik, and begins to see the actions that will bring about reconciliation.

It’s not a parallel analysis because Erik’s anger never manifests differently. Erik’s anger is always violent and masculine, always brutal. It’s even blinding, and he’s never able to recognize love and affection (from women!): from his girlfriend, whom he accepts as a cost of killing Klaue and entering Wakanda; between the Dora Milaje, one of whom he happily executes during the final battle.

I’m not excusing the ways he represents toxic masculinity, but I am arguing that it’s a product of Erik having given up his sense of self in favor of his revolutionary ideology. He embodies the perfection of the master’s tools – a patriarchal, colonizing force that seeks to organize the world into what is powerful and powerless. To empathize with Erik’s rage is to recognize why he chose to become such – because he had already lost his sense of identity when T’Chaka kills his father.

In contrast, T’Challa’s anger manifests as pride, and this pride evolves from holding the kingship as faultless to bearing responsibility for his father’s sins. It becomes humility, of recognizing how he carries the failures of previous kings, and seeks to atone them for the sake of future kings.

He humbles the position of the throne – from perfectly wise – by bringing to light the way previous kings have failed. But he does this with hope and trust that his people will respect him, that those (women) around him will support him, and that the righteousness he brings about is worth the difficulty.

He succeeds with M’baku and the mountain tribe. He wins the challenge using the strength of his righteous claim to the throne and leads from mercy and thinking about the ways M’baku’s people need him. T’Challa, before asking for M’baku’s army, tells him that despite his predecessors never including the Jabari, he is a different king. And M’baku recognizes this – turning down the Black Panther fruit and his chance at the throne, and turning away when T’Challa is brought back to life (by women!).

But he fails with Erik. Checking his pride and leading from humility doesn’t come fast enough. It begins with his violent claim to his father’s secrets (taken from Zuri, for whom the grief and shame overwhelms, represented by his death at the hands of Erik). It continues as he protects, not reveals that secret in front of the council when Erik is brought before them. It manifests when he looses the challenge and is thrown off the cliff. And until the moment Shuri, Nakia, and Ramonda’s grief bring him back to life, and he faces his father and recognizes he’s taken the wrong path, and M’baku and Ross become witness to his humility, he doesn’t see how the throne is all that can restore Erik back to his people.

The Only Alternative Future is Life

All to say, Erik never had a chance. From the moment T’Chaka kills his father, through the series of choices in which he embraces Killmonger rather than N’Jadaka, and, in parallel, the way T’Challa grows too slowly and too late to inheriting the power of the throne, Erik’s destiny was death, and that’s all we have in the world.

But that’s hopeless, and awful, and I refuse to believe in it. So what does an alternative look like? The only alternative future is life, stemming from the power of the throne.

Of T’Challa’s kingship having power to restore Erik, to bring N’Jadaka to life.

I imagine an alternative ending (heh I’m going to write one, even). Where T’Challa bears his sins before N’Jadaka; where he doesn’t speak “Maybe we can save you yet,” (such a prideful, lofty thing for a king to say), but names how his branch of the family tree has been broken off. Where his proclamation of power isn’t a broken sword through the Black Panther suit, but of familial restoration, proclaiming his power in the form of annexation of people, not of land.

I didn’t include this in my analysis, but he does this for Ross, whom he saves and effectively makes a Wakandan. It’s easy for Ross (a physical healing), but how much harder is it to bring his people’s sin to forgiveness? But if he’s a King, and he could make a broken man walk again, should he not also be able to transform the death of Erik Killmonger into the life of N’Jadaka?