Imploding the MCU: Sublimities in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever

Screen Research at UWE welcomes Professor Catherine Constable (University of Warwick) for an illuminating talk: Imploding the MCU: Sublimities in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.

Join us for an evening exploring Afrofuturism, postcolonial critique, and the aesthetics of the sublime in Marvel’s Black Panther films. Catherine will examine how Wakanda Forever pushes the limits of the MCU to challenge colonial legacies and reimagine futures.

Date & Time: Wednesday 11 February, 18:30–20:00
Venue: Pervasive Media Studio, Watershed, Bristol
Followed by drinks in the Watershed bar.

Abstract

Albarrán-Torres and Burke position Black Panther and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever within a postcolonial turn in superhero cinema that commences with Thor Ragnarok (Taika Waititi, 2017), in which the genre begins ‘to address the painful legacy of colonialism’ (2023, 2). As Afrofuturist works, the Black Panther films draw on a rich tradition that uses historical revisionism to re-envisage the future, thereby ‘rethinking the past, present, and futures of the African Diaspora [and merging] … culture, tradition, time, space, and technology to present alternative versions of blackness’ (White 2021, 22). This paper explores the ways in which the postcolonial and Afrofuturist projects of Wakanda Forever draw on different versions of the sublime, critiquing and subverting the Burkean, Kantian and technological sublimes, while also utilising and developing critical counter traditions. I will examine the ways in which the film’s visual presentation of natural resources and neocolonial extractivism draws on and critiques the traditional and technological sublimes. The paper will then parallel Killmonger’s endeavour to erase the indigenous religious culture of Wakanda in the first film with Shuri’s final war against the Talokan, showing the ways the films draw on the traditional and technological sublimes in the staging of both episodes in order to critique such violence as a continuation of colonial imperialist logics. In putting the Black Panther franchise into dialogue with different forms of sublimity, I will show how they navigate and critique ‘the not-yet-past of Enlightenment thought’ (Jackson 2018, 621) as well as developing counter traditions in unexpected ways, thereby pushing the narratives and tropes of the MCU to their limits in order to open up new possibilities.

Bio

Catherine Constable is a Professor of Film Studies in the School of Creative Arts, Performance and Visual Cultures at the University of Warwick. She is the author of Thinking in Images: Film Theory, Feminist Philosophy and Marlene Dietrich (2005), Adapting Philosophy: Jean Baudrillard and The Matrix Trilogy (2009) and Postmodernism and Film: Rethinking Hollywood’s Aesthetics (2015). She has written numerous articles linking philosophy, film theory and science fiction film, of which perhaps the best known are: ‘Becoming the Monster’s Mother: Morphologies of Identity in the Alien Series’ for Alien Zone II (1999) and ‘Surfaces of Science Fiction: Enacting Gender and “Humanness” in Ex Machina’ in Film Philosophy (2018). She is on the editorial boards of the journals Film-Philosophy and Science Fiction Film and Television. She is currently working on a monograph on the presentation of raced and gendered sublimities in contemporary science fiction film.

Where to find the PMStudio

https://www.watershed.co.uk/studio/about/visit-access

The Pervasive Media Studio is located within Watershed in the city centre on Bristol’s historic harbourside. To access the Studio, please go to the Main Watershed Box Office entrance and go upstairs to the Café Bar. Walk across the cafe bar, turn right and walk towards the double doors. Go through into the corridor and walk all the way down until you reach the Studio. The Studio is wheelchair accessible and there is an accessible and gender neutral toilet. There is also a baby change area.

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