'Reading the popular' : an analysis of the reception of Black Panther by subaltern black South African women

Abstract

In February 2018, Black Panther made headlines worldwide as the first Marvel Cinematic movie to feature a black superhero, black director, and predominantly black cast. (Babcock, Beskow & Carley,2018). South Africa came to a standstill as the Black Panther fever hit the nation. Many black South African moviegoers filled movie theatres wearing their beautiful cultural attires and singing traditional songs and praises, signalling the arrival of a ‘cultural moment’. Black Panther attempts to capture what it means to be Black in both America and Africa through the lenses of Afrofuturism - a 21st-century cultural aesthetic. The movie is revolutionary and epoch-defining sci-fiction. Some scholars have written about the significance of Black Panther, its cultural aesthetic and its thematic engagement with black themes. However, limited research still explores and accounts for the movie’s popularity in specific socio-historical consumption contexts. Existing research examining Black Panther's popularity has mainly approached audiences as homogenous and used research methods that privilege textual determinism. The study used a cultural studies approach as its conceptual frame and audience reception analysis as its methodology. The cultural studies approach the study of the media views media texts as having more than one meaning. This study aimed to account for the popularity of Black Panther among black South African women, particularly in Soweto township. The study’s findings revealed that the popularity of Black Panther is attributable to the meanings and pleasures associated with resistance that it suggested among marginalised black South African women in Soweto. The film provided these women with a ‘cultural moment’ to resist, challenge and subvert global and localised forms of oppression that they encounter in their everyday lives. It also offered them voice and space to symbolically recuperate and claim a futuristic world where they have agency and control over their lives.