"Ele tinha ideias muito revolucionárias": Killmonger e as relações de poder em Wakanda

Abstract

In a social context that demanded more black representation in the media, the American film Black Panther (2018) was released, based on a series of comics with the same title, created in the 1970s, also during a movement to fight for the rights of the black population. from the same country. With iconography that refers to the African continent, the film became popular among the public, generating great box office sales and praise from specialized critics. Killmonger, the villain of the feature film, was one of the most prominent characters and brought his speech to the agenda of historical reparation for black people. The research analyzed power relations in the filmic structure of Black Panther (2018), seeing how much whiteness and its power relations were able to shape aspects of the narrative, making it complex beyond the discourse of representation. The objectives are to analyze how the construction of the character Killmonger, who even in a villainous role, brings a mobilizing aspect to the black public, but in a way that endorses the idea that themes such as historical reparation of blackness are harmful to power structures. The issues of gender and race in cinematographic narrative were also explained, in addition to providing a history of the comics that give rise to the characters. As a methodology, we used the film analysis of Penafria (2009) and Campos (2011), in studies on comics, we worked with Cirne (2000) and Chinen (2019), in addition to a bibliographic analysis focusing on the intersectional, afrodiasporic and decolonial studies present in texts by Fanon (2008), Wilderson III (2021), hooks (2019), Kilomba (2010), among other authors. We conclude that whiteness acts to guarantee the maintenance of its discourses even in narratives considered Afro-diasporic. The imagery full of signs that refer to a historically subordinated culture does not overcome the content that reinforces social standards that maintain the interests of whiteness and the images can reinforce colonizing narratives.