By Duane Deterville
Film Review
Now before anyone starts dismissing super-hero movies as trivial pop-culture fare let me contextualize this commentary about “Hancock”, a super-hero movie starring Will Smith, by saying that the figure of the hyper-masculine super-hero is probably the first image that young males encounter as the imagination’s cornerstone for creating a public personae. If the aforementioned figure is decidedly white, male and wealthy we have a problem of existential proportions for those youth that don’t expect to wield white privilege in this American empire.
Myths are created to give groups of people a sense of identity that transcends their actual recorded history. Myth empowers the psyche of these groups of people by the telling and retelling of a story until a belief in the principles conveyed in the story outweighs the plausible existence of the story’s characters. According to Joseph Campbell (probably the most widely recognized authority on the subject) myths serve four purposes. The first two are mystical and cosmological. The third is “…the sociological one – supporting and validating a certain social order.” The fourth “…is the pedagogical function, of how to live a human lifetime under any circumstances.” (The Power of Myth by Joseph Campbell) In short, myth builds individual and collective self-image.
Arguably, the two greatest purveyors of secular myth making in America are the Hollywood film industry and the comic book/graphic novel industry. As early as 1915 with DW Griffith’s “Birth of a Nation” white American filmmakers have used cinema to perpetuate myths that bolster the mythic notion that the righteous vigilante is embodied in the image of the white male. “Birth of a Nation” is now universally recognized for the dubious dual distinction of bringing the image of KKK lynching to its first mass media audience (with a decidedly sympathetic portrayal of the KKK) and for being the first Hollywood blockbuster. It was Hollywood’s highest grossing film prior to World War Two. The comic book superhero was codified by the creation of Superman in the 1930s by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster. With the character Superman and the rise of the comic book as a popular form of entertainment amongst teenagers the hero with godlike or “superhuman” powers emerged as a powerful image in the minds of young males in America. These secular myths were often times merged with wartime patriotism. An example of this is the character Captain America. Even the popular Superman television show explained him as fighting for “…truth, justice and the American way.” Although these characters were portrayed in movie screen serials, none of them used any movie actors of Hollywood “star” status.
The figure of the Hollywood movie star is a key component of the power built within the secular myths created in American films. Joseph Campbell observed, “There is something magical about films. The person you are looking at is also somewhere else at the same time. That is a condition of the god. If a movie actor comes into the theater, everybody turns and looks at the movie actor. He is the real hero of the occasion.” Recently, we have witnessed a powerful synthesis of iconic secular myths in the form of Superhero movies that blend movie star myth with comic book superhero myth. With the rise of computer generated imagery the comic book movie adaptation has been transformed from B-movie status to multi-million dollar Hollywood summer blockbuster status employing A-list academy award nominated actors playing the leads.
This summer we have Robert Downey Jr. as Ironman, Edward Norton as the Hulk, Christian Bale as Batman and Will Smith as “Hancock.” Hancock!?! Hancock is obviously not an iconic superhero but it is obvious that a considerable amount of money was spent on special effects. As a result we can conclude that this movie is expected to compete in the same arena as the other iconic superhero movies released this summer.
Here’s where things get strange. We seldom see the role of the superhero in comics or otherwise where the main character is a Black man. When we do, it’s downright startling. Anyone remember Wesley Snipes brilliant portrayal of the vampire hunter “Blade” in 1998? Village Voice critic Greg Tate called Blade “…hands down the most dynamic portrayal of a Black superman in the history of cinema.” It’s as if Hollywood understood the threat of that notion and promptly crash-landed what could have been one of the greatest superhero myths to come to the screen with two of the worst sequels that one could imagine.
Prior to “Hancock’s” release the teaser trailer that announced it opened with the words “There are heroes”, “There are superheroes” “And then there’s Hancock.” This obviously distances the image of Hancock from the legacy of the mythic superhero even before we see him. Right from the beginning the encoded imagery and music in “Hancock” is highly damaging to the project of building the myth of the Black man endowed with superhuman powers. The first image in the movie is of Hancock, a poor disheveled homeless Black man in an obviously inebriated state laying on a park bench. This image is accompanied by a soundtrack using the classic folk Blues voice of John Lee Hooker wordlessly invoking the history of Blues people, Africans in America, as only he can. The soundtrack shifts from folk Blues to contemporary Hip Hop with Ludacris’ sexist anarchic song “Move Bitch” as we watch Hancock drunkenly flying through the air, crashing through a freeway sign while taking a swig from a bottle of liquor. The music connects the history of Black folks in America to the figure of Hancock by drawing a line from seminal folk Blues to contemporary Hip Hop with an obviously condescending commentary on the results of that lineage.
Hancock is basically a flying wino. This may be a cinema first. The depiction of a man endowed with the power of flight, drunkenly soaring through the air. They didn’t even break this one out for Ironman and in the comic character’s story line his alter ego, Tony Stark is actually an alcoholic. Such a depiction may have been too close to home for Robert Downey Jr. but they didn’t spare Will Smith this image. Unlike the millionaire alter egos of Ironman (Tony Stark) and Batman (Bruce Wayne) who dwell in mansions, Hancock is homeless and has no other alter ego personae than the one the public sees. There is no complex pathos driven by a life as a superhero and a secret civilian life. This is important because this tension in the superhero character is what gives them nobility and fosters a sense of empathy in the viewer because they are in someway like us.
The alter ego is a primary element in the construction of the superhero myth. Most people don’t consider that the circumstance that creates the superhero is often times their superior intellect. An article in the June 1st 2006 BusinessWeek magazine listed the eleven smartest superheroes. Eleven is an odd number in more ways than one. In this case it is probably because someone noticed that all of the superheroes chosen for the list were white and male. Barbara Gordon the alter ego of the less than iconic character Oracle was probably added as the token woman. The fact that all of the characters were white didn’t seem to pose any additional problem. Further, the article stresses that these superheroes prior to obtaining their superpowers were scientists, college professors and inventors. Ironman’s alter ego Tony Stark attended MIT and Bruce Wayne, the alter ego of Batman, attended Harvard. These are two characters in this summer’s spate of comic book movie adaptations and it is important to note that neither of these characters have superpowers other than the ones given them by the intellect that led them to create their superhero technology. In Batman’s case it’s also his tireless training work ethic that gives him his peak physical conditioning. In addition to superior intellect, both of these characters in their movie portrayals are using weaponry that’s manufactured by the US Military. So we see that the encoded imagery of Ivy league white boys endowed with the technological power of the military industrial complex get superhuman powers along with the moral and ethical validation to use those superpowers as they see fit. On one hand these are empowering principles for the white male youth who resemble these images. On the other hand, these encoded images police the imaginations of Black people and others who do not empathize with the myth created by those images.
Somehow the writer of the BusinessWeek article omitted probably the best Black comic book superhero that was ever created, the Black Panther. The invention of the legendary team of Marvel comics creators Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. The Black Panther’s alter ego is T’challa the ruler of the mythical African kingdom of Wakanda. Evidently, even though T’challa has a PhD in physics from Oxford and is a statesman that rules a country, that wasn’t enough intellect to get the brotha’ on BusinessWeek’s list. Special acknowledgement is due for Lee and Kirby for inventing this character in the late 1960s at the height of the Black Power movement. In addition to that, they magnificently sidestepped the temptation to create a character that could easily have fallen into the trap of being a primitive stereotype of some sort. Instead they invented a technologically advanced independent African Kingdom for him to rule! In doing so, these two ingenious Ashkenazi mythmakers made a unique contribution to the legacy of Afri-futurism. For years there has been Hollywood buzz that Wesley Snipes was to portray T’challa in a Black Panther movie. He actually began the project before “Blade.” Now rumor has it that Djimon Hounsou (Amistad) will portray him with John Singleton directing. It makes one wonder what the hold up is, since plans for this movie started long before Ironman and others. In the meantime we have “Hancock” as the Black superhero image sufficiently diffused as an empowering myth by making him into a comic relief character.
Another technique for diffusing the power of the superhero myth embodied in the Black figure is to make it clear that the superhuman power that the Black figure has is irrevocably attached to white male power. In the “Blade” movie we see the appearance of the white male character Abraham Whistler who rescued Blade as a child and makes his entire arsenal of vampire hunting weapons. But this character never existed in the comic book rendition of Blade. In the original comic book rendition of Blade the character that mentored Blade and taught him his devastating martial arts techniques was a Black Jazz musician from Harlem named Jamal Afari. This character was omitted from the movie. In the first “Blade” film there is a Black woman who actually gives Blade her blood in order to rescue him and strengthen him for battle in a scene that artfully mirrors lovemaking. (Now meditate on that image for a minute.) Also, there is a Black apothecary who evidently provides Blade with the vital serum that prevents him from reverting to vampirism. Both of these characters simply evaporate with no explanation in the second sequel to “Blade.” However, Whistler returns in this trilogy. By the third sequel there are two other white vampire hunters ‘helping’ Blade. Remember, these are constructed fictions that build myth. The first “Blade” movie with a Black woman and a Black man allied to empower a Black man with superhuman power was powerful myth building imagery. Evidently, what those empowering images represented symbolically was a little too uncomfortable for the white collars in Hollywood. Those images needed to be policed and reinscribed in a way that re-empowers myths that are made for the white male psyche.
Does that sound a little too conspiratorial for you? Consider this, on July 2nd Will Smith revealed in an MTV interview that he had been offered to play Superman before the Hancock movie and he turned it down. He said, in what began as a serious comment and ended with laughter, “…you can't be messing up white people's heroes in Hollywood! You mess up white people's heroes in Hollywood, you'll never work in this town again!" Smith understands clearly what the mythic image of Superman represents and for whom. What he revealed on MTV, however brief, is a powerful statement about the policing of the Black imagination and who is given agency with iconic secular myths created by the image of a person endowed with godlike powers.
We should always consider who is building the myths and for what motivation. What principles are being conveyed here and for the psyche of what group of people? Who’s young audiences do these images serve? It’s my contention that the principles being conveyed are that unregulated superpowers are reserved for white males. The exception is when Black men and others can have superpowers, as long as those powers are mentored or governed by white male intellect. The power of the independent righteous vigilante is for white men alone.
Recall Will Smith’s statement when he was offered the role of Superman. He understood clearly that Superman is an iconic hero for white people specifically. The character of Hancock as evidenced by the opening sequence of soundtrack music is clearly an encoded image aimed at Black folks. As a result, despite allusions to gods and angels in this movie, Hancock is not a superhero. At the end of the narrative he is a nameless Black man with superpowers that handles them poorly until he gets a PR man to help him with his image and advise him on how to use his superpowers. The PR man is white and this image protects the myth of inherent intellectual superiority in white men. Even with superpowers the black protagonist requires a white mentor in order to use those powers properly. Smith has portrayed a similar hero in the 1996 sci-fi movie “Independence Day” where he portrays a jet fighter pilot who navigates an alien space ship to save planet earth. However, this only occurs under the supervision of a character portrayed by Jeff Goldblum. Again, heroism is portrayed as intellect when embodied in the White hero and brawn when embodied in the Black hero. Keep in mind that this is all fiction, all myth making, and the process of casting is a premeditated aspect of constructing the myths.
It doesn’t seem that Hollywood will dare to allow Black moviestar power to combine with superhero mythology unencumbered. Halle Berry was quite disappointed when the formidable comic book character Storm was reduced to just another ensemble player in the “X-Men” trilogy. Perhaps Hollywood balked at combining the empowering image of an academy award winning moviestar embodied in a stunningly beautiful black woman portraying arguably the most powerful mutant superhero in the Marvel comic universe. “Hancock” it turns out is no more than disempowering images and myth making that underline stereotypes about Black men being ‘naturally’ endowed with extraordinary physical abilities. Physical abilities that require the intellect of white men to be an asset to society. Talk about reinscribing antebellum plantation slave mythology. I won’t bring any young people I know to see it.
The Black Panther character is enjoying a surge in popularity in contemporary comics. In a recent story trajectory T’challa marries the powerful African superhero Storm in a royal wedding. After this Black superhero sabotage the only thing that Hollywood can do to redeem itself is to create a long overdue Black Panther trilogy culminating in the wedding of T’challa with the X-men’s African goddess Storm. Starring Halle Berry of course.
Duane Deterville is a visual artist, writer and Co-Founder of Sankofa Cultural Institute. A former Contra-Mestre of the African Brazilian martial art known as Capoeira, Duane’s primary interest is in African and African Diasporic cultural expression. As the Board Chair and Artistic Director of Sankofa Cultural Institute he produced three symposiums on Jazz: “ Jazz the Black Aesthetic” in 2001, “Bird, Bop, Black Art and Beyond” in 2006 and “The Sacred Jazz Symposium” in 2007. His independent field research includes trips to Haiti and Brazil to research sacred ground drawings and altars. He has recently co-authored the book entitled “Black Artists in Oakland” that was published by Arcadia in 2007, in addition to publishing an article on the painter Raymond Saunders for The Green Magazine. His visual art practice is focused on drawings that address the intersection between symbols and ritual in African Diasporic religions. Duane received his BFA in Drawing from the California College of Arts and Crafts in 1982 and he is currently engaged in graduate studies in Visual and Critical Studies at the California College of Art located in San Francisco California.
Film Review
Now before anyone starts dismissing super-hero movies as trivial pop-culture fare let me contextualize this commentary about “Hancock”, a super-hero movie starring Will Smith, by saying that the figure of the hyper-masculine super-hero is probably the first image that young males encounter as the imagination’s cornerstone for creating a public personae. If the aforementioned figure is decidedly white, male and wealthy we have a problem of existential proportions for those youth that don’t expect to wield white privilege in this American empire.
Myths are created to give groups of people a sense of identity that transcends their actual recorded history. Myth empowers the psyche of these groups of people by the telling and retelling of a story until a belief in the principles conveyed in the story outweighs the plausible existence of the story’s characters. According to Joseph Campbell (probably the most widely recognized authority on the subject) myths serve four purposes. The first two are mystical and cosmological. The third is “…the sociological one – supporting and validating a certain social order.” The fourth “…is the pedagogical function, of how to live a human lifetime under any circumstances.” (The Power of Myth by Joseph Campbell) In short, myth builds individual and collective self-image.
Arguably, the two greatest purveyors of secular myth making in America are the Hollywood film industry and the comic book/graphic novel industry. As early as 1915 with DW Griffith’s “Birth of a Nation” white American filmmakers have used cinema to perpetuate myths that bolster the mythic notion that the righteous vigilante is embodied in the image of the white male. “Birth of a Nation” is now universally recognized for the dubious dual distinction of bringing the image of KKK lynching to its first mass media audience (with a decidedly sympathetic portrayal of the KKK) and for being the first Hollywood blockbuster. It was Hollywood’s highest grossing film prior to World War Two. The comic book superhero was codified by the creation of Superman in the 1930s by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster. With the character Superman and the rise of the comic book as a popular form of entertainment amongst teenagers the hero with godlike or “superhuman” powers emerged as a powerful image in the minds of young males in America. These secular myths were often times merged with wartime patriotism. An example of this is the character Captain America. Even the popular Superman television show explained him as fighting for “…truth, justice and the American way.” Although these characters were portrayed in movie screen serials, none of them used any movie actors of Hollywood “star” status.
The figure of the Hollywood movie star is a key component of the power built within the secular myths created in American films. Joseph Campbell observed, “There is something magical about films. The person you are looking at is also somewhere else at the same time. That is a condition of the god. If a movie actor comes into the theater, everybody turns and looks at the movie actor. He is the real hero of the occasion.” Recently, we have witnessed a powerful synthesis of iconic secular myths in the form of Superhero movies that blend movie star myth with comic book superhero myth. With the rise of computer generated imagery the comic book movie adaptation has been transformed from B-movie status to multi-million dollar Hollywood summer blockbuster status employing A-list academy award nominated actors playing the leads.
This summer we have Robert Downey Jr. as Ironman, Edward Norton as the Hulk, Christian Bale as Batman and Will Smith as “Hancock.” Hancock!?! Hancock is obviously not an iconic superhero but it is obvious that a considerable amount of money was spent on special effects. As a result we can conclude that this movie is expected to compete in the same arena as the other iconic superhero movies released this summer.
Here’s where things get strange. We seldom see the role of the superhero in comics or otherwise where the main character is a Black man. When we do, it’s downright startling. Anyone remember Wesley Snipes brilliant portrayal of the vampire hunter “Blade” in 1998? Village Voice critic Greg Tate called Blade “…hands down the most dynamic portrayal of a Black superman in the history of cinema.” It’s as if Hollywood understood the threat of that notion and promptly crash-landed what could have been one of the greatest superhero myths to come to the screen with two of the worst sequels that one could imagine.
Prior to “Hancock’s” release the teaser trailer that announced it opened with the words “There are heroes”, “There are superheroes” “And then there’s Hancock.” This obviously distances the image of Hancock from the legacy of the mythic superhero even before we see him. Right from the beginning the encoded imagery and music in “Hancock” is highly damaging to the project of building the myth of the Black man endowed with superhuman powers. The first image in the movie is of Hancock, a poor disheveled homeless Black man in an obviously inebriated state laying on a park bench. This image is accompanied by a soundtrack using the classic folk Blues voice of John Lee Hooker wordlessly invoking the history of Blues people, Africans in America, as only he can. The soundtrack shifts from folk Blues to contemporary Hip Hop with Ludacris’ sexist anarchic song “Move Bitch” as we watch Hancock drunkenly flying through the air, crashing through a freeway sign while taking a swig from a bottle of liquor. The music connects the history of Black folks in America to the figure of Hancock by drawing a line from seminal folk Blues to contemporary Hip Hop with an obviously condescending commentary on the results of that lineage.
Hancock is basically a flying wino. This may be a cinema first. The depiction of a man endowed with the power of flight, drunkenly soaring through the air. They didn’t even break this one out for Ironman and in the comic character’s story line his alter ego, Tony Stark is actually an alcoholic. Such a depiction may have been too close to home for Robert Downey Jr. but they didn’t spare Will Smith this image. Unlike the millionaire alter egos of Ironman (Tony Stark) and Batman (Bruce Wayne) who dwell in mansions, Hancock is homeless and has no other alter ego personae than the one the public sees. There is no complex pathos driven by a life as a superhero and a secret civilian life. This is important because this tension in the superhero character is what gives them nobility and fosters a sense of empathy in the viewer because they are in someway like us.
The alter ego is a primary element in the construction of the superhero myth. Most people don’t consider that the circumstance that creates the superhero is often times their superior intellect. An article in the June 1st 2006 BusinessWeek magazine listed the eleven smartest superheroes. Eleven is an odd number in more ways than one. In this case it is probably because someone noticed that all of the superheroes chosen for the list were white and male. Barbara Gordon the alter ego of the less than iconic character Oracle was probably added as the token woman. The fact that all of the characters were white didn’t seem to pose any additional problem. Further, the article stresses that these superheroes prior to obtaining their superpowers were scientists, college professors and inventors. Ironman’s alter ego Tony Stark attended MIT and Bruce Wayne, the alter ego of Batman, attended Harvard. These are two characters in this summer’s spate of comic book movie adaptations and it is important to note that neither of these characters have superpowers other than the ones given them by the intellect that led them to create their superhero technology. In Batman’s case it’s also his tireless training work ethic that gives him his peak physical conditioning. In addition to superior intellect, both of these characters in their movie portrayals are using weaponry that’s manufactured by the US Military. So we see that the encoded imagery of Ivy league white boys endowed with the technological power of the military industrial complex get superhuman powers along with the moral and ethical validation to use those superpowers as they see fit. On one hand these are empowering principles for the white male youth who resemble these images. On the other hand, these encoded images police the imaginations of Black people and others who do not empathize with the myth created by those images.
Somehow the writer of the BusinessWeek article omitted probably the best Black comic book superhero that was ever created, the Black Panther. The invention of the legendary team of Marvel comics creators Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. The Black Panther’s alter ego is T’challa the ruler of the mythical African kingdom of Wakanda. Evidently, even though T’challa has a PhD in physics from Oxford and is a statesman that rules a country, that wasn’t enough intellect to get the brotha’ on BusinessWeek’s list. Special acknowledgement is due for Lee and Kirby for inventing this character in the late 1960s at the height of the Black Power movement. In addition to that, they magnificently sidestepped the temptation to create a character that could easily have fallen into the trap of being a primitive stereotype of some sort. Instead they invented a technologically advanced independent African Kingdom for him to rule! In doing so, these two ingenious Ashkenazi mythmakers made a unique contribution to the legacy of Afri-futurism. For years there has been Hollywood buzz that Wesley Snipes was to portray T’challa in a Black Panther movie. He actually began the project before “Blade.” Now rumor has it that Djimon Hounsou (Amistad) will portray him with John Singleton directing. It makes one wonder what the hold up is, since plans for this movie started long before Ironman and others. In the meantime we have “Hancock” as the Black superhero image sufficiently diffused as an empowering myth by making him into a comic relief character.
Another technique for diffusing the power of the superhero myth embodied in the Black figure is to make it clear that the superhuman power that the Black figure has is irrevocably attached to white male power. In the “Blade” movie we see the appearance of the white male character Abraham Whistler who rescued Blade as a child and makes his entire arsenal of vampire hunting weapons. But this character never existed in the comic book rendition of Blade. In the original comic book rendition of Blade the character that mentored Blade and taught him his devastating martial arts techniques was a Black Jazz musician from Harlem named Jamal Afari. This character was omitted from the movie. In the first “Blade” film there is a Black woman who actually gives Blade her blood in order to rescue him and strengthen him for battle in a scene that artfully mirrors lovemaking. (Now meditate on that image for a minute.) Also, there is a Black apothecary who evidently provides Blade with the vital serum that prevents him from reverting to vampirism. Both of these characters simply evaporate with no explanation in the second sequel to “Blade.” However, Whistler returns in this trilogy. By the third sequel there are two other white vampire hunters ‘helping’ Blade. Remember, these are constructed fictions that build myth. The first “Blade” movie with a Black woman and a Black man allied to empower a Black man with superhuman power was powerful myth building imagery. Evidently, what those empowering images represented symbolically was a little too uncomfortable for the white collars in Hollywood. Those images needed to be policed and reinscribed in a way that re-empowers myths that are made for the white male psyche.
Does that sound a little too conspiratorial for you? Consider this, on July 2nd Will Smith revealed in an MTV interview that he had been offered to play Superman before the Hancock movie and he turned it down. He said, in what began as a serious comment and ended with laughter, “…you can't be messing up white people's heroes in Hollywood! You mess up white people's heroes in Hollywood, you'll never work in this town again!" Smith understands clearly what the mythic image of Superman represents and for whom. What he revealed on MTV, however brief, is a powerful statement about the policing of the Black imagination and who is given agency with iconic secular myths created by the image of a person endowed with godlike powers.
We should always consider who is building the myths and for what motivation. What principles are being conveyed here and for the psyche of what group of people? Who’s young audiences do these images serve? It’s my contention that the principles being conveyed are that unregulated superpowers are reserved for white males. The exception is when Black men and others can have superpowers, as long as those powers are mentored or governed by white male intellect. The power of the independent righteous vigilante is for white men alone.
Recall Will Smith’s statement when he was offered the role of Superman. He understood clearly that Superman is an iconic hero for white people specifically. The character of Hancock as evidenced by the opening sequence of soundtrack music is clearly an encoded image aimed at Black folks. As a result, despite allusions to gods and angels in this movie, Hancock is not a superhero. At the end of the narrative he is a nameless Black man with superpowers that handles them poorly until he gets a PR man to help him with his image and advise him on how to use his superpowers. The PR man is white and this image protects the myth of inherent intellectual superiority in white men. Even with superpowers the black protagonist requires a white mentor in order to use those powers properly. Smith has portrayed a similar hero in the 1996 sci-fi movie “Independence Day” where he portrays a jet fighter pilot who navigates an alien space ship to save planet earth. However, this only occurs under the supervision of a character portrayed by Jeff Goldblum. Again, heroism is portrayed as intellect when embodied in the White hero and brawn when embodied in the Black hero. Keep in mind that this is all fiction, all myth making, and the process of casting is a premeditated aspect of constructing the myths.
It doesn’t seem that Hollywood will dare to allow Black moviestar power to combine with superhero mythology unencumbered. Halle Berry was quite disappointed when the formidable comic book character Storm was reduced to just another ensemble player in the “X-Men” trilogy. Perhaps Hollywood balked at combining the empowering image of an academy award winning moviestar embodied in a stunningly beautiful black woman portraying arguably the most powerful mutant superhero in the Marvel comic universe. “Hancock” it turns out is no more than disempowering images and myth making that underline stereotypes about Black men being ‘naturally’ endowed with extraordinary physical abilities. Physical abilities that require the intellect of white men to be an asset to society. Talk about reinscribing antebellum plantation slave mythology. I won’t bring any young people I know to see it.
The Black Panther character is enjoying a surge in popularity in contemporary comics. In a recent story trajectory T’challa marries the powerful African superhero Storm in a royal wedding. After this Black superhero sabotage the only thing that Hollywood can do to redeem itself is to create a long overdue Black Panther trilogy culminating in the wedding of T’challa with the X-men’s African goddess Storm. Starring Halle Berry of course.
Duane Deterville is a visual artist, writer and Co-Founder of Sankofa Cultural Institute. A former Contra-Mestre of the African Brazilian martial art known as Capoeira, Duane’s primary interest is in African and African Diasporic cultural expression. As the Board Chair and Artistic Director of Sankofa Cultural Institute he produced three symposiums on Jazz: “ Jazz the Black Aesthetic” in 2001, “Bird, Bop, Black Art and Beyond” in 2006 and “The Sacred Jazz Symposium” in 2007. His independent field research includes trips to Haiti and Brazil to research sacred ground drawings and altars. He has recently co-authored the book entitled “Black Artists in Oakland” that was published by Arcadia in 2007, in addition to publishing an article on the painter Raymond Saunders for The Green Magazine. His visual art practice is focused on drawings that address the intersection between symbols and ritual in African Diasporic religions. Duane received his BFA in Drawing from the California College of Arts and Crafts in 1982 and he is currently engaged in graduate studies in Visual and Critical Studies at the California College of Art located in San Francisco California.
