I love action movies. But sometimes I wish I didn’t have to compromise my values just to enjoy them. I mean, do all action movies have to be grossly prejudiced and built on stereotyped tropes?
I get it, we need a good side and a bad side. It’s no fun if you can’t root for the good guys. But do the good guys always have to be the white, patriotic Americans fighting against the terrorists of [name that color/religion/other category]?
As a woman, I appreciate that we’ve had some good female action characters dating back to Leia in Star Wars. I surprised myself by binge-watching Jessica Jones last year, just because she was a tough woman who could get herself out of jams.
But we can do more. For the love of action movies, we have to do more.
Sometimes, the tropes are enough to make me wish I could swear off action movies altogether. The other day, I started watching the original Iron Man, and much as I love the quirky character that Robert Downey Jr. embodies, his origin story is painfully full of torture techniques and enemy Muslim terrorists. I couldn’t get past the first half hour.
This same discomfort and discouragement makes me especially excited about Black Panther, a comic book written by Ta-Nehisi Coates based on the original Marvel character, also called T’Challa. He’s a rare instance of a Black hero, and in this case, an African hero.
Coates has gotten some heat from comic traditionalists for his writing of T’Challa, mainly because Coates has written T’Challa with flaws. A superhero with flaws? For many that’s a no-go. But I really like it. And I like even more what Coates has to say about writing more complete characters, even in comics:
I have to ask questions. I have to ask questions of human beings. What are their own private individual wants?
We talk about empowering women and sexism in comics. All it requires is you elevate characters as human beings. You don’t have to make them perfect. Ask human being questions of them.
[Read the whole wonky, comic-book enthusiast’s interview with Evan Narcisse.]
According to IMDb, Black Panther is coming out as a movie in 2018. Man, I really hope they do better and create full characters without sliding into tropes. There’s such potential in this story, and I just don’t feel like stowing away my values for the sake of yet another action movie. Is it too much to ask for entertainment and humanity at the same time? We can do that, can’t we?
If Coates can do it in the comic, we ought to be able to make it happen in the movies. After all, isn’t art about evolution?
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