27. Redemption - Zacari and Babes Wodumo

I’ve mentioned the impact my time in Brisbane in 2018 had on me, my career and my approach to life.

Well, one evening my business partner and I went to the movies and saw Black Panther. I wrote the following that night.

And I sat and listened to the entire Black Panther soundtrack before, during and after writing it.

And for the days and weeks afterwards, it was on high rotation.

But this one song - Redemption - in particular never fell out of my listening list.

It’s a fantastic track, fusing a steamy beat with some laidback delivery, and a refrain that just propels you forward, no matter what you’re doing.

Every time I hear this song - or any of the ones off that soundtrack - I think of that movie, that night and writing this piece.

We went and saw Black Panther last night.

And on the most basic level, it’s a Marvel movie – there’s computer generated action, cartoonish villains and quips aplenty.

But it’s also a Black movie.

With a Black cast.

A Black director.

A Black superstar curating a soundtrack filled with other Black stars.

A Black crew, working on a movie deeply committed to building a Black world.

And there are Black people, imbued with agency and control and depth.

It’s also a movie filled with strength from people who typically have their strength removed as part of the scripting process.

There are female warriors and female tech geniuses. There’s an orphan transformed into strength personified.

And it’s normalised.

There’s a scene in some courtroom drama where Matthew McConaughey trips and stumbles through the retelling of an horrific crime. And he ends it with the words – ‘now imagine she’s white’.

It’s a marvelous moment in film; an excoriation and a confession and an accusation and an apology.

Black Panther is the inverted response – ‘imagine he was black’.

Imagine a black hero.

Imagine a black star.

Imagine a black person in that role.

I’m dancing around the point, I can feel that. I mean, this obviously isn’t the first movie with a Black hero.

So why was I moved?

Because in the first twenty minutes of the movie, I kept thinking of my niece and nephew.

And that, clearly, their experience, and that of their family, are not that of the African diaspora.

Black Panther is an important film for so many people, and I’m wary of detracting from that by overlaying any other assessment. Those struggles – of black Americans, of Africa and Africans, of people in bondage – are not my family’s.

And hopefully they won’t be.

But they’re still ‘different’ in a world driven by people that value ‘sameness’.

So the sheer power of them buying a ticket and going to the movies with their friends and seeing people on the screen that kinda look like their dad, or their grandfather, or their uncles, or their cousins, or themselves…that’s a power that cannot be explained.

It’s the power to strip people of their status as The Other.

And it’s new.

I went to the movies a while ago with them, to see Moana, and there was a kid on screen that looked just like my nephew. And it wasn’t a thing, it wasn’t a token gesture towards ‘diversity’ or ‘inclusion’.

Now that never happened in my childhood. There were no kids that looked like me on screen.

Imagine you were on screen, and it was normal.

Or, invert that - imagine you were never on screen.

And it was normal.

If for no other reason, I loved Moana for this, for giving them that.

And though our experience is tangential to those for whom this movie is critically important, I think I love Black Panther for the same reason.