English Language and Literature Commons^™

Black Panther Shatters Social Binaries To Explore Postcolonial Themes: How Ancestry, Identity, Revenge, And The Third Space Impact The Ability To Navigate Change And Create New Forms Of Cultural Hybridity, Deborah Paquin

English (MA) Theses

In a world climate stricken by hatred, polarity, and revenge, the movie Black Panther continues to offer a unique perspective on pertinent postcolonial themes that still haunt today. This paper will review how the movie reverses, eliminates, or shatters social binaries to explore such postcolonial themes as: Gothicism, anticolonialism, Orientalism, gender roles, hybridity, and ancestry. Through its characters and their relationships, I will analyze how the film presents overriding factors, such as ancestry, heritage, identity, trauma, anger, hatred, and revenge, and how they impact an individual’s ability to successfully navigate change. This includes exploring how the film offers resolutions through …