In this week’s episode, which was actually recorded back in November 2022, we discussed two films from last year, “The Woman King” (dir. Gina Prince- Blythewood) and “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” (dir. Ryan Coogler). Thinking critically about how Indigeneity and the African diaspora are imagined in these works, we considered how these creative projects grapple with the (im)possibility of solidarity and desires for a mythic past. Focusing on representations of Black women at war, we analyzed how gender, sexuality, violence, grief, and histories of slavery and anti-blackness play out in these blockbuster films which center on Black women warriors in fictionalized and fabulated early and/or pre-colonial African kingdoms.
