See The Woman King in Theaters (and Order Lots of Banned Books)
There’s a lot of things white supremacists don’t want us to see and read. Their attempts to ban library books jumped by 367% in the last year, and their politicians in states are passing laws to censure books.
But they can’t stop The Woman King which is outdoing box office expectations and may already be the most pivotal film of this century.
This blockbuster starring Viola Davis, Thuso Mbedo, Lashana Lynch and John Boyega finally celebrates what American mass media has kept off the main stage for the last hundred years: the historic bravery and power of Black women and also the great ancient civilizations of Africa (many that still thrive today) that all us human beings should pay tribute to as the nations of our mother continent.
It’s a commanding and deeply-felt epic of cinematically historic proportions based on the legendary Agojie warriors of the Dahomey Kingdom. Like all great action epics which are very loosely based on history like Spartacus, Gladiator, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves or countless others, its purpose is to capture our hearts and minds and help us as individuals and as a society set our worldview — our collection of beliefs and assumptions about how life works…where we come from, how we’ve arrived at this time and place, what and who is good/bad…and so on.
But until now, only grand epics that glamorize tales of white male valor have been granted big Hollywood productions. Those epics have painted a fantasy world over our worldview lenses where the good life is built by white male supremacy, white male benevolence and white male providence. In other words, in America we have only been allowed to culturally celebrate and get emotionally tethered to white fantasy in the modern era of mass media. Movies about the actual world we live in — where women and people of color have paved the road to liberation and bore the labor and sweat of our civilizations — have been limited to side shows or side shows of side shows such as historical dramas and shoe-string budget films that you find in the indie media section of your library.
Now we have The Woman King, a major blockbuster epic that kicks down the gate to the greater historical truth that’s been locked away and hidden from the glamour and potency of our most view-shaping and emotional medium for storytelling, the action hero blockbuster.
The movie world that has been selling us the ideas of the supremacy of whiteness and necessity of patriarchy has insisted on itself ever since the age of motion pictures began. We love to be riveted (and while downing popcorn) so we’ve gladly consumed the same entertainment dish served to us over and over again. But the price way pay for this reliable amusement is what we see, what we believe about life and who we give our respect and admiration (and obedience) to.
The legacy of the Agojie warriors brought to screen in The Woman King starts to correct our soft cinematic brainwashing about some things. These include the nature of leadership and the American view of the globe which sees the U.S. as much bigger and more important than what it is, and the rest of the world as marginal and Africa as irrelevant. This movie entertains from a more real standpoint where Africa is the main scene of action and Black women gain our deepest loyalty, respect and following which they have been denied for so long. As one reviewer at The Root wrote about the film’s impact, “Black women have proven time and time and time again that when they lead, we all win.”
Yes, this movie has been a very very long time coming. We should mark this occasion and use it to call for a new era in blockbuster movie-making where Black and indigenous women save the day and define what is most noble and good about our collective history.
Hollywood has a century of catching up to do, but this could be a start so long as the operatives of hate don’t succeed in dampening the enthusiasm. At this very moment, they are working hard drumming up negativity about this movie as they do with all Black freedom films. They want to deflate them before they have a chance at becoming major hits and eventually American classics. That’s their worst media nightmare. So they’re getting ever more crafty and sophisticated with their attacks from making up lies about the film followers (Black Panther in 2018) to using the voices of people of color to try to legitimize their lines of attack. In the case of The Woman King, they are trying to enlist and amplify voices of patriarchal men of color who feel some kinda way about women of color in leadership. Sadly, this tactic has legs as Conservative operatives have strategically fomented a kind of political Stockholm Syndrome among some Black and Latinx men to appeal to their patriarchy and use it to hook them into today’s organized revival of racism and sexism.
Ironically, it’s why we need The Woman King more than ever. Black and Latinx men must not fall for the trap of false appeals to toxic brotherhood with white men raging patriarchal resentment. This seems to be how the dangerous path to white supremacy begins for some of these men of color nowadays. That’s why we need Nanisca and the Agojie warriors to invite us back to where we belong and to beckon to men of color in particular, to stand with them and follow them into battle.
Why is this still so hard for some men (and even some women)? One reason is that America has been watching the same epic action movie for over 100 years. We are plagued by a centuries’ worth of cinematic indoctrination that plays over and over the fantasy reels of white supremacy and necessary patriarchy in our souls and brains.
The blockbuster was invented in 1915 with the creation of the first feature-length film bearing a musical score, a 12-reel and a national premier that included a private White House screening for the President. It was a national event and a giant gift to White Supremacy patriotically titled Birth of a Nation. The film lamented the end of slavery and introduced the Klan as the uniter of North and South and the hero of the nation against the danger of free Black people. The blockbuster was a phenomenal mass media weapon and the film inspired the actual revitalization of the KKK into a much mightier second version of itself. The invention of the blockbuster was also noticed by the Third Reich who recognized its incredible power and invested in movie-making and radio broadcasts as the cornerstone of their strategy to win the hearts and minds of the German populace.
Thus, with Birth of a Nation, the first blockbuster, came the action movie story mold that has been used ever since to write nearly every big Hollywood action epic: a narrative about the heroism of white men and the danger of darker-skinned beings. Eventually, as a nation we became conscious of how obviously racist this was (like a few years ago), so we allowed for a slight adaptation to preserve it: heroes could be people of color and women so long as they were saving the day on behalf of a white society or institution such as the military, law enforcement or a law firm. In fact, America has come to love this adapted 1915-story mold even more because it reinforces white nationalism, elevating the loyalty of non-white people to itself.
After 103 years, Black Panther finally took us a real leap forward by bringing Black nationhood onto the blockbuster screen. Together with The Woman King these films are finally breaking the 1915 mold and offering America a new one that isn’t based on the knighthood of Klansmen and post-Civil War white supremacist fervor. That’s why the premier of The Woman King in 2022 is such a major event and a historic test for American society. The Agojie warriors can become the new story mold for action movies from here on out — narratives where Black and indigenous women are the victors we lean on to build a new world and narratives that are grounded in a full remembrance of slavery (like period films of the mid-twentieth century are with the Holocaust and World War 2) so that we can finally start to deal with it and keep it from happening again.
The film is off to a great box office start, but how big it becomes all depends on us…what we each decide to watch and read, what we get excited about and take our kids to go see at the movies. These choices matter more now than ever. Do your part. Buy box office tickets of The Woman King with your friends and family. (And keep ordering those banned books by the dozens.)
