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Wakandan Renaissance

Black filmmakers correct the narrative with powerful storytelling

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Black Panther, gay news, Washington Blade

Michael B. Jordan as Erik Killmonger and Chadwick Boseman as T’Challa in ‘Black Panther.’ (Photo courtesy of Marvel Studios)

In Shakespeare’s The Tempest, when Prospero’s daughter Miranda meets the visitors to their enchanted island, she says, “How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world, That has such people in’t!” Her father replies, “‘Tis new to thee.”

I think of this as I watch the rapturous critical and popular response to the mythical nation of Wakanda introduced last week to millions outside the world of comics by writer-director Ryan Coogler in his masterful film, Black Panther.

It is not just that the title character was created in 1966. A sleeping giant, awakened, soon remembers her strength. The long Western reduction of Africans to conquered primitives, and of their cinematic descendants to mostly subservient and pathological roles, stems not from the continent to which humanity traces its origins but from a white colonialist gaze. Ultimately, willful blindness is no advantage.

Coogler and his collaborators give us an advanced African nation that has never been colonized; with a ruler who seriously confronts the tension between tradition and innovation; where a child’s expectation is success.

Black Panther is at once a triumph of filmic storytelling and a lesson in the folly of neglecting black audiences and squandering black talent. The success of this $200 million project (a big change from Coogler’s $900,000 first feature, Fruitvale Station) is another step in the rough journey from exploitation to collaboration between black artists and a white-dominated industry.

It is emblematic of our age that a real-world president reduces grave national issues to cartoonish simplicity, while a comic-book king brings statesmanship, complexity, and empathy to his job. As America slides into tribalism, T’Challa strives to overcome it.

The strong presence of women in Black Panther has roots in women warriors in places like Dahomey, Ghana, and Nigeria. The film also boasts talented women behind the scenes, including production director Hannah Beachler, cinematographer Rachel Morrison, costume designer Ruth E. Carter, hair department head Camille Friend, specialty jeweler Douriean Fletcher, and first assistant director Lisa C. Satriano.

Provocateur alert: Breitbart, a Russian bot of a website, reports that some are objecting to the lack of a lesbian moment between two warriors in the Dora Milaje. Gee, and I thought the movie was plenty gay because I dreamed of being stuck in an elevator with Killmonger and T’Challa.

I am sorry, but picking fights over things that are not in a particular story reminds me of a late friend who could hardly watch a movie without finding something to piss him off. We might just as well demand a scene set in Cartagena. I go to movies rooting for the moviemakers to succeed. Part of embracing diversity means enjoying other people’s stories without insisting that they cover everything. This movie has an ambitious reach and succeeds beautifully, and I for one am celebrating it. There will be sequels.

People of all races are flocking to theaters to visit Wakanda in the aftermath of another mass shooting that displays government impotence in the face of unchecked greed. They hunger for leadership and inspiration. Thanks to Coogler and his extraordinary assemblage of artists, I see children dancing for joy. They long to see themselves reflected in power onscreen. Their vibrant spirit is the vibranium.

As T’Challa’s antagonist Killmonger observes, colonialism left a bloody trail across Africa. In early 1961, America helped assassinate Patrice Lumumba, the first prime minister of the post-colonial Democratic Republic of the Congo. In the 1980s, Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher called Nelson Mandela a terrorist for acts that would have been lionized if committed by white men in Lexington and Concord in 1775. Today in America, descendants of the Middle Passage are still targets of vote suppression and legal lynching by police officers as white nationalism is stoked from the executive mansion.

In short, we have been a long time waiting for Wakanda. Ryan Coogler, an engaging and self-assured man devoted to making movies with a social impact, is a proven blockbuster director and film auteur at age 31. He is joined by directors like Ava DuVernay, Barry Jenkins, Jordan Peele, and a host of actors and craftspeople at the vanguard of a new era in moviemaking. Call it the Wakandan Renaissance.

 

Richard J. Rosendall is a writer and activist. He can be reached at [email protected].

Copyright © 2018 by Richard J. Rosendall. All rights reserved.

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Community comes together to repair WorldPride history exhibition

Vandals damaged pictures, timeline walls on June 22

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(Photo courtesy Rainbow History Project)

Earlier this month, vandals shouting homophobic slurs damaged the 8-foot hero cubes and timeline walls of the Rainbow History Project’s (RHP) WorldPride exhibition “Pickets, Protests, and Parades: The History of Gay Pride in Washington.” The week’s incident was the fifth homophobic attack on the exhibition chronicling DC’s LGBTQ+ History, the vandalism damage was only made worse by the storms this past week. 

In response, RHP posted a call online for volunteers and donations and over a dozen volunteers showed up on Saturday to repair the exhibition in its final stretch. 

It took three hours, but the group assembled during a heat advisory to bend the fences back into place, fix the cubes and zip tie all the materials together to keep them safe. Some of those who came out to volunteer, Slatt said, were known RHP volunteers but most were total strangers who had attended an event here or there or just wanted to get involved for the first time, one was even in D.C. as an out-of-town guest and after seeing the Instagram call, decided to spend their day lifting some heavy fencing back into place. 

When asked why they showed up, volunteer Abbey said: “especially during Pride month, it’s so important to come together as a community, not just to celebrate, but to support each other. To know that this historic exhibit is even able to exist right now under this administration is really amazing. The fact that we’re just able to help continue it in its last leg of being out here is really important.”

 “Rainbow History Project does a lot of work for the community,” another volunteer Ellie said, “they show up in a lot of ways that I think we really need right now, so in terms of being asked to come out and do a couple hours of lifting, that is something that we can easily support and do.”

 “We put out a call asking for support from the community, and so we didn’t know what we’d get,” Slatt continued, “but strangers have shown up. We were upset, we were crying. We were trying to come up with a battle plan and more and more people have shown up with open arms and empty hands to do this. It’s 95 degrees, we are melting in the heat. It’s just amazing the number of people who have come here.”

If anything, the anonymous exhibit designer said, the people who vandalized the exhibit made the community stronger and mobilized members passionate about preserving and sharing our histories. Their efforts backfired in a big way — bringing together people who had only attended one or two RHP events or had read about the organization online to actively contribute to the work. 

It’s a meaningful representation of the history of D.C.’s LGBTQ+ community, one that often starts with a small group of people who come together to protest but soon mobilize their communities and enact monumental change in the nation’s capital.

“If Pride in D.C. started with 10 people picketing the White House,” Slatt remarked, “you just got 12 more to join the gay history movement.”

This was especially poignant, another volunteer Mattie said, on the week that the Supreme Court issued a decision allowing Tennessee to ban puberty blockers and hormone therapy for minors seeking gender affirming care. It was a devastating moment for the LGBTQ+ community who mobilized once more in front of the Supreme Court this past Friday. 

“It’s been actually really important to see this community come together in the face of direct attack on our history in the wake of direct attacks on our rights,” Mattie said, “and we stand up to that. We come together, and we represent. That is so important to maintaining our strength and our community throughout trying times now and ahead.”

When asked about how community members can support RHP’s work and repair the damage long-term to the exhibit, Slatt urged people to donate to RHP, to volunteer as exhibit monitors, and to come visit the exhibit. 

“We’ve been doing this for 25 years. This is our 25th anniversary, and if it weren’t for volunteers donating their time and their talents, if it weren’t for small dollar donors, we would never have gotten anything done,” Slatt said. “I’d say to anyone out there that we are on this plaza all through Independence weekend, we are here through the Smithsonian Folklife Festival, people can come on down.” 

Slatt and other volunteers will be leading tours each evening at 7 p.m. at Freedom Plaza, and people can pre-order the exhibition catalog right now, which will be delivered in time for LGBTQ+ History Month in October. 

Emma Cieslik is a D.C.-based museum worker and public historian.

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Can we still celebrate Fourth of July this year?

President Donald Trump wants to be king

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(Washington Blade file photo by Michael Key)

Independence Day, commonly known as the Fourth of July, is a federal holiday commemorating the ratification of the Declaration of Independence by the Second Continental Congress on July 4, 1776, establishing the United States of America. The delegates of the Second Continental Congress declared the 13 colonies are no longer subject (and subordinate) to the monarch of Britain, King George III and were now united, free, and independent states. The Congress voted to approve independence by passing the Lee resolution on July 2, and adopted the Declaration of Independence two days later, on July 4. 

Today we have a felon in the White House, who wants to be a king, and doesn’t know what the Declaration of Independence means. Each day we see more erosion of what our country has fought to stand for over the years. We began with a country run by white men, where slavery was accepted, and where women weren’t included in our constitution, or allowed to vote. We have come far, and next year will celebrate 250 years. Slowly, but surely, we have moved forward. That is until Nov. 5, 2024, when the nation elected the felon who now sits in the Oval Office. 

There are some who say they didn’t know what he would do when they voted for him. They are the ones who were either fooled, believing his lies, or just weren’t smart enough to read the blueprint which laid out what he would do, Project 2025. It is there for everyone to see. There should be no surprise at what he is doing to the country, and the world. Last Friday his Supreme Court, and yes, it is his, the three people he had confirmed in his first term, gave him permission to be the king he wants to be. The kind of king our Declaration of Independence said we were renouncing. A man who with the stroke of a pen can ruin thousands of lives, and change the course of America’s future. A man who has set back our country by decades, in just a few months.

So, I understand why many are suggesting there is nothing to celebrate this Fourth of July. How do we have parties, and fireworks, celebrating the 249th year of our independence when so many are being sidelined and harmed by the felon and his MAGA sycophants in the Congress, and on the Supreme Court. Yes, there are those celebrating all he is doing. Those who want to pretend transgender people don’t exist, and put their lives in danger; those who think it’s alright to take away a women’s right to control her body, and her healthcare; those who think parents should be able to interfere on a daily basis with their children’s schooling and wipe out the existence of gay people for them. Those who pretend there was a mandate in the last election, when it was only won by about 1 percent. Those who think disparaging veterans, firing them, and taking away their healthcare, is ok. Those in the LGBTQ community like Log Cabin Republicans, who think supporting a racist, sexist, homophobe is the right thing to do.

So, what do we, as decent caring people, do this Fourth of July. What do we say to those who are being harmed as we celebrate. What do we say to those trans people, those women, those immigrants who came here to escape their own dictators, and are now finding they have come to a country with its own would-be dictator. I say to them, please don’t give up on America. Don’t give up on the possibility decent loving people in our country will finally wake up and say, “enough.” That the majority of Americans will remember we fought a revolution to escape a king, and we fought a civil war to end slavery. That we moved forward and gave women the right to vote, and gave the LGBTQ community the right to marry. Don’t give up on the people that did all that, and think they won’t rise up again, and tell the felon, racist, homophobe, misogynist, found liable for sexual assault, now in the White House, and his sycophants in congress, and his cult, that we will take back our country in the 2026 midterm elections. That we will vote in large numbers, and demand our freedom from the tyranny that he is foisting on our country. 

So yes, I will celebrate this Fourth of July not for what is happening in our country today, but rather for what our country actually stands for. Not for birthday parades, and abandonment of the heroes in Ukraine in support of dictators like Putin. But for the belief the decent people in our country will rise up and vote. That is what I will celebrate and pray for this Fourth of July. That is what I think the fireworks will mean this July Fourth. I refuse to accept defeat the same way our revolutionary soldiers wouldn’t, and the way our troops in the civil war wouldn’t till the confederacy was defeated. 

I will celebrate this Fourth of July because I refuse to accept we will not defeat those who would destroy our beautiful country, and what it really stands for. 

Peter Rosenstein is a longtime LGBTQ rights and Democratic Party activist.

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Is it time for DC to have new congressional representation?

Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton will turn 89 in June

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Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.) (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)

With WorldPride, Supreme Court decisions, military parades in our streets, mayor and City Council discussions about a new football stadium, it is entirely understandable if we missed the real local political story for our future in the halls of Congress. Starting this past May, the whispered longtime discussions about the city’s representation in Congress broke out. Stories in Mother Jones, Reddit, Politico, Axios, NBC News, the New York Times, and even the Washington Post have raised the question of time for a change after so many years.  A little background for those who may not be longtime residents is definitely necessary.

Since the passage of the 1973 District of Columbia Home Rule Act, we District residents have had only two people represent us in Congress, Walter Fauntroy and Eleanor Holmes Norton, who was first elected in 1990 after Mr. Fauntroy decided to run for mayor of our nation’s capital city. 

No one can deny Mrs. Norton’s love and devotion for the District. Without the right to vote for legislation except in committee, she has labored hard and often times very loud to protect us from congressional interference and has successfully passed District of Columbia statehood twice in the House of Representatives, only to see the efforts fail in the U.S. Senate where our representation is nonexistent. 

However, the question must be asked: Is it time for a new person to accept the challenges of working with fellow Democrats and even with Republicans who look for any opportunity to harm our city? Let us remember that the GOP House stripped away millions of OUR dollars from the D.C. budget, trashed needle exchange programs, attacked reproductive freedoms, interfered with our gun laws at a moment’s notice, and recently have even proposed returning the District to Maryland, which does not want us, or simply abolishing the mayor and City Council and returning to the old days of three commissioners or the very silly proposal to change the name of our Metro system to honor you know you.

Mrs. Norton will be 89 years old next year around the time of the June 2026 primary and advising us she is running for another two-year term. Besides her position there will be other major elected city positions to vote for, namely mayor, several City Council members and Board of Education, the district attorney and the ANC. Voting for a change must not be taken as an insult to her. It should be raised and praised as an immense thank you from our LGBTQ+ community to Mrs. Norton for her many years of service not only as our voice in Congress but must include her chairing the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, her time at the ACLU, teaching constitutional law at Georgetown University Law School, and her role in the 1963 March on Washington. 

Personally, I am hoping she will accept all the accolades which will come her way. Her service can continue by becoming the mentor/tutor to her replacement. It is time!

John Klenert is a longtime D.C. resident and member of the DC Vote and LGBTQ+ Victory Fund Campaign boards of directors.

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