(Versión española)

With the upcoming release of the movie about the superhero Black panther, we are seeing again the buildup of the already typical narrative that if you didn’t like the movie it’s because you’re a racist. We saw the same thing with ghostbusters, when a narrative was built claiming that every single person who didn’t like the film was sexist, and we have seen it since with various movies whenever they have a female or minority cast. It’s a way to deflect any criticism of the movie and excuse its failure by blaming the viewers with false accusations. Because, you know, the only possible reason to not like a blockbuster movie is because you hate women or minorities, it can’t possibly be because these movies are usually as simple as a lolipop. I’m not saying the movie will be bad; i’ve liked a few superhero movies, like the Iron man ones, or Wonder woman, but most of them are only worth for a 2 hours mild entertainment that i promptly forget.

In this case it has reached a point where Rotten tomatoes has threatened to ban people who give the movie a bad review if they think the review is hate speech. This would not be bad on itself until you consider how today everything under the sun is considered hate speech, and how some are already claiming that any negative review of the movie is racism. To prove this point, after one critic gave the movie a bad review, journalists, twitters and bloggers have been smearing that person for daring to give a bad review to a black movie, with headlines as wonderful as “Trump’s America Spoils Black Panther’s 100% Rotten Tomatoes score” or “Black panther is for movies what Barak obama was for politics”, arguing, like many are doing, that Black panther is the first blockbuster movie in history with a black protagonist, ignoring tons of movies like Blade, spawn, shaft, catwoman, men in black, Coming to America, etc. But the greatest claim of them all, is the one that the article in the comic, and some people in twitter, have made that Africa would be an ultra futuristic billionaire continent if it wasn’t for white people. Last time i checked a history book, Africa was already a pretty bad place when white people came arround, and their technological level wasn’t exactly state of the art. By that logic, Spain, which was occupied by the moors for almost 800 years, would be an ultra futuristic country if it wasn’t for them, and it should be as poor as Africa is right now. Instead, we are a normal European first world nation, and we were at a time the most powerful nation in the world.

The funniest thing about all of this, is that Wakanda, the fictional country that the movie is set on (and one some people believe is real), was actually in the comics an ultranationalistic state, with a big big wall surrounding it, that refuses any kind of inmigration or even tourism. T’chala is far, far more nationalistic and isolationist than Trump has ever been, to the point that the alt-right is making the joke that “he’s one of them”. And they’re probably not wrong.

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