"This film set the bar unbelievably high early on this year when it came to onscreen representation. Because of my intersectional identity as a woman of colour, seeing this cinematic masterpiece and witnessing the beauty of black culture in theatres was incredibly important to me. The movie came right around the time a certain someone made offhanded remarks about African countries that perpetuated a notion of black inferiority. But Black Panther completely flips the script by depicting Wakanda, an African country I would absolutely love to live in, as a beautiful and technologically advanced land that has preserved its richness and balance by remaining hidden in plain sight.
Huh, an African nation is secretly far more superior in resources and intellect than the rest of the world because it's untouched by colonial influence — see the irony? The Wakandans living and thriving in their own land, and throwing a bit of shade toward the "primitive" ways of the rest of the world, gave me a sense of pride in my culture that I honestly had never really felt while watching a movie before." — Brea Cubit, Editorial Assistant