I wrote some words about Black Panther, the Last Jedi, and moral deliberation

Note: There are so many spoilers ahead, for both Black Panther and The Last Jedi. Also the original Star Wars trilogy, just in case you are visiting from 1977. I’m even going to put a big image just under this paragraph so you have the chance to throw this into your Instapaper or Pocket account to read after you’ve seen both. You’ve been warned.

The most compelling villains in the Stars Wars and Marvel cinematic universes.

So one thing Star Wars: The Last Jedi and Black Panther have in common is this: after the movies ended, I found myself thinking about the villains and going… “Well, they’re not entirely wrong…”

And I’m not the only one who thinks so– just ask the movies’ heroes. In The Last Jedi, both Luke Skywalker and Kylo Ren agree the Jedi order was corrupt and something else should take its place. The end of Black Panther saw T’Challa in America doing what Erik Killmonger prodded him to: using the resources of Wakanda to help raise the Black diaspora out of subjugation. The main difference between Luke and Kylo or T’Challa and Erik is the means by which they were willing to accomplish their goals. But they agreed with their adversaries: the old ways were corrupt. Let the past die.

* * *

One of the best things I’ve read this year, between my viewings of The Last Jedi and Black Panther, is Catherine Nichols’ essay The Good Guy/Bad Guy Myth. In it she explores just how recent an invention stories in which a moral good faces off against a moral bad are.

“Stories from an oral tradition never have anything like a modern good guy or bad guy in them, despite their reputation for being moralising. In stories such as Jack and the Beanstalk or Sleeping Beauty, just who is the good guy? Jack is the protagonist we’re meant to root for, yet he has no ethical justification for stealing the giant’s things. Does Sleeping Beauty care about goodness? Does anyone fight crime? Even tales that can be made to seem like they are about good versus evil, such as the story of Cinderella, do not hinge on so simple a moral dichotomy. In traditional oral versions, Cinderella merely needs to be beautiful to make the story work. In the Three Little Pigs, neither pigs nor wolf deploy tactics that the other side wouldn’t stoop to. It’s just a question of who gets dinner first, not good versus evil.”

In contrast, modern stories make it very clear who you ought to be rooting for (and against). Nichols uses the example of Darth Vader in the original Star Wars, strangling subordinates and blowing up planets. He is, clearly, Bad. But by the end of the third film he has switched sides, thrown the Emperor down a shaft, and saved his son. He has turned Good.

That scene is echoed in The Last Jedi when Kylo Ren kills Snook. He and Rey team up against the guards, dispatching them one by one. And then, in one of my favourite moments of the film, he tells her he has no interest in coming back into the fold of the Resistance.

“The Empire, your parents, the Resistance, the Sith, the Jedi… let the past die. Kill it, if you have to. That’s the only way to become what you are meant to be.”

* * *

In this unwillingness to change teams, Kylo Ren has more in common with the characters of The Iliad than Star Wars Episode VII. As Nichols writes:

“Achilles doesn’t become Trojan when he is angry at Agamemnon. Neither the Greeks nor the Trojans stand for some set of human strengths or frailties. Since their conflict is not a metaphor for some internal battle of anger versus love, switching sides because of a transport of feeling would be incoherent. In Star Wars, the opposing teams each represent a set of human properties. What side Darth Vader fights on is therefore absolutely dependent on whether anger or love is foremost in his heart.”

Unlike Vader, Ren hasn’t chosen to be good. He’s simply chosen to be in charge. In that, he isn’t unlike the Wolf of the Three Little Pigs, or the character of W’Kabi in Black Panther who, upon announcing his allegiance to Killmonger, tells the other Wakandans, “There will be two types of people: the conquerors and the conquered. I’d rather be the former.”

Usually, the simple act of pursuing power at the expense of others would be enough to place a movie villain firmly in Bad Guy territory. But neither The Last Jedi nor Black Panther keep things as simple as an Evil Nephew here to destroy the family legacy. Both are shaped by the mistakes of those who ought to have known better. Erik Killmonger was abandoned by his uncle, the King of Wakanda, to live a life of hardship and oppression after the death (murder) of his father. Kylo Ren may have been turning to the Dark Side, but the final push was given when he woke up one night to see his Uncle Luke standing over him with a lightsaber, contemplating the murder of a child.

In their worlds, both Luke and King T’Chaka were viewed as infallible heroes, but Kylo and Erik saw them fumble, and fail, at moments when they needed them most. Those moments set the pair on paths like those of the old fairly tales in which it isn’t a question of who’s Good and who’s Bad, but simply who’s on top.

* * *

Add to that an element of failure in the entire systems of both the old Jedi and the ancient Wakandans. Here’s Luke to Rey: “The legacy of the Jedi is failure, hypocrisy, hubris… At the height of their powers, they allowed Darth Sidious to rise, create the Empire, and wipe them out. It was a Jedi Master who was responsible for the training and creation of Darth Vader.”

Erik Killmonger has a similar indictment prepared for the Wakandans.
“You are all sitting up here comfortable. Must feel good. There’s about two billion people around the world who look like us and their lives are a lot harder. Wakanada has the tools to liberate them all.”

Just as the Jedi stood by to watch the rise of the Empire, the Wakandans quietly watched the rise of slaving empires, a system of worldwide oppression that continues to be felt. Ostensibly, they were remaining neutral but that neutrality had a cost. Is Erik’s plan to give the oppressed the tools to rise up necessarily a worse moral choice than the Wakandans decision not to?

* * *

In Nichols’ essay, she argues the Good Guy/Bad Guy story is essentially a propaghandistic tool, and that by casting characters as either representative of Good or Bad the audience is saved the task of any actual moral deliberations.

“Stories about good guys and bad guys that are implicitly moral – in the sense that they invest an individual’s entire social identity in him not changing his mind about a moral issue – perversely end up discouraging any moral deliberation. Instead… such stories rigidly categorise people according to the values they symbolise, flattening all the deliberation and imagination of ethical action into a single thumbs up or thumbs down.
“Good guy/bad guy narratives might not possess any moral sophistication, but they do promote social stability, and they’re useful for getting people to sign up for armies and fight in wars with other nations. Their values feel like morality, and the association with folklore and mythology lends them a patina of legitimacy, but still, they don’t arise from a moral vision. They are rooted instead in a political vision, which is why they don’t help us deliberate, or think more deeply about the meanings of our actions.”

Although neither Black Panther or Last Jedi leave us with any doubt about who we’re cheering for by the time the final battle comes along, I’d argue they go further than most blockbusters in allowing- possibly even encouraging- some moral deliberation on the part of the audience.

One of the major criticisms I’ve seen of the The Last Jedi was Luke’s bitterness towards the Jedi, but I found that to be one of the movie’s strengths (one negative review I saw was very upset the movie was implying the world couldn’t easily be divided into dark and light, so there’s that). Likewise, I’ve been reading some discussion over whether Killmonger was, in fact, right in Black Panther (a lot of it is linked to in this piece over at The Atlantic).

I know these movies are plotted out well in advance of current events, but I can’t help but see them in light of a climate in which moral deliberation and personal responsibility seems to be increasingly at the fore of public conversation, and the idea of neutrality under increased interrogation. These films seem to want us to ask just because we’ve been told these things are good, are they? I also note that on and off-camera, these movies include more women and people of colour than past blockbusters, groups that may be used to seeing the worst parts of the ostensibly good people and institutions in power.

(I will also point out here, simply because I couldn’t work it in anywhere else but it feels relevant, that in the characters of Rey and Nakia, you have female characters recognizing the need for things to change without necessarily blowing everything else up to do so).

One of the threads in Black Panther that I’d like to see more of us is the aftermath of the major battle which pitted Wakandan against Wakandan. Some of the warriors chose to fight with Killmonger, loyal to the rules of the kingdom and the mantle of king. Others chose to break those rules in defence of what they believed to be the greater good. Both sides believed they were making the moral choice, and were prepared to kill the other for it. Neither side was entirely wrong. How do you come back from that?

Anyway! Those are some ideas I am playing with. I’d be interested in hearing your thoughts so I’ve opened up the comments and also I am on Twitter or Microblog.