Candyman is Just as Important as Black Panther

The Youth Deserve to See Candyman as Much as They Did Black Panther

Candyman shows the thirst for White Americans to find a source of faults for the oppression of Black people, ignoring the alienation and objectification against African Americans. This statement is the gimmick of the slasher flick in question.

Helen is someone who'd be an "ally" in today's time, and yet, her inability to respect and understand racial poverty led her to summon an angry deity in the form of Candyman, highlighting the inability for people of her kind to mind their business. There is always an angle to exploit when “progression” is the reason.

Candyman represents an anger that survived generations up to the point of return to the mortal world by the hand of Helen. Watching as a young adult(and the times I saw it as a teen) who's not too scared of someone I have to literally ask to kill me, the film never shows our antagonist as an actual evil force, but a disturbed one instead, and that's exactly what we need—not someone who has to be the bigger person by European standards, but someone who’s more so a mirrored force of rich-Caucasian audacity.

This isn't a marketing ploy, this is true white lenses gazing in Black communities, and when that viewpoint is the perspective of the majority in the States, it creates a clear perception of what poorer communities represent to the "average" citizen, the White citizen.

Cabrini as a setting in other fictional properties like "Good Times" is shown from an entirely different world view despite being sharing the same epicenter as our movie in question, most likely due to the presence of Eric Monte in the writing room for Good Times. Eric Monte is a Black screenwriter who’s work extends across a plethora of Black 70s TV Shows.

Black Panther, while inspiring in some regards, leaves out a lot more realities in the topics that it covers. Additionally, the film only scratches the potential of discussing diaspora-related problems, with range limitations most likely connected to Disney’s audience(don’t take my word for this, it’s my opinion).

In this time of day, scratching isn't enough, and withholding knowledge is far from "correct" when it involves people who can register said knowledge.

Can**M**(I'm not saying that shit again), is an educational horror that can be viewed as a propaganda-documentary in some regards, and that dabbling in various genres while being a slasher film at heart is what makes it extremely worthy of discussion.

It's also why I think the new addition to the series should be available for streaming instead of having a theater release, although I know that may have a negative industry impact that I'm not too educated on to discuss. Back to the topic at hand.

What Black Panther Shows Nicely From the Perspective of an African American, But Also...Does Not?

As a fan of comic books and fiction, I must say that while I do not personally think the film was for me, I definitely believe that it created enough discussions that were probably impossible to speak about in regards to other Disney films. Black Panther allowed us to take a look at the very definition of diaspora in the form of Killmonger and the rest of the Wakandans. In Wakanda itself, there were different tribes that I assume were showcased for the sake of adding variety to the cultural aspects of the setting.

Even so, these were thin portrayals and the inspirations behind them were shown only at face value, which personally does a disservice in my personal opinion.

Black Panther also starts a conversation in regards to the ethics of historical museums, which was a nice scene for Killmonger.

All in all, Black Panther doesn’t dive deep enough into anything, it gives you topics to think about, but it does not have the ability to automate the discussion of its messages in your brain without giving you more in-depth discussions purely on mood, aesthetic, plot, and complex character philosophies outside of paper thin ideals of what Black society could be in a monolithic gaze that C*ndyman directly goes against in its showing of Black people under different financial classes and ideologies in regards to what’s expected.

Black Panther is illusionary and 2-dimensional, easily digestible for kids, but not enough. That is my verdict.