First I wrote this up as a comment, but then it turned out a little longish, and therefore I put it up as a mimi-style essay, and hopefully one day I write another follow up to this one.

So, here it goes:

I have seen the full movie "Black Panther" now, that is the German version of it, here in Germany. Yeah. I thought I had to see it, after all the brouhaha about it in Wendy's essay and its comments, including mine. I am glad I did. To write something about my first reactions I posted here, my reactions while I was watching the film and my reactions the last night trying to read up about some background and history, I decided I have to watch the English version. I also have to get the script and point out directly the time codes of certain phrases that were said in the film. I don't know exactly how I can do it.

I just say this for right now.

I can support the idea that it is nice to have given - probably a couple of hundred or more black (Afro-Americans mostly, I assume) a job in the movie production industry. We all have to pay the bills in this frigging environment somehow. So, the movie was an employment-creation program, which I wouldn't dare to not wish anyone to get a job in, for all those, who need and want to work in that industry.

I can support the movie for its design and artistic values. As someone, who hasn't watched science fictions movies at all, and as someone, who is biased against them and mostly find them so uninteresting and so boring that I quit watching after a couple of minutes (yes, I am speaking just for my own narrow-minded me, and that does mean I give all those who feel differently lots of slack), I have to say, the fact that I made myself go to the movie theater, means a lot.

I spent 15 Euro on the ticket, refused to spend another 12 Euro on popcorn and soft drink and something cheesy on it. I asked the guy, who sold them in the movie theater, if he had tap water. As he was from some Eastern European or Middle Eastern country, he smiled and said 'yes. When I asked if I had to pay for the plastic cup, he smiled again and said 'no'. How nice of him! If he had been a German, the answer would have been I have to buy a bottle of water and that they don't have tap water. Yep. Oh, I give a frigging shit. Imagine if I had the kids and may be a significant other or a dad to the kids with me - like Bob Sealy seemed to have said that I as a parent of a black kid had to show the movie to my kid - I had to pay easily a hundred dollar to have a "nice afternoon" in the movie theater. Fantastico!.

Ok, so respect my effort to pay my dues to see the movie and pay ... hopefully the actors and technicians and designers behind the set, who are hopefully all pitch black Afro-Americans or African immigrants to the US. Next thing I want to know who exactly makes the money of the movie. From the info I read, producers where white guys. The script writers and director were hired by white guys.

I looked around me in the theater lounge area and saw just three black folks. Young and hip with pink hair and cool outfits. I got my 3D glasses from a the girl, who I asked why the heck I have to see it 3D. She said, you can't watch the movie without the glasses. Aaahh. That's the way it is these days with them movies. I thought to myself, mimi, you have to accept the fact that you are outta of this world and be more accepting of the existing world as it is. So, I decided to watch it 3D. Heh, I am a cool granny now.

I walked down to the restroom to change my warm winter clothes. The movie theater was heated and warm. Apparently for some reason my American experience that movie theaters are always too cold for comfort, as them USians in their climate zones seem to not be able to control their air conditioning addictions, that experience was subconsciously in my bones. Now I had to get rid of my warm winter clothes. It was snowing the whole Sunday afternoon, I had to walk and was prepared to conquer the streets bravely prepared clothe-wise - just to get to this god-damn movie theater.

Well there, down in the restrooms, I saw the only real big Afro-styled hair-do young black woman, cleaning the toilets. Yep, yep. The toilet cleaning industry in Germany seems to be fully occupied by African immigrant women. (compared to the mid- 1960 to the late 1970-ies, when that was not the case). I thought to myself I will ask her after I have seen the movie, if she had seen it and what she thought about. I like asking people like that. And she was the only one I saw. And I saw her only from behind and didn't hear her speak, so it was not clear to me if she was an African woman, or an Afro-American woman or just a kid of an African immigrant to Germany or a kid from a former USians Afro-American soldier stationed in Germany, who was raised in Germany. So many possibilities and all different.

So, there were around 50 persons in the movie theater, I would say it was 1/4 to 1/3 full. I didn't see any black folks. After I settled down I heard behind me three African women talk, couldn't see them, it was too dark, but I can recognize Africans who speak English by their accents.

Well, I tumbled in the 3D world of technologically addicted movie makers and got a little dizzy. Rockets, some fantastically designed fighter planes were shooting from behind me and in front of my eyes horizontally into deep canyons, mysterious cavernous tunnels into the underground spaces of that miraculously undetected African kingdom in something that looked like georgous African landscapes. Unbelievable images. Real amazing and good ones. I just wonder how they were made.

My head was banged from one ear to the other with terrible noises. Ok, I endured it, after ten minutes I had headaches. But heh, that's the sacrifices you have to make to enjoy and respect a science fiction movie. So, shut up, mimi, I thought myself.

Well, I got used to it. Slowly, but surely, I got into the vibes. Then I started to find it funny and comical. There were some hilarious scripted sentences in it. Comedy style. I started to smile and even laugh. Behind me the three African ladies reacted alike. They thought it was funny. At least. About 40 minutes into the film, I heard the African women, watching the great fighting scenes between the competing good kings versus the bad wannabe ones - while I tried to figure out who was a spy for whom - and the amazon-women defending their nation kingdom and their ancestor's customs furiously and bravely, I heard them real-life African women behind me saying: 'yeah let the film begin'. Chuckling.

Now the women in that movie are almost all the "Amazon-style warrior types", of course all extremely beautiful and heroic, fighters in defense for their kingdom, their king and their ancestors, their traditional wisdoms. The costumes were outstanding. The music was seductive, and the dances of course even more, the way you expect them to be from Africa, those 'shithole' countries. Are the expectations now our clichés? And are they served nicely by those Afro-Americans, who would like to fight them?

As I have lived with some folks from those 'shithole' countries and that while living with them in the 'greatest country of the world', I would say... ok, if you see it that way ... nice try. If you put a little effort in it, you can enjoy the spectacle.

I admit that I have listened to and heard African women fighting fiercely, not in defense of their 'kings' or 'men', but over them. My sister-in-law, as pure of an African woman with six kids, widowed and relatively poor, showed me her scars from bites another woman had caused her to have, during a fight over what was a man. When I stared at her in disbelief, she just said to me (I was around 26 years at that time and lived with her before in Africa and then in Germany and France), 'ack, mimi, I can't explain it to you, you didn't grow up the way I did' and that was the end of my 'understanding' of African women's lives. More or less. The way I have experienced African women, I see them as very strong, enduring the shit of their lives no matter what and be survivors. Sometimes becoming the "evil" gals. Ok, what else would be new, in which nests you wouldn't find some bad eggs from time to time. Be honest.

I walked out the movie theater thinking ok, that wasn't that terrible as I thought, gave me a couple of laughs like any good comedian can do. I thought I had to correct my record of my previous rant here. And then thought, it will be difficult without the English script and the clips that entailed the hilarious moments to show you.

When I came home late at night and really tired, I couldn't help but getting back to my first thinking. How dare those filmmakers used the "Black Panther" title? How dare they used the "Black Panther Party" history during the sixties to attempt to get some "political visions" across to today's Afro-American kids. There is a lot to say about that attempt by the script writers. I can't help to think that they were too young to know better and I give them some slack. When I read about Bob Sealy's twitter comment and Big Al's reactions here, I thought how damn tragic and sad this whole movie affair turns out to be. This movie has some very sad and tragic connotations to me.

Unless I can get the script's text, I don't get into more details.

Then I thought, may be we should ask Angela Davis about the movie. She was in the beginning member of the Black Panther Party and later left. She knows a thing or two about the Black Panther Party, the Communist party and the Student NonViolent Coordination Committee of the sixties. There is racism and the ridicule of socialism and revolutionary or rebel thoughts in the movie, nicely packed in harmless science fiction and little quips of political comedy style jokes.

I am tired now and can't go on talking.

To be honest, to think clearly about it imo, it was an insult on many levels, but very few would be able to follow that kind of thought and would be able to feel that way. So, may be for that reason, it's best - for me at least - to put the movie in the category of "irrelevant" and forget about it. At least it could make you laugh a little, but that's it.

In the end I think this movie is what in vulgar German words would be a "Verarschung" of the historical and social movements of Africans AND Afro-Americans and of their kids in today's world of the mid-nineties to now. And so I say to the folks, who put their millions in it to make more millions out of this movie for their own good, "You can kiss my 'Arsch'".

Sigh, I want to forget this movie. Stupid "Kintopp". I forgive the scriptwriters, they, I think, were too young to handle the subject the way I think it should have been handled and I am definitely too old, so gimme some slack as well.

That's the end, folks.

PS I can't handle punctuation of quotes and indirect speech in English. Apologies for all mistakes. Arggh, I can't handle a lot of things ...