There was an intriguing article over on Splinter recently, Black Panther Is Making Conservatives Feel Profoundly Threatened by Isha Aran. She’s looked at a number of reviews of the film that were written by right-leaning reviewers. What’s she’s found, she says, is a certain class of white people is a bit concerned about Panther. It makes them nervous.

Why? Maybe because the film presents a utopia ruled and managed by people of color, black men and women who don’t take lip from anyone, much less white people who think they are in power. And maybe, too, there is the little issue of the fact that the story is set in a fictional African country that can and does tell the rest of the world to mind its own beeswax, thank you very much. Imagine how scary that might be to, say, an IMF operative or Central Banker to envision a world in which some “shithole” African nation could do without them.

Might be kind of disconcerting, when you think about it.

Okay, I’ll be honest, I haven’t see the movie (I don’t like superhero films. Never have. Just my taste. Silly comedies are more my thing.). And, again, to be honest, I haven’t made a careful study of the reviews of the film, so I don’t know for certain that Ms. Aran is correct.

But, I could believe her story. It sounds quite plausible.

After all, we watched the Right go ballistic for eight years over a genuinely superior man who happened to be Black, that is, president Obama.

How much worse it must be to see a fictional one on a screen, ten feet tall, and not restrained by any need for politic restraint.

~mjt