>>41798>what you’re engaging in is more or less literal western chauvinism where advancement = looking like the West NTA but no, it's not. It's material dialectics, the depiction in the film is fundamentally impossible, you cannot have the capacity to build impossible space-ships and energy shields without massive industry to provide the qualitative and quantitative capacity to reproduce components necessary. Said industry cannot appear from scratch, as it must develop and improve, or utilize technologies and knowledge from other societies that already have gone through the process, like China and the USSR did during their 5 year industrialization plans. The film's depiction is retarded because we don't see real industry, we see a mine and some advanced technology, but where it or any other infrastructure (such as tall glass and metal buildings) originated from is a mystery. Also I find it ironic that you bring up the point that it's not supposed to be like the West… except for the city that looks just like any Western modern city, with sky-scrapers and grids and ports, just miniaturized. How is that not just taking Western culture and tech and superficially slapping an African spin onto it?
In comics and cartoons prior to the film, Wakanda is depicted as primarily agrarian with high technological development in some areas, but which they choose not to pursue further than necessary and with limited production because they wish to retain their isolated culture and way of life. Their development is not to the point where they have immense industrial capacity, but where they still make and utilize ore and produce it, which is actually more accurate to African pre-colonial development with Iron smelting and various African city states prior to Arabian and European colonization.
>spears still function as ranged weapons And the design is retarded, there's a reason that handguns developed in similar lines; regardless of culture, the human body has the same basic mechanics - limbs are more comfortable moving in certain directions and positions, and those spears do not hold well. shooting is clearly not meant to be the first use of the spear, and that's stupid because that means it's an ineffective weapon for ranged combat. The only reason nobody shot the Wakandan characters when they're outside their hidden country is because plot armor meant bad guys missed or only hit protected areas of their enemies. Remember, only Black Panther has the magic armor.
>rhinos are carbon neutral transportation Rhinos are not particularly smart, but are particularly aggressive and impossible to control, they are not cows which are docile unless provoked, they are jumpy as fuck. Also to play semantics they are not carbon-neutral, producing methane gas as part of their digestive tract. Finally, in the film these Wakandan fucks are flying around with technology that even Tony Stark doesn't have (built how?) and yet they wouldn't use something more efficient like a hover-craft of some kind, instead going for rhinos we barely see used (because it was so stupid). The rhinos aren't used to pull carts or
>their infrastructure isn’t meant for wheeled transportation anyway Something quite curious, because I have to wonder how the entire world developed the wheel (or in the case of the South Americans was in the process of doing so) but Wakanda didn't, and somehow it didn't need the infrastructure to develop its industry further (which includes transportability for supply lines) because I guess it was fun for the king to have them haul around stuff on foot apparently? The real answer is that the writers didn't think this through and wrote it as if the magical rock gave them their technology, meaning that it's not their advancement at all, and it was just gifted to them automatically without any of the struggles ANY society went through to develop. Also African cultures had wheeled transportation since ancient times, why the fuck wouldn't it materially improve like wheels did in the West or Asia?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_wheel_in_Africa?useskin=vector>Technological determinism This doesn't mean what you imply it to mean.
and by that you are insinuating technology is determined to develop in only a specific way, hence your reference to teleology>Teleology "ackchual historians" means 'Western liberal post-modernist historians/anthropologists'. People don't understand what teleology is; it is a philosophical concept that something has an end purpose or goal, and has a logical path to achieve it. If development and advancement is the
telos of a society, then the
logos is material improvement dictated by the rational self-interests of societal leadership, in this case the tribal leaders and king (sort of like the Czar and Duma).
>The West also largely worships a completely fanciful godhead and the Wakandans don’t seem very fundamentalist to begin with What the fuck does this mean? The society literally has a hierarchy with only blood of nobility and royalty able to challenge candidacy for the throne and regardless of the opinion of those serving, they will serve the king, which is why the guards slavishly fight for Killmonger despite not wanting him as king. It's even a plot point in some stories when Man-Ape took over and Black Panther's fight to return the throne involved him convincing the elders that it was time to let go of outdated tradition. The king is literally the embodiment of the Panther God and the right to rule is considered unassailable after the outdated trial by combat test. T'Challa in the movie is literally just refusing to accept his loss of the legitimate traditions of his own people. In older stories T'Challa usually wasn't the one that lost the challenge, it was his father, and either way it was usually because of under-handed trickery and interference.
>You only saw the chanting as racist because at least subconsciously you made an association between Africans and monkeys No, that's liberal projection. It's LITERALLY a monkey tribe. M'Baku is literally the "Man-Ape" and his tribe is the White Gorilla Cult.
>the “Advanced = Western Europe Not what is argued at all, you've literally projected this onto the other anon's post.
Finally Wakanda and the entire character of Black Panther is a figment of Western fiction. They are characters and stories created for a Western audience first and foremost, so when you see these things, you see what the other anon described, a racist, contradictive caricature, because the reality of what this is, is just utilizing surface aesthetics of commonly known African tribal traditions (mixed in from various completely different African tribes BTW) and mashing it with poorly thought out scifi aspects.
The most ironic thing is that the comics have addressed all these problems, pic rel. Wakanda is technological but while it has uniquely advanced areas, it is not impossibly futuristic while lacking industrialization. Its troops carry melee weapons that can double as ranged weapons, but also have vibranium powered guns. The cities resembler old African cities but more technological. Roads are made of smoothed stone, hover-craft are used for transport etc. So there is literally no excuse for the writers to make the movie so retardedly inconsistent other than performative liberal pandering.