#icmabas

Sometimes we begin to understand who we are by seeing those who so distinctly represent who we are not; or who we do not wish to be. The gap between where we are and where we want to be is more easily traversed when we understand who we are. Without that latter piece, the journey seems meandering and purposeless. The tragic figure of Eric Killmonger evidenced for King T’Challa and Wakandans that they were connected to a Black world outside of their nation, and that true freedom means being able to serve your people to the best of your abilities. This very idea came not from Killmonger, but from Nakia—Wakandan international spy and T’Challa’s person/trusted advisor.

As a friend (@yrisaacs) recently said to me: knowing who you are is the place from which you can do the most good.  That applies to yourself and others. Nakia understood this, and T’Challa, being the baby kind that he was, took time to come to see Nakia was right. Two things here: I am reminded of my Fitzgerald and Olivia. Fitz now knows who he is and his (privileged) place in the world. And what is he doing with that? He’s putting it to use to help people—namely Black people (finding missing Black girls, and tackling the criminal (in)justice system which is disproportionately cruel to Black people). Olivia Pope has accomplished great things in deceptive and untruthful ways because, ultimately, she doesn’t know where she’s going in life, because she doesn’t know who she is yet. In my preamble to S7, I remarked that the poster of Olivia Pope on a bench, overlooking Washington, DC gave me the impression of Olivia searching for her proper place as a Black woman in the nation. Olivia has sided with the Republic, again and again, to her own detriment and disengagement precisely because she does not know who she is, and is probably afraid to uncover. She is lost and can’t admit it. And in the gap of a loss not dissimilar to Eric Killmonger’s, an overzealous dedication to an abusive nation becomes a stand in for what is actually missing: a grounded sense of self. The identity, which Olivia’s father, Rowan, has emphasized, has failed her. Killmonger, too, was failed by fathers—both N’Jobu and T’Chaka. Olivia will not understand her place in the nation until she reconciles with the black feminine presence (preferably her own mother, Maya), perhaps starting in the upcoming HTGAWM crossover wherein she will interact with three generations of Black women: Analise Keating, AK’s mother, and Michaela. In both Black Panther and Scandal, the absence of the black maternal figure is strategic narration.

Disappointing Fathers & Absent Mothers

Another theme that looms large in both Black Panther and Scandal is the failure of fathers and the absence of mothers. These related issues produce lost children whose disengagement masks a profound search for true connection. My dear friend and scholar, Schuyler Esprit (@thatmaroongirl ) introduced me to Pauline Hopkins’ work in 2013, noting her influence in Shonda Rhymes’ style of drama. In Jill Bergman’s treatment on the trope of the motherless African American child in the novels of Pauline Hopkins (1859-1930), she notes that motherlessness is a motif that runs through all of Hopkin’s novels. Bergman (2012) asserts that the motherless trope resonates for African Americans dealing with the profound loss of having been abducted from a motherland, and the ensuing familial fragmentation that occurs as a result of slavery. For African Americans, post-Reconstruction, this results in alienation from a country in which they reside, but are not loved. Furthermore, it produces a profound longing for the missing maternal figure, which can manifest as a desire to connect with a literal lost parent or heritage (of the motherland).

Both Olivia and Eric Killmonger are left motherless, as children, and in the care of their fathers. We do not know the circumstance under which leaves Killmonger motherless. Olivia, however, is lied to by her father, at the age of 12 that her mother is dead, when in fact she is taken prisoner by her father as punishment for betrayal (308). Olivia is soon sent off to an expensive European boarding school and never lives with her father again (301, 306). This is effectively a double abandonment. Eric Killmonger, too, is abandoned by his father (N’Jobu) through his murder at the hands his brother, King T’Chaka. The reason for N’Jobu and Maya’s death/”death” are ostensibly the same: protecting a nation by punishing the individual betraying it. In the case of both children, their own family members are to blame for their abandonment. Neither family provides any true consolation for the loss these children experience.

The Scars of Disengagement

The childhood abandonment increases the sense of alienation for both Killmonger and Olivia well-into adulthood, where it has metastasized. Born N’Jadaku, he becomes Eric Killmonger, and wears the evidence of his scarred childhood on his literal body. The scars are supposed to resemble tribal markings, but they are effectively empty in Killmonger’s case, as each represents the death of someone at his hands. All of it done to reach Wakanda to exact revenge for his father’s death. In Olivia’s case, as is for many women, the scars of her childhood pain are all internal. On the outside she radiates ‘bad bitch’, but that flawlessness has always been a deflection. The disengagement comes off as aloof coolness, but that too is armor. It keeps people from getting too close.

But T’Challa does eventually get close enough to see Killmonger. Having defeated Killmonger for the soul of Wakanda and path to freedom for the rest of the diaspora (the battle takes place in a futuristic, underground railway!), T’Challa sees the extent to which Killmonger is damaged by what his father, King T’Chaka did. T’Challa tries to save Killmonger, but he baselessly assumes that this help comes in the form of bondage, and instead chooses death, citing his kidnapped ancestors who jumped overboard instead of facing a lifetime of bondage. I wondered if he chose to stick with the dependable pain that he knew, rather than being made vulnerable, which accepting help requires.

Death is a way out of bondage—a fate seen as worse than death. This theme has popped up on Scandal repeatedly since Olivia was kidnapped in the 4th season. At that time, one of her captors told her “There are many things far worse than death” (410).  The time in bondage, however brief, has returned an Olivia who has become increasingly alienated from the people and relationships around her. Each ensuing season has seen this compounded. She, like Killmonger, mistook help as a form of bondage (509), choosing instead to hold on to the familiarity of her fears through the death of a relationship. Both these characters see vulnerability as a kind of bondage.

Black Feminism as a Check on Toxic Masculinity:

One of my favourite things about Black Panther is the balance of the masculine and feminine. Perhaps because of the absence of colonialism, and the European Enlightenment ideas upon which it operated, Wakanda is not a society dominated by patriarchy. There is a king, but T’Challa’s visit to the spirit world to reunite with T’Chaka revealed there were female Black Panthers, too. There’s also Okoye, the General of the Dora Milaje—the best warriors in the land. And there are female members of the king’s counsel, including the Queen mother, Ramonda. Female leaders of tribes. The best engineer in the land is a 16 year old princess, Shuri. And the person who shows the king the future of Wakandan leadership is Nakia. Every single one of these women is different, and what’s more none of them believe in a self-reliance that alienates love or other relationships. Community and country are important to them, but so are individuals. Black women play pivotal roles as fully formed humans who lead. It’s a film white feminists should study.

I bring up the role of Wakandan women not just because they are sovereign beings and equal citizens, but because there is a clear point being made in the film with regard to how T’Challa and Killmonger treat these women. The contrast in treatment aligns seamlessly with each man’s political philosophy on the liberation of Black people. Earlier I wrote about the strategic absence of Black femininity in both Olivia and Killmonger’s life.  T’Challa, by contrast, is surrounded by women (his mother, sister, Okoye, Nakia, etc). He loves, respects and values their counsel, especially as he is finding his footing as a new king in the wake of his father’s death. Meanwhile, Killmonger, who doesn’t grow up with that influence, is seen with a girlfriend, whom he soon kills when she stands in the way of his mission. Having arrived in Wakanda, he disrespects, chokes, or kills Wakandan women. Killmonger may have had a point, but his overall philosophy of liberation was fucked up. Killmonger’s was a toxic masculinity that ultimately consumed him and obviously harmed those around him.

“Masculinity without the combination of the feminine is weak. It is all bravado. It is not true power. It is anger without control. That’s the message [of Black Panther] to me”–@rodimusprime, TBGWT 

Toxic masculinity has all but consumed and ruined the life of Olivia Pope, too. Olivia has been questing to find out what true power is, and along with the way she has increasingly adopted the primary model of power in her life: that of her father, Rowan. His is a toxic masculinity that reads power in terms of domination and violence, particularly toward black women. Black women whose names end the letter ‘a’ have had their lives ruined by Rowan. He separated is wife Maya from Olivia for over twenty years. Before Maya, we learn he had a paleontologist girlfriend who he seemed to love. Her name was Sandra. She ended up dead, shot in the head by Rowan.  And now Olivia has adopted so many of her father’s traits, including a disregard for things deemed ‘weak’ or ‘feminine’, except the cut of her clothing.  She threatens people’s children to get what she wants. She kills lovers to teach a lesson and maintain her power. She lies to the people who, somehow, still love and care for her, to prove she can outsmart anyone. The adage ‘hurt people hurt people’ is completely true in this portrait of generational abuse in the Pope family. And the absence of the Black mother (as well as any black female friends) is a key to understanding how the toxicity of this type of masculinity, which masquerades as Black power, is ultimately weak and unsustainable. It is disengaged and alienated. It has no friends or intimate relationships, even of the non-romantic kind. It is lonely and fragile.

What will save Olivia from becoming Killmonger (because Rowan is already Killmonger and can’t be saved. I feel this in my bones.), is a change in her understanding of her own power. She will have to draw on a feminine source for that. The relationship with Fitzgerald is a source of feminine power, as Fitz himself represents masculinity that embraces the feminine . That is the balance that attracts Olivia to him, but that relationship will not succeed until Olivia sees possibility and power in the black feminine presence—in someone who mirrors that for her so that she can see it in herself. The Olivia we have at present is someone stomping around with a lot of hurt and insecurity inside. She has not truly embraced her inner ‘bad bitch’ because that comes with understanding vulnerability as a necessary part of life and love.

The Master’s Tools

“For the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. They may allow us to temporarily beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change.”—Audre Lorde (1979)

Olivia is not Killmonger, but I see some of the same pain inside them, and the same misguided ideas about power, which are aligned with the masculine. Killmonger’s plan to fight oppression by arming Black people around the world was untenable and dripping in the same violent domination colonizers use to put people in bondage. But, you know, it sounded cool. I guess. When was the violence supposed to end? When the oppressors were overthrown, then what? Killmonger is an extreme example of Black patriarchy-masquerading-as-black-radicalism.  And it’s why it cannot lead us into the future.

The true radical, to me, in Black Panther was Nakia. She is the one who thought that Wakanda could show the rest of the world what it meant to provide aide. After all, Wakanda was not a nation which had made itself rich off the backs of oppressing people and stealing the resources of their countries, only to turn around to offer pitiable aide and blame them for their own poverty. So, for Wakanda to help Black people around the world, from a position of love for those people would be radical indeed. In a white supremacist world, loving black people is a radical concept.

Vulnerability as True Power:  The Importance of the Heart & Governing

Speaking of loving black people as a radical act, I want to conclude by talking about the heart shaped herb and its relationship to strength and power. When T’Challa undergoes the ritual to become king, the other tribes are entitled to challenge him. He has to prove he is worthy of the crown, through their agreement. T’Challa is stripped of his Black Panther power before he fights for the crown. This means he has to make himself vulnerable as a man (not a super hero) to prove his worthiness as leader. This is a contrast to how Killmonger conceives of leadership and power. Later this idea reinforced when the heart-shaped herb restores T’Challa’s panther powers. When he enters the spirit plane to consult his dead father, T’Challa asks T’Chaka if he will make a good king. T’Chaka tells him that he will be challenged because “you are a good man, with a good heart. And it’s hard for a good man to be king”. It was then that I understood why the flower, which provides strength, is shaped like a heart. The combination of the delicacy of the flower and the heart shape, both associated with the feminine, are conveyed as sources of strength and power. It reminded me of another character who’s a good man with a good heart:

“Weakness is our strength. It’s what makes us human. It’s where our compassion lies.”—Fitzgerald Grant (211)

The ‘bit of sweetness’ Maya saw in her daughter, Olivia, is something the daughter sought to eradicate, thinking doing so would make it easier to rule her “empire”. But to eliminate vulnerability makes one a tyrant. It makes one less of a human. Wakandans understood that. At one point Okoye tells Killmonger that his heart is full of hate, and so he cannot be an effective leader. A good leader needs heart because they must understand the struggles of the people they are leading.  I think Olivia is, underneath it all, a good woman with a good heart. Someone emotionally browbeaten by fear, trauma and years of emotional abuse that have led her to cope through addiction. Unlike Killmonger, I don’t think she’s given up on life or love. She just has to work at embracing vulnerability and her full potential as a black woman. It’s the key to seeing new possibilities in life, as the Wakandans did.

I thought about the collision course she’s been on, and how much of it has stemmed from the chaotic channeling of an anger that’s been building since her kidnapping in S4. I remarked that by late in season 6 and start of season 7, Olivia no longer resembled a person to me. So much of her light had been replaced by the white heat of anger, masquerading as a justice-seeking missile towards the White House. 

Anger is an obviously useful emotion. It can get shit done. No doubt. But it is also true that the energetic boost we get from it is unsustainable physiologically and emotionally. A constant state of anger and the pain that comes with it will kill us. And, yes, I know that particular for Black people, systemic oppression puts us in a quagmire of having to connect with some kind of emotion that doesn’t leave us stuck, and helps us fight against the powerlessness that we feel. And because of that power boost, we readily call upon anger. But it is ultimately a disconnecting emotion that alienates us from each other.  “Anger begets anger” is a line cum joke in the film that is also serves as a prominent theme.  

This takes me to the second moment in the film.  Three Billboards... is about the anger of a white mother, over the lack of justice for the murder of her daughter. She can’t really connect to people in real ways because of this anger, which becomes a stand in for her grief. There is a breakthrough for her, emotionally, when the male character I mentioned earlier takes the letter of the deead man to heart and risks himself to ameliorate the grief of the mother. His attempt does not result in justice, but the two characters are able to connect beyond the failed attempt. And it’s because both characters reached a point where anger alone was no longer enough, and they couldn’t move forward. A life spent caged in fear and anger, disconnected from our fellow humans in meaningful ways is n life at all. 

In the end, this idea of movement is conveyed by the two characters taking a road trip to Idaho. The reason for the trip is tenuous. More importantly, it’s the first time we are taken outside this claustrophobic little town of Ebbing. 

What does this have to do with Scandal?