The superhero movies of the Marvel Cinematic Universe have become the most successful, omnipresent pop culture entity of our times. And no MCU film showed how that cultural impact can manifest quite like 2018's Black Panther. The film was a phenomenon — thanks in large part to the Black community finally feeling seen in a superhero blockbuster, it broke box office records, earned near universal critical acclaim, and was even nominated for a Best Picture Oscar.
And while there certainly was an obvious representation lens to view the movie through, Whitworth psychology professor Justin Martin was less focused on the cast and more focused on the film's Afro-futurist nation state, Wakanda. Growing up a fan of the Black Panther comics, he felt there was something missing in the dialogue around this cultural phenomenon.
"This was one of the first times where I watched a film, a superhero film, where I didn't have to worry about, like, 'Oh, how is that one Black character going to be portrayed?'" says Martin. "Those stakes weren't as high here, because everybody was Black. So since I didn't have to worry about that, what is it about the human experience that I think is portrayed in the film? Not thinking about race, but just what is it about Wakanda — how the people interact with each other, how they engage with their government, how they view moral issues — that's common to the human experience?"
As a psychologist, one of Martin's main fields of interest is social domain theory, or SDT. SDT contends that during their developmental stages, children interpret interactions among others in three distinct domains: moral, socio-conventional and personal/psychological. The moral deals with justice, fairness, rights and harm/welfare. Social-conventional is tied to norms, laws/rules and authority. The personal/psychological focuses on wants, emotions, intentions and autonomy. It's suggested that all three domains develop differently in individuals, and children often view actions fundamentally differently depending on which domain they are thought to fit into.
To illustrate, Martin points to the playground during recess. Games must be played in the allotted recess time and have set rules (socio-conventional), children must choose to not cheat and should include classmates who also want to play (moral), but they generally have free rein to use the time however they choose and play which games they desire (personal).
In his paper The Many Ways of Wakanda: Viewpoint Diversity in Black Panther and Its Implications for Civics Education, Martin argues that the unique fictional civics foundation of Wakandan society — which he calls "the film's unofficial main character" — actually offers distinct divisions among SDT domains, making the film a good template for teachers in Grades 2-5 to build upon with their lessons.
"[Wakanda] shares this national identity, but at the same time, there's a lot of issues they don't agree on," says Martin.
In Black Panther, Wakanda is composed of five tribes and ruled by a king who doubles as the Black Panther. The Black society's technology surpasses that of any other country on Earth due to its stash of the rare super-mineral vibranium, but Wakandans keep their advances hidden and don't interfere with world events in order to maintain their own safety and stability. T'Challa takes the throne and Black Panther mantle after a ceremonial battle where the tribes can nominate royal blood to fight to the death (or yield). This ancient order of rules gets upended when T'Challa's morally complex cousin, Killmonger, makes a claim for the throne, eschewing the traditional isolationism for violent Black interventionism backed by Wakandan technology and weapons.
The movie is incredibly fertile ground for SDT examination, and using fictional realms like the Marvel Cinematic Universe actually makes broad moral civics issues easier for children to understand.
"If you can suspend disbelief — and you deal with superpowers, and you deal with time travel, you deal with all of these things that, in a normal context, give regular humans limitations — I think it allows for a more unique way to explore issues of justice, harm, authority, legality," says Martin.
Martin is not advocating explicitly teaching Black Panther to children. He realizes it's a violent PG-13 film, and showing it in a classroom wouldn't be appropriate. Rather, his paper is targeted at teachers who can design better lesson plans by seeing how a pop culture touchstone can generate civics learning activities centered on SDT. These include teaching about the ways individuals in a society can be generally unified but disagree on certain issues based on SDT viewpoints (like certain tribes disagreeing about Wakandan intervention/isolationism), social contracts and the fairness of monarchies (like a society that chooses it's ruler based on an interpersonal competition, like T'Challa versus Killmonger), and procedural justice (like how the Black Panther must be stipped of his powers for the ceremonial battle for the throne).
Martin hopes to open up discussions about how social science research and civics education can be weaved into our conversations about omnipresent pop culture touchpoints like superhero movies. You cannot understand Batman without Gotham or Black Panther separate from Wakanda. These heroes are tied to the civic environments that surround them... just like the kids who consume their stories with awe. ♦