Why Doesn't Nakia Count?

As is Bluesky’s wont, last weekend there was discourse on my dash, in this case about Erik Killmonger, the villain played by Michael B. Jordan in Ryan Coogler’s Black Panther. The discourse centered around the question “why do people think Killmonger is right?” He’s clearly the film’s antagonist, who stages a violent coup of Wakanda and tries to take over the world; it’s not subtle.

The counterargument was that Coogler’s portrayal of Killmonger is part of a broader pattern throughout the MCU (seen especially in Falcon & The Winter Soldier’s Flag Smashers and the Maximoffs) wherein any character that is a revolutionary, and in particular angry at the United States government, will do some cartoonishly awful thing like murder civilians or work with the Nazi allegories as a way to delegitimize critiques of US imperialism and support the status quo.

It reinforces the message that “everything is fine the way it is, there’s no need for change beyond perhaps purging of some bad apples, any problems certainly aren’t systemic, and any Pro-Palestinian protesters must be doing this as some sort of cynical ploy, because anyone demanding change is dangerous.”

Now, obviously, I’m 85% sure that if you asked anyone involved in the MCU if they have done this consciously, they would say that’s not the intent. I’m sure some of them would profess progressive allegiances, be against the war in Iran, vote Democratic in every single election, so on and so forth.

That doesn’t really matter. Often, how we make and engage with art will reflect our own biases without us being directly conscious of it; that’s one of the many reasons we say “all art is political.”

So, yes, if Killmonger is portrayed as a “mustache-twirling villain,” that would not necessarily be a counterargument to “Killmonger was right.” It would, in fact, be supporting it. His basic point, that Wakanda should be doing more to fight global white supremacist hegemony, is correct, and the film is demonizing that point and, by extension, any criticism of said hegemony by making him such an obvious villain.

There’s just one problem: neither of these are supported by the actual film.

The film is fully willing to admit that Killmonger had some points. The biggest indication of this is that the status quo in Wakanda changes at the end of the film.

The main character, King T’Challa, played by the late Chadwick Boseman, decides to stop being isolationist and expand their resources to other members of the African Diaspora, the film ending on the idea that this is the start of something good (we can ignore the end credits scene).

T’Challa literally speaks to the ghost of his father and ancestors and says, “What you did was wrong, this is not okay.” At the end of the film, T’Challa tries to reach out and empathize with Killmonger, and Killmonger decides he would rather die than work with them.

And, most crucially, Nakia, T’Challa’s love interest, played by Lupita Nyong’o, is advocating for the exact same change as Killmonger. She serves as a foil to Killmonger, also saying that Wakanda should be doing more to help people around the world, and is never demonized or treated as wrong. There’s a solid case that she’s the moral center of the film.

Her existence and role as an unambiguous hero, counters the claim that the film is demonizing people who want to change the status quo, because at the end of the day, she and Killmonger want the same thing, but have different methods.

Thus, the place where Killmonger is wrong is not his desire to change the status quo, but his methods, which are pretty explicitly informed by United States imperialist violence.

Nakia and Killmonger are both spies, Nakia even having the same job as Killmonger’s father. However, Killmonger was trained as a spy by the CIA, and specialized in infiltrating countries to destabilize them and overthrow their governments, methods that he is explicitly using in his hostile takeover of Wakanda. He declares, “the sun will never set on the Wakandan Empire,” a version of the slogan used by the British Empire at the height of its powers.

One of his first targets is China, which — while absolutely deserving of criticism — is a weird choice if the goal is simply revenge for the transatlantic slave trade, but does track if you understand it through the lens of imperialist violence, which must consume everything in its path.

Nakia, meanwhile, infiltrates countries to protect Wakanda, and in witnessing their hardships, argues that Wakanda should be using its power and privilege as an African nation untouched by colonialism to support the other people of the African diaspora, and in the second film is working in Haiti.

Both identify the problems around the world caused by imperialist violence and resolve to do something, but Killmonger only knows to do that by recreating that same violence and inflicting it on others, while Nakia has come from a protected and prosperous country, but is informed by compassion and empathy for victims, rather than simply destructive anger at perpetrators.

So the only way to argue that Black Panther demonizes critiques of global hegemony is to argue that Nakia’s advocacy does not count as truly being revolutionary. Her push for the same thing matters less than Killmonger’s. And why?

You can’t argue that she doesn’t accomplish anything, because again, at the end of the film, the status quo has changed. The film takes place over a relatively short time frame, so it’d be odd to claim that Killmonger’s vision has more impact than hers, especially since her vision wins out. Maybe you could claim that without Killmonger T’Challa would never have been convinced of Nakia’s plan, but you can just as easily argue that the reason T’Challa was receptive to Killmonger’s points is that Nakia brought them up first.

At minimum, Nakia has an equal amount of influence to Killmonger on the narrative, so why are people so quick to defend him and never even mention her?

Why is it that so many people on the internet saw two characters who wanted to change the status quo, a man who only knows how to use the methods of imperialist violence, and a woman who wants to take an empathetic approach to uplift and provide resources to victims, and decided that only the man counts? The woman’s advocacy is irrelevant to this conversation, such that she might not even be in the film for all she matters to a thematic analysis.

Why is the Western method of change more valid than the African method? Why can Wakanda only be a positive change in the world and stand up to white supremacy by abandoning their past (Killmonger literally burns the special plants that allow the Black Panther to commune with his ancestors), embracing the violence done to them, and repeating it?

Why are the contributions of Black women to progressive causes and advocacy so often looked over, forgotten, or excluded?

Why doesn’t Nakia count?

Coincidentally, as the Black Panther discussion was going on, there was also a discussion about California Gubernatorial candidate Eric Swalwell and whether he should drop out of the race after accusations of sexual assault surfaced.

Many self-identified progressives were questioning the timing of the accusations, why hadn’t the women come up before, there wasn’t enough evidence, it was a hit job, etc. etc.

Essentially, because Swalwell was the best polling Democrat, he should be supported no matter what. We need him to fight Republicans because no one else would be as effective.

It’s an ugly offspring of the Great Man view of history, the idea that we need to find the one Great Man who can defeat the Republicans, and that man must be protected at all costs. There’s no room for “purity tests” or “coalition breaking.”

“What happens if we lose a Great Man” is the concern whenever a prominent academic or politician is accused of sexual assault, as opposed to “what would have happened if all those women were not forced out?” The man claiming to be a revolutionary must be the only valid one, regardless of any other context.

In light of that, it’s worth asking: Is there room for art that is critical of people with progressive ideas and rhetoric? One could argue that the reason Nakia doesn’t count is because any portrayal of someone who wants to change the status quo as a villain is bad at this point in time. Nakia’s presence doesn’t negate the harm done by portraying Killmonger as the bad guy.

Many tropes might not be a problem in their individual work, but when looked at holistically, support a harmful message or trend.

Can any villain identify and use an actual problem or issue with the status quo in a work of art to gain support and sympathy, whether cynical or genuine, then still cause harm and need to be defeated without delegitimizing the original issue?

Is there room for art that discusses say, a party who declares themselves to be Socialists, but then when they come into power fought communists in the streets, a host on an online news website that supported a very progressive candidate who then descends into bigotry and transphobia, a nation made by the victims of a genocide who then go on to commit another genocide, and so on and so forth.

As you can probably guess from the fact that all those examples are pulled from real life, not only do I think there’s room for it, I think it’s crucial to be able to identify and denounce bad actors as quickly as possible.

And so, if we can accept it is possible to depict that kind of character as a villain or antagonist, what would be the method to convey that the problem is not being upset with the status quo, but rather their methods or their insincerity? Presenting a character who wants the same thing on the heroes’ side and actually changing the status quo at the end would be the bare minimum for me.

So, why doesn’t Nakia count?

White viewers can have trouble dissecting Black art for what it is and what it is trying to say, instead defaulting to forcing it into familiar boxes.

In the same way it’s reductive to call Sinners “just a vampire movie,” it is reductive to call Black Panther “just another film that demonizes revolutionaries,” much less name the trope after it by calling it “a Killmonger,” when other works do it poorly.

Black Panther is a deeply thoughtful film that I’ve only come to appreciate more over time, especially in light of watching Sinners, which has a lot of the same DNA. Ryan Coogler is a director with something to say, and it’s not clever or insightful to dismiss what he’s trying to say because it is superficially similar to films that do it worse, especially because Black Panther is very much Coogler’s film more than anything else.

Critique the MCU all you want, critique how popular art for the masses tends to reinforce the status quo, and refuse to examine the roots of an issue, critique how our own biases can be reflected in how we talk about that art. That’s great.

But it should mean actually engaging with what is being said and being aware of which elements are being discarded, and why you are so quick to discard them or write off their role in the film. Ask yourself:

Why doesn’t Nakia count?