“Black Panther”: Chadwick Boseman and the story of Wakanda’s greeting

Actor Chadwick Boseman, known for playing the superhero “Black Panther” in the Marvel movie universe, died a year ago, on August 28, 2020, after suffering from cancer for four years. colon.

Its debut like Black Panther a Captain America: Civil War (2016) was just a succulent appetizer of what I would come up with Black Panther (2018), the first film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) with a black man as the protagonist.

African-American filmmaker Ryan Coogler gathered a splendid cast around Boseman (Michael B. Jordan, Lupita Nyong’o, Danai Gurira, Letitia Wright …) for a blockbuster showcasing Afro-descendant pride, which shattered the box office with 1,347 millions of dollars, which caused a huge impact on American society, and which channeled into fiction the anti-racist claims of movements like Black Lives Matter.

Along the way, Black Panther also made history by becoming the first superhero subgenre to be nominated for an Oscar for Best Picture (took the statuettes for best soundtrack, best costume and best design for production).

Boseman suddenly became a world symbol for young people of African descent. But it wasn’t just for Marvel tapes (it appeared in the triumphant diptych Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame, 2018-2019), as, for example, in June it was seen at demonstrations in Los Angeles ( USA) after the death at the hands of the Police of the African-American George Floyd.

Greetings Wakanda

Everyone seems to love the patriotic greeting of the fictional Wakanda and the pose that accompanies it. When actor Chadwick Boseman, who played “Black Panther,” walked down the street or visited a ceremony, it was very common to be asked to do the well-known pose.

“If I don’t want to do it (greeting), I can’t leave the house,” Boseman told Respect in a former interview with Jimmy Kimmel shortly after the premiere of Avengers: Infinity War.

However, he always took it with humor and as a sign that his fans wanted it. He laughed at the memes they pulled out indicating that maybe he would be tired of always making the greeting. The performer was always attentive to his fans and journalists who asked him to make the peculiar greeting.