I knew I wanted to say more than the quick acknowledgement I gave after Chadwick Boseman’s passing, but I decided to take a few days to gather my thoughts. For the general public, a celebrity death always feels a little bit like the rug being pulled out from under you. When they’re unexpected, they can hit you between the eyes (I remember Heath Ledger’s passing,) but even when they come at the end of a long life, there’s still this sudden hole in the world where they used to be (I think of Mary Tyler Moore.) But, while a celebrity’s death always affects me, I can never tell which ones are going to hit me hard. The last one that left me reeling was Peter Tork, and before that was probably Prince (and as I said then, I didn’t even know enough of his work at the time to consider myself a Prince fan – again, I can’t never tell which ones are going to hit me hard.) And right now, it’s Chadwick Boseman.
I haven’t seen a ton of his work, although I’d seen enough to recognize his talent and know that I wanted to see more. From the looks of his IMDb page, there isn’t enough to see – he only transitioned to film from smaller TV roles in 2012, and he had fewer than 10 non-Marvel movies in his filmography. It appears he was on the brink, just at the start of really bursting through, and that’s part of the sadness I’m feeling right now. The films he won’t get a chance to make, the star power he was just beginning to wield.
But if Boseman’s time in Hollywood wasn’t long, it was long enough for him to witness how loved he was by audiences. After a handful of films that included a trio of Black-icon biopics (playing Jackie Robinson, James Brown, and Thurgood Marshall,) the world met his Black Panther. Well, technically, Black Panther was introduced between Get on Up and Marshall, in Captain America: Civil War, and Boseman rocked it hard in that movie, bringing to life T’Challa’s trademark mix of dignified honor and acrobatic badassery. I don’t contest that Black Panther was one of my favorite parts of that movie. But Black Panther was just something else.
The film is more than just Boseman, of course, and a lot of elements came together beautifully to make it the worldwide phenomenon that it was. But he was at the center of it, the glue holding everything together. This was the film that left Black guys hugging the poster in the theater, that brought drum lines to opening night, that inspired countless Halloween costumes by Black children whose pictures exude the thrill of having a hero who looks like them. More than a billion dollars of audiences’ devotion was spent on ticket sales alone, and a new trailer for Infinity War came out that suddenly featured a lot more Black Panther. The “Wakanda Forever” symbol was adopted by Black athletes as they celebrated their accomplishments on the field and the court.
Boseman played the first Black baseball player in the major leagues and the man who would become the first Black Supreme Court justice. In Black Panther, he wasn’t the first Black superhero, but he was the first to headline his own blockbuster movie in a cool-ass film that featured phenomenal talent, awesome action sequences, and a full-throated celebration of Blackness. That resonated with people, and Boseman understood that weight well, taking on the unofficial role of the fandom king of the Black diaspora.
In recent days, people have been sharing tributes, and in among the beaufitul, deeply-respectful words, have been a lot of clips and gifs and screenshots – not just of his film work, but of Boseman himself. Social media has been full of reminders of how thoughtfully he took his role. I’ve appreciated these watching again, like the bit on Jimmy Fallon’s show where he hid behind a curtain, popping out to surprise fans as they spoke about what the movie meant to them. I also love the interview he gave on The Daily Show (one of many Black Panther cast interviews Trevor Noah featured at that time!), discussing how he saved T’Challa from having a British accent, why Wakandans speak Xhosa, and the way the story of Black Panther is an offering for Black Americans whose cultural African heritage was stolen from their ancestors. When Boseman hosted SNL (two months after the movie came out,) he lamented that all the good Black Panther sketches had already been done, but the show still pulled it out for an awesome sketch featuring T’Challa on Black Jeopardy. I’ve seen videos I’d never seen before too, like this one of Boseman giving an acceptance speech on behalf of the cast at the SAG Awards, talking about inclusion and opportunity. His commencement address at Howard University is also wonderful, getting real about pushback he faced early in his career when he combated stereotypical writing.
In a year
that’s been full of a lot of pain and hardship, and in which the Black
community has been dealt many heavy blows, it was hard to lose Boseman too.
Though it was a shock to the general public, it was the end of a long fight for
him, in which he worked hard to deliver incredible work in the midst of illness
and pain. I know my sadness at Boseman’s passing pales in comparison to that of
the community that held him in such esteem, but I know that Hollywood was
richer to have him in it. My heart goes out to his family and friends, and to
the Black fans whose grief cuts far deeper than mine. The people will miss
their king, but they’ll never forget all he gave them.
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