Black Panther in widescreen: cross-disciplinary perspectives on a pioneering, paradoxical film

Critics and scholars alike hail Black Panther (2018) as a celebratory cinematic response to decades of racial injustice in Hollywood while also calling attention to popular culture's limited means to transform structural oppressions. Our Introduction to this themed issue explores the provocative tensions—between jubilation/disappointment, progress/retrogression, and reality/fantasy—that surround Black Panther. These tensions have animated the Black Panther franchise since its inception and continue to shape the character's cinematic rendering. Our interpretation of Black Panther as reformist yet simultaneously pernicious cinema is framed by paradoxical ideation not only as the core narrative device for the film and its comic antecedents, but also as the central feature of its mediated context—first as a product of Marvel Comics and now the Walt Disney Company.