Plastic Off the Sofa

Summary

Podcast Summary: “Plastic Off the Sofa” – Cannonball with Wesley Morris

Host: Wesley Morris
Guest Co-Host: Jenna Wortham
Published by: The New York Times
Date: November 29, 2022
Episode Focus: A deeply personal and critical conversation about Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, exploring grief, cultural representation, colonialism, and the role of Disney as a cultural force.

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Main Theme & Purpose

This episode unpacks the cultural and emotional impact of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. Wesley Morris and Jenna Wortham explore how the film honors Chadwick Boseman, addresses collective mourning, and expands Marvel's vision of representation. They also grapple with the uneasy reality of Disney’s immense cultural reach and the complexities it introduces.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Processing Grief: Chadwick Boseman's Death (00:43–07:40)

• Immediate Challenge: The hosts wonder how the film will address Chadwick Boseman’s (T’Challa’s) real-life death and its effect on both the narrative and audiences.
• Opening Rituals: The movie’s opening with a royal funeral evokes genuine mourning, seen both in the characters and the actors themselves.
  • “You're also watching actors who've lost their co-star. You’re watching Angela Bassett and Letitia Wright and Danai Gurira weep.”
    — Wesley Morris, 02:54
• Meta Mourning: The film’s altered Marvel logo—only featuring Boseman—is described as a poignant corporate tribute.
  • “For a mega production to devote its brand logo to this dead black actor, its star, it’s just really moving.”
    — Wesley Morris, 03:31
• Societal Need for Grieving Spaces: Jenna reflects on how Boseman’s passing coincided with a period of pandemic-related loss.
  • “By late summer… we were really coming to terms with how impoverished our grieving and mourning rituals are.”
    — Jenna Wortham, 04:07
  • They see the film as a rare collective grieving opportunity, particularly for Black communities.

2. Collective Grieving in Black Communities (05:21–07:40)

• Radical Black Grieving Practices: The conversation shifts to smaller, private grief rituals (e.g., vigils for Dominique Remy Fells and Toyin Salau) and contrasts these with Marvel's global public sphere.
• A Surprising Vehicle: The hosts marvel at Marvel’s role in providing this collective framework for mourning.
  • “It winds up being Marvel that offers this framework for walking us through, trying to process this grief collectively. I just—blows my mind.”
    — Jenna Wortham, 07:23

3. The Stakes and Themes of Wakanda Forever (08:10–15:25)

• Shifts from First Film: The sequel pivots from questions of nationalism vs. globalism to more complex cultural and political fights.
• Introduction of Talokan & Namor:
  • Namor, drawn from Mesoamerican mythologies, leads Talokan—a hidden civilization also shaped by colonization.
  • The undersea city is vividly described; both hosts wish for even more screen time exploring it.
  • “Like, yes, we both wanted more. We both wanted more. Like, an hour of the film could have just been set in Talokan.”
    — Jenna Wortham, 10:30
• Colonial Legacies: The Talokan storyline powerfully links to hemispheric histories of colonization and resistance.

4. Wakanda and Talokan: Allies or Adversaries? (12:16–15:07)

• Potential Unity: Both civilizations have vibranium and are at risk from Western extraction, but have different strategies—diplomacy vs. warfare.
  • “The idea that they are special and unique and alone in this fight… this changes everything.”
    — Jenna Wortham, 14:30
• Villains and Perspective: Namor isn’t treated as a conventional villain—the real antagonists are the unnamed colonizers seeking resources.

5. Representation: Riri Williams and Affirming Black Genius (15:31–18:19)

• Subverting Expectations: The much-hyped scientist “at MIT” is not a white male but Riri Williams, a young Black woman from Chicago.
• Cultural Recognition: A highlight is Riri’s recognition of differences in how Blackness is experienced in Wakanda versus the US.
  • “To be young, gifted and Black, right? And then she corrects herself… Oh, wait, you probably don’t say that in Wakanda, do you?”
    — Wesley Morris, 16:11
• Affirmation for Black Viewers: Riri’s arc offers authentic representation, not just for white audiences but as a reaffirming mirror for Black identity and capability.

6. Disney as a Cultural Force – Blessing or Colonizer? (21:04–30:55)

• Wesley’s Confession: He admits he didn’t love the first Black Panther, but appreciated Coogler’s attempts to imbue blockbuster cinema with Black cultural specificity.
• The Problem of Conflict: Both feel discomfort with the depiction of Wakanda and Talokan (Africans vs. Central Americans) at war.
  • “It is the worst part of the movie… It is deeply uncomfortable to watch these groups fight.”
    — Jenna Wortham, 23:11
• Disney as a Colonizing Force: The hosts overtly refer to Disney’s absorption of studios as a kind of modern cultural colonization.
  • “Disney is a colonizing force. Right. Truly, Disney has spent the last 30 years essentially being this colonizing force.”
    — Wesley Morris, 24:47
• Questions of Responsibility: If Disney controls so much, what is it responsible for culturally? Marvel now tells stories with very specific cultural, religious, and racial lenses—should it take even more risks?
  • “Why not just take some risks, some real risks? … The things that started this company out were based on ideas of minstrelsy, xenophobia, and blatant racism. So there’s a lot of complexity in the... legacy of this company.”
    — Wesley Morris, 27:04 & 27:31

7. The Loss of Cultural Diversity Within Monoculture (28:53–30:56)

• Benefits & Losses: While Marvel boosts certain voices, the monoculture potentially limits where else Black creatives can go or what independent projects they might lead.
  • “Who knows what movies and plays and TV shows and creations Dominique Thorne could have been in. But instead, she’s playing Riri Williams, and I can’t wait. But there's still a question of what she could have been doing.”
    — Jenna Wortham, 29:31
• Chadwick Boseman’s Legacy: Despite criticisms, the hosts close by acknowledging that only a company of Disney’s scale could so publicly mourn Boseman, rendering his impact meaningful for millions.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “For a mega production to devote its brand logo to this dead black actor, its star, it’s just really moving.”
  (Wesley Morris, 03:31)

• “It winds up being Marvel that offers this framework for walking us through, trying to process this grief collectively. I just—blows my mind.”
  (Jenna Wortham, 07:23)

• “All the risk is being taken out. Right. And it makes a movie like this, like Wakanda Forever, seem risky when really they could do anything and it would still make a half a billion dollars in three weekends.”
  (Wesley Morris, 29:40)

• “Disney is a colonizing force. Right. Truly, Disney has spent the last 30 years essentially being this colonizing force.”
  (Wesley Morris, 24:47)

• “Who knows what movies and plays and TV shows and creations Dominique Thorne could have been in ... But instead, she’s playing Riri Williams, and I can’t wait. But there's still a question of what she could have been doing.”
  (Jenna Wortham, 29:31)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• 00:43 — Opening questions on grief and Chadwick Boseman’s passing
• 02:54 — Meta-mourning onscreen and off
• 03:31 — The Marvel logo tribute
• 07:23 — Marvel as a framework for collective grieving
• 10:30 — Wonder and awe at Talokan
• 14:30 — Wakanda’s self-image challenged by discovering Talokan
• 16:11 — “To be young, gifted and Black” in Wakanda vs. America
• 21:04 — Confession: Not loving the first Black Panther
• 23:11 — Discomfort with the inter-cultural battle in the film
• 24:47 — Disney’s role as a cultural colonizer
• 27:04 — Marvel’s cultural responsibilities and historic baggage
• 28:53 — Cultural monoculture and missed opportunities for Black creatives
• 29:40 — Final thoughts on the paradox of risk-taking and Chadwick Boseman’s legacy

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Tone & Language

The conversation is thoughtful, candid, and emotionally resonant. Both hosts blend incisive cultural critique with personal reactions and honest vulnerability. There's a mutual sense of awe at certain achievements, frustration at structural systems, and loving care in their cultural analysis.

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Conclusion

This episode of Cannonball is a wide-ranging conversation about grief, representation, and cultural power, holding the complexities of both mourning and celebration, hope and warning. Whether or not you’re a Marvel fan, this is a deep and accessible guide to one of 2022’s biggest films—and to the forces shaping how we grieve, imagine, and identify.

Transcript

[Narrator/Advertiser]

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[Jay Wortham]

I'm Jay Wortham.

[Wesley Morris]

I'm Wesley Morris. We're two culture writers at the New York Times.

[Jay Wortham]

You mean super powered individuals at the New York Times. This is still processing. We went to see the sequel to Black Panther, Wakanda Forever, you know, directed by Ryan Coogler, a movie that has been highly anticipated.

[Wesley Morris]

Yeah.

[Jay Wortham]

But a big question on my mind, and I think on the mind of many people, was how the movie is going to deal with the passing of Chadwick Boseman, who died in August 2020 after a long battle with cancer that many people did not know about.

[Wesley Morris]

Right. Yeah.

[Jay Wortham]

A lot of people were grieving. Ryan Coogler was like, I am not going to recast Black Panther. So it was this big question mark.

[Wesley Morris]

I was less fascinated by that question because, I mean, I'm mourn Chadwick Boseman. Right. But I just assumed that what was going to happen was this world is big enough to find a plot that both accommodates the death of t', Challa, AKA Black Panther, played by Chadwick Boseman. And he was the king of Wakanda. Right. They have to have a service worthy of the king. And the movie opens with that. It gives us this beautiful ritual of grief. And everybody's in white and the music is, you know, it's moving. I mean, I heard sniffles. And this funeral also presents this really fascinating meta moment where you're watching Tchallas mother Queen Ramunda weep. You're watching his sister Shuri mourn. You're watching the head of the Dora Milaje, which is Wakanda's security defense force Okoye. Like, her face is swollen with grief as she carries this coffin.

[Jay Wortham]

That's right.

[Wesley Morris]

You're also watching actors who've lost their co star. You know, you're watching Angela Basset and Letitia Wright and Danai Gurira weep.

[Jay Wortham]

Mm.

[Wesley Morris]

And then, like, the movie properly starts formally with the unspooling of the Marvel logo that we all have seen a thousand times. And usually what's in that logo is all the characters in the Marvel universe, The Hulk, Black Widow, Captain America, Iron Man. But instead, the Marvel logo is entirely Chadwick Boseman.

[Jay Wortham]

It was very moving.

[Wesley Morris]

Like my eyes are tearing up right now. And for a mega production to devote its brand logo to this dead black actor, its star, it's just really moving.

[Jay Wortham]

What stands out for me is thinking about the timing of Chadwick's passing, which was late August of 2020. And at that moment in time, the losses were just mounting. Losses that we weren't able to properly grieve.

[Wesley Morris]

Yeah.

[Jay Wortham]

I think by late summer, as Americans, we were really coming to terms with how impoverished our grieving and mourning rituals are.

[Wesley Morris]

Oh, yeah.

[Jay Wortham]

And Chadwick's loss landed at a moment when I think people were really understanding that there's no way to process these losses.

[Wesley Morris]

Right.

[Jay Wortham]

So when I saw the title cards, I was like, Marvel is really unafraid to allow this movie to be a vehicle for people to really let out their feelings around Chadwick. But I think that Chadwick is also a stand in for all the losses we've suffered from which we've never really collectively talked about.

[Wesley Morris]

I think it speaks to one of the many lacks that we currently have as a people in this country and the idea that like everything else, like so many things in this country, public grieving has been privatized, essentially. And it's an indictment of our relationship to. To grief.

[Jay Wortham]

Well, the movie seems very conscious of a desire to focus on the grieving and the grieving rituals. It's aligning itself with something that in my opinion, has become a very important black radical practice over the last handful of years. Right. Which is to try to figure out how to allow space to mourn and to sit with those feelings and that are separate from the act of dying and the act of death. And I also think this is something a lot of doula workers and grief workers, breath workers, and people overall who think about the importance of having private spaces to mourn that are not regulated and manipulated by big cultural entities. I'm thinking of Dominique Remy Fells who was killed in Philadelphia. There were birthday celebrations for her not too long ago that were limited to bipoc neighborhoods and spaces. Or when people were grieving over the kidnapping and ultimate murder of a 19 year old activist from Florida named Toyin Salao.

[Wesley Morris]

Yes.

[Jay Wortham]

There were these private morning rituals held in Bed Stuy and Herbert Von King park. Just vigils for people to let out their sadness about this woman. Without it being a Twitter campaign, without it being a say Her Name campaign.

[Wesley Morris]

Right.

[Jay Wortham]

And I listened to a conversation between Ta Nehisi Coates, our pal, and. And Ryan Coogler about the making of this movie, which we'll link to in the show notes. And they talk a lot about how there were these private ceremonies for Chadwick Boseman where people laid hands on the coffin. And it really moved me to hear that because it felt really clear that the scene in the movie is so emotional because it was also lived. Right. And so when I see the scale at which Marvel is opening up a window for practicing collective healing, I'm amazed. Right. But it's just so wild that it winds up being Marvel that offers this framework for walking us through, trying to process this grief collectively. I just blows my mind.

[Wesley Morris]

The money gonna do what it wants to.

[Jay Wortham]

Yeah. By the way, Wesley, we've only gotten into the first five minutes of this movie, and it's a three hour long movie. Do you remember at one point I turned to you and said, what day is it? How long have we been in here? You did say that A lot happens in this movie. And we already talked about the first Black Panther on an episode which we'll link to in the show notes. If you want to go back and hear our thoughts about the first Black Panther, it's all in there, too.

[Wesley Morris]

I mean, the stakes in the first movie were really about establishing Wakanda as an entity on the global stage. And it has taken its place as a steward of goodness, morality, righteousness, decency, humanitarianism. And the tension in that film came down to, very interestingly, this idea of global humanitarianism versus nationalism, essentially. What would it look like if we were just like, no, we should be protecting ourself. Right.

[Jay Wortham]

Talk about questions of responsibility.

[Wesley Morris]

Right, right, right, right.

[Jay Wortham]

Truly.

[Wesley Morris]

And this time that tension exists in a really interesting way, I would say. My people call me Baku Kun Khan, but my enemies call me Namor, because there is now this new character who in the Marvel universe was called Sub Mariner. His name was Namor. Here it is Namor. And he is essentially the t' challa of this place deep down underwater called Talokan. And Namor is essentially amphibious. He can live underwater. He can live way up high in the air because he's got these wings on his ankles. And Talokan is essentially this region deep underwater that is made up of Mayan and Aztec cultural ideas, and civilizationally would be Mesoamerican, which is that stretch of land that we essentially call Central America that runs from Southern Mexico down to Costa Rica. And my favorite passage in the movie is this you know, I don't know how long it lasts, but there's an extended sequence where we are underwater learning about Talokan, and Namor is essentially our guide.

[Jay Wortham]

And you get to see all this technology, you get to see this entire civilization. There's a whole temple, there's this huge stadium, there are these games the kids are playing. And in that moment, you know, Shuri's a stand in for us too, because she's got this look of wonder and delight and awe.

[Wesley Morris]

And it was my look of wonder, delight and awe.

[Jay Wortham]

Like, yes, we both wanted more. We both wanted more. Like, an hour of the film could have just been set in Talokan.

[Wesley Morris]

And part of the story that he tells Shuri involves a flashback to 1571, when we learn that his people were essentially colonized by the Spanish. And some of these people wind up being drawn into the water. And a civilization is essentially built away from the colonizers. And that's what Talokan is, and that's how it's flourishing. And to basically set up that we're talking about two kingdoms formed in reaction against and in preemption of the colonialist urge.

[Jay Wortham]

That's right. That's right. And I find it really interesting that a lot of the offline chatter of this film has revolved around how to accurately talk about the Talokan, the culture, the lineage, the people, the geographic significance. And it requires an education, right? Yeah, it does. Be respectful. It requires an education. And so that means understanding the difference between Aztec and Maya culture to understand what Mesoamerica means and why we went from Mesoamerica to a smattering of a bunch of different countries. And it also links the legacies of plantation culture. Right. It links the afterlives of these plantations and helps us understand that we in the audience have a lot more in common with Namor. And Namor is vengeance than the Wakandans.

[Wesley Morris]

Than the Wakandans. Yep. And in Talokan, there is vibranium, that rare, precious, glowing metal that Wakandans use to make things like Black Panther's suit and his weapons and, you know, all of Shuri's technology, Vibranium. And, you know, someone has invented a machine that can find King Namor's and the Talokans. Vibranium. The American military now has discovered it's there, and they're going to mine down to the bottom of the ocean to get it. My mother told stories about a place like this, a protected land with people.

[Jay Wortham]

That never have to leave.

[Wesley Morris]

Namor pops up in this Wakandan lake and says to Queen Ramunda, listen, you'll need to find the scientist who built this machine so I can kill them. And Queen Ramunda's like, this is not part of my mandate.

[Jay Wortham]

That's right.

[Wesley Morris]

I don't want to do this. And he's like, listen, I'mma bring a hurt on y' all that you can't even imagine. My ancestors would often say, without the.

[Jay Wortham]

Black Panther.

[Wesley Morris]

Wakanda would fall. But I think the Wakandans and the Talokan are essentially aligned. The tension here is a matter of strategy. The Wakandans are about protecting through diplomacy, negotiation. And Namor will go to war to protect Talokan from being discovered by anybody. I just feel like the thing about these two civilizations is they are very much in conversation with each other, right? Not just about how to protect themselves from exploitation, but also how to survive. These people are connected. When Okoye finds out that Talokan exists and that there is vibranium in Talokan, she says something that really fascinated me, which was everything that we know about who we are as Wakandans, this changes everything. This changes everything. Definitely. The idea that they are special and unique and alone in this fight for.

[Jay Wortham]

This paradigm, this predicament, this situation.

[Wesley Morris]

Yes. That there's another civilization that is also, like, having this plight, but in a different way. I don't know. It just really touched me. Like, we're going to have to relearn how we think of ourselves in relation to these other people and not as adversaries, as allies. I mean, conventionally, Namor would be the villain, right? But he's. What he's asking for is an extreme version of a reasonable thing. He wants protection from invasion.

[Jay Wortham]

No, he's not the villain. The people who are willing to destroy civilizations to mine minerals, they are the villain. And the movie lets you know constantly who they are. They don't have names. They just get called colonizer. Don't scare me like that. Colonizer.

[Wesley Morris]

Col. What? My name is Everett.

[Narrator/Advertiser]

Yes, I know.

[Jay Wortham]

Everett Ross. The joke from the first movie still works in the second one.

[Wesley Morris]

And so Shuri and Okoye have to leave Wakanda and go to MIT and get this scientist. And I will confess something and just say that I have been programmed by American movies to expect only one kind of person to be this scientist when they get to mit.

[Jay Wortham]

Mm.

[Wesley Morris]

Some nerdy white guy.

[Jay Wortham]

Totally.

[Wesley Morris]

But instead, we get some stressed out black girl.

[Narrator/Advertiser]

I'm warning you, do not take another step toward me.

[Wesley Morris]

Who is Played by Dominique Thorne. Her name is Riri Williams.

[Jay Wortham]

You need to be conscious of the way that you look walking around here.

[Narrator/Advertiser]

The time, all that ash on your head.

[Wesley Morris]

And there's a really moving thing that happens. Riri Williams is explaining her situation, and she says to be young, gifted and black, right? And then she corrects herself and says, oh, wait, you probably don't say that in Wakanda, do you? And it just was like, oh, yeah. These movies, in addition to being about colonialism.

[Jay Wortham]

Mm.

[Wesley Morris]

It's also about living in a world where racism doesn't exist, AKA parts of Africa, Right. Where, like, you just experience your blackness as being your. The greatness of your blackness. Right.

[Jay Wortham]

What's remarkable about Riri noting that Wakandans wouldn't resonate with the idea of young, gifted and black isn't that they wouldn't know who Nina Simone is. It's that the engine of that song, right? Which is an anthem to lift you up and to remember, like, you are young, gifted and black, regardless of what the world is telling you, hold yourself close. You are so precious. In Wakanda, they're like, that's a Tuesday. And so riri is also recognizing that in this encounter with them, the movie is also very invested in showing that black genius looks like Riri from the south side of Chicago. And this is someone who is outpacing her professors at mit, who has managed to cobble together an Iron man suit replica, who has built something that the government wants and is willing to pay a lot of money for writing papers.

[Wesley Morris]

For her fellow students.

[Jay Wortham]

Right? And also knowing that this character is going to emerge at some point in the Marvel universe as part of Phase five. She's the next Iron man, basically, right? She's Ironheart. She's gonna have her own series next year. But seeing this character emerge that fully formed and being at the top of your class, you can look like someone who's in three. And it's less of a reminder, I would say, for maybe white people that are watching it, but just kind of an affirmation for us that we actually don't have to change ourselves to enter into these spaces, that we can still show up as ourselves. And that's enough.

[Wesley Morris]

I mean, the folks that made this movie have taken on this responsibility to complicate this idea of representation, whatever we mean by that tired, empty concept of representation. And I think the movie knows it's responsible for representing all the things that Wakanda is. And I also think. And now it's also taken on this responsibility of creating Talokan and then bringing that world to life in a way that feels vibrant and true and intriguing. And in the same way that the funeral passages in this movie are remarkable, I think this sense of serious, solemn responsibility that is also gratifying to see coming from a company like Disney. So I think we should take a break, and when we come back, let's talk about what Marvel is also responsible for.

[Jay Wortham]

Let's do it.

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[Wesley Morris]

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[Jay Wortham]

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[Jay Wortham]

The New York Times.

[Wesley Morris]

It's your world to understand. Find out [e-mail] yourworld this is the part of this conversation where I tell you I didn't like the first Black Panther that much.

[Jay Wortham]

I mean, okay, let's get into it.

[Wesley Morris]

I just didn't, you know, it was fine. It was fine. A lot of work went into it. I understood why it was important. I love the idea that Ryan Coogler, who at that time was making his third movie, was being given a lot of money and a lot of trust to basically try some stuff out. You know, how black could he make a superhero movie? How culturally rich could he make a superhero movie in a way that corresponds to reality? You know, he seemed to take very seriously Marvel's old mantle of what its mission was. The sort of guiding principle of the company was the world outside your window. The idea that Disney has acquired Marvel and they're now like, oh, yeah, well, we could actually do a world outside your window. And what does that look like? Well, it looks like browner people. It looks like more stories that actually from the standpoint of just texture and I mean, clothing texture Hair texture, complexions. Those things are really interesting to me as an attempt to make a giant blockbuster product that has some correspondence with other people who go to the movies. But I gotta say, for as much as I loved being underwater with the Talokanil.

[Jay Wortham]

Yeah.

[Wesley Morris]

Learning about these wonderful people and seeing this, they want to welcome Shuri in a way. They give her the greeting, the open hand greeting, which is the equivalent of the crossed arms in Wakanda. And I don't know about you, but this whole movie comes down to this battle between these two civilizations. Basically Wakanda versus the Talokanil, which is essentially like watching Africans fight Central Americans. That does not feel good.

[Jay Wortham]

It is the worst part of the movie. And I don't know what your group chats are like, but we are not alone in feeling this. It is deeply uncomfortable to watch these groups fight. And not only fight, but watch the Wakandans lose almost every time. Like to come into awareness of how vulnerable they are and precarious they are. I mean, for a movie that's so invested in not overplaying Black Death, it definitely does not have a problem with showing black frailty. And I just. I mean, I almost didn't want to watch. And part of the reason I haven't been back to see it again is because I. I don't want to sit through that again. The second Easter egg of the movie at the very, very, very end of the credits. And this is not a spoiler, okay? Just FYI, people, it just says at the very end, black Panther will return. Right. In case you were worried there wasn't going to be more movies, Disney's like, we got you. We got y'. All. You know, there are more movies coming. And it raises this complicated question. I mean, how do we feel about that? I mean, the colonizing totality is so potent. The colonizer mindset is so all encompassing. So where does that leave us in terms of thinking about the entities of these. I'mma just call them content creators.

[Wesley Morris]

I mean, what you really saying is that we are dealing with a sort of separate colonization.

[Jay Wortham]

Right? Right.

[Wesley Morris]

Disney is a colonizing force. Right. Truly, Disney has spent the last 30 years essentially being this colonizing force. I mean, you're right. Going back to just when they bought Miramax. Right?

[Jay Wortham]

Yeah.

[Wesley Morris]

They bought independent. They bought the, like the fountainhead of American independent movie making. They bought Marvel, they bought Pixar. They are now responsible for Star Wars.

[Jay Wortham]

Yes.

[Wesley Morris]

And the Muppets.

[Jay Wortham]

The Muppets.

[Wesley Morris]

I mean, and just thinking about the role it has played in my family's life, the role that it continues to play in my family's life. You know, when my mother was my 9 year old niece's age, Disney was the center of her world. And that is more true than it ever was.

[Jay Wortham]

Wow.

[Wesley Morris]

Because now Disney has way more arms to wrap around you. And I guess the question though is if we are in an inexorable place where this company is essentially the center of our entertainment universe, of our screen entertainment universe.

[Jay Wortham]

Mm.

[Wesley Morris]

What then is it responsible for doing and who is it responsible for speaking to and representing?

[Jay Wortham]

I mean, we're just way beyond Captain Civil War, right? Those movies, which, no dings against them, enjoy them thoroughly. But they're so far in the rearview mirror at this point. Like we're looking at a show like Ms. Marvel, which is taking on, introducing millions of people to Muslim life, talking about the partition, talking about mass migration and the impact on Pakistani families. I mean, you have something like Ironheart, right? Riri Williams show coming in 2023, taking place in the south side of Chicago. No idea what that's going to hold. These narratives are getting a lot more culture specific and the stakes are getting higher.

[Wesley Morris]

I think that what's happening now is some attempt to like Windex the window that Marvel wanted to open onto the world. Right. And so I think if they know that they have a built in audience and they know that millions of people, millions upon millions of people are going to go watch these movies no matter what they do, why not just take some risks, some real risks? Because, you know, in the old days, the Wakandans, the Talokanil, they would have been savages in a Disney movie, but here they're the heroes. And that is this company taking responsibility not only for what it's like to be a moral leader in the 21st century, but to atone for its sins in the 20th. The things that started this company out were based on ideas of minstrelsy, ideas of xenophobia and blatant racism. So there's a lot of complexity in the, in the legacy of this company and it essentially is acquiring these new properties because it's not Disney proper that is making these changes. It's Marvel that's responsible for making these changes. It's Pixar that's responsible for making these changes. It's just happening under the Disney umbrella, Right? So you go to Disney and you see this, this menu of whatever we mean by when we call diversity, diversity, but it's Disney buying that responsibility.

[Jay Wortham]

In many, many ways. I agree with you and it is really encouraging to see Disney try to culturally atone for past sins. Yeah. And mistakes. And at the same time, I mean, you more than anyone has really helped me understand and see just how much we lose when everything gets consumed and everything gets sucked up into Disney, into the Marvel universe. I mean, who knows what movies and plays and TV shows and creations Dominique Thorne could have been in.

[Wesley Morris]

This was what I was gonna say.

[Jay Wortham]

But instead, she's playing Riri Williams, and I can't wait. But there's still a question of what she could have been doing.

[Wesley Morris]

All the risk is being taken out. Right. And it makes a movie like this, like Wakanda Forever, seem risky when really they could do anything and it would still make a half a billion dollars in three weekends. Right. And yet at the same time, to think about where we started, which was mourning the death of Chadwick Boseman, I can't think of any other company that would have had the audacity to expend at that level, that kind of lament for one person who became a star because of these movies and wound up meaning so much more to so many people than he ever would have met playing just James Brown or Jackie Robinson, as Chadwick Boseman did before he was t'. Challa. And so in that respect, I mean, I am glad these movies got made.

[Jay Wortham]

That is.

[Wesley Morris]

Our show Still Processing is produced by Alyssa Dudley with Christina Josa and Hans Buto were edited by Sarah Saracen and Sasha Weiss.

[Jay Wortham]

The show is mixed by Marian Lozano and recorded by Maddie Masiello Digital Productions by Mahima Chablani. Our photo editor this week is Amanda Bo.

[Wesley Morris]

And our theme music's By Kindness. It's called World Restart from the album Otherness.

[Jay Wortham]

And good news, we will be back.

[Wesley Morris]

Next week just like Black Panther.