We have tickets for Tuesday night.
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Don’t worry, I’ll wait. Want the community to see it and then we’ll tear it apart.
You love the propaganda? Or, you love that the film stuffed in two throughlines of propaganda?
Not sure I could ever get into propaganda. Not sure I’d want to either. Nothing like a great story for the sake of the story. Indeed, been watching older films lately for that reason 
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I love the skill of their hiding. It’s seeing the extra layers of the message. It’s like a piece of flat bread left too long in the fridge. You try to peel one off and the other is stuck to it, so much so that you might mistake them for one piece because you’re hungry.
Propaganda as it is generally connoted is a bit different from what we mean in Dramatica (and what it originally meant in the field of brainwashing and persuasion technique).
The popular definition of propaganda is an argument that bashes you over the head with one side of it.
The real definition is an argument that deliberately leaves out a piece of the puzzle so that the audience is persuaded to complete it themselves. That’s all. It’s like gestalt: look at an almost finished line-circle and your brain imagines it completed.
So in Dramatica, propaganda is the technique of leaving out part of the storyform so that the audience inserts their own meaning into that gap. It makes them complicit in the argument.
No idea how this applies to Black Panther – haven’t seen it. But those are the general basics.
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For the sake of clarity, I include The Theory Book’s p.253 definition:
Propaganda, n. 1. any organization or movement working for the propagation of particular ideas, doctrines, practices, etc. 2. the ideas, doctrines, practices, etc. spread in this way. (Webster’s New Twentieth Century Dictionary)
Propaganda: 3. a storyforming/storytelling technique used to impact an audience in specific ways, often employed to instigate deliberation and/or action. (Dramatica)
It’s pretty much the same thing. For Dramatica, the story becomes the vehicle through which a message is being sent.
The manner in which an author propagandises a story would be of the kind described above - which is to deliberately leave out a pattern or patterns in order to force the audience to fill in the blanks.
The reason the missing patterns need to be hidden is so that the audience doesn’t suss it out. The missing patterns can be made to be quite obvious, but then the audience has a choice in whether to accept the message or not. (Choice, oh no! Can’t have that! Lol!)
Of course, this brings us to authors who are not Dramatica experts.
When new authors write, they will likely leave out some pieces or patterns, unwittingly. Is this also propaganda?
Dramatica is based on the model of the “human” mind trying to solve an inequity. A lot of good writers have the gift. What Dramatica does is to show you how that mind was working. What processes were happening in their mind even though the writer wasn’t consciously aware of it. Seasoned writers probably are, but their illustrations are often “felt”. They just feel that it works. Dramatica strips the muse naked in a way. Lol. No more teasing, no more holistic seduction( giving you just enough to keep you hooked and controlled). It’s just…bare.
Saw it yesterday. Highly recommended for those on the fence about it! It’s much more small-scale and intimate than other Marvel movies (mostly, anyway – I have a bit of an issue toward the end, but that involves spoilers).
Definitely didn’t think it was propaganda in the Dramatica sense. I’ll hold my thoughts until more have seen it, but there were many moments where I sat there thinking “Oh, that’s clearly the OS Symptom. Everyone keeps citing that as the problem.” or something similar. It never felt like I was filling in gaps. It actually felt mostly clear to me where everything sat (the IC is the only thing that I’m torn on).
Anyway, I’ll wait until more people have seen it. But yes, very good.
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I finally saw this today. I definitely enjoyed it, though I think my expectations were a little too high as I didn’t totally love it. (I often have trouble with suspending disbelief in the bigger-scale superhero movies, whereas smaller things like Daredevil TV series on Netflix work much better for me.)
Like @jhay I thought the OS Issue and problem quad were really clear throughout, as is the OS Concern and I think the Goal too. (The Goal seems to require careful phrasing, but we can discuss that.)
The IC and RS throughlines seemed a bit lacking though. Would be interested in others’ take on these.
Are folks still interested in analysing this?
P.S. Sorry I took so long … the two older kids loved it but it wasn’t appropriate for my 7-year-old so it was hard to find the right time!
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I did an anlysis of this at one point. So, I can share mine when everyone is ready. Are we ready yet?
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I say just go for it. It’s been out so long it’s now one of the highest-grossing movies of all time. I’ll let someone that’s seen it more recently start us off because I have to find my notes out.
Let’s do this, people!
Starting with Domains:
MC: Universe
OS: Physics.
RS: Psychology
IC: Mind
Wait, wait. We haven’t identified the throughlines yet. Who is MC/IC etc?
These are my thoughts, but the IC/RS is very ropey for me (I agree with @mlucas, I don’t think there’s a lot there):
OS: Protecting Wakanda from Outside Forces
MC: T’Challa
IC: Killmonger (maybe a bit of Nakia near the beginning)
RS: Cousins/Rivals
I really struggled to identify the IC because the characters were so heavily engaged in the OS that I struggled to find anything that wasn’t tied to that. I also don’t really like when villains are the IC, but I think Killmonger and Nakia share a unique perspective of “We need to open our doors to the world” that is a constant challenge to T’Challa. The only difference is that while Nakia has good intentions, Killmonger’s are… distinctly not. So they impact him in two very different ways.
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I agree on Killmonger for part of the IC throughline.
I didn’t notice Nakia sharing that “We need to open our doors to the world” perspective, though I might have just missed it? W’Kabi (the friend who ended up supporting Killmonger) definitely espoused that idea, though he seemed mostly an OS character.
The other possibility for sharing IC throughline is T’Challa’s (dead) father, King T’Chaka. At face value it seems he had the exact opposite perspective from Killmonger, but he did impact T’Challa, and in Dramatica sometimes exact opposite is the same thing. Like, maybe the IC perspective is about protecting your own kind no matter what it takes, something like that. You could sort of see Killmonger and King T’Chaka both espousing that.
There was also a definite relationship between T’Challa and his father T’Chaka, which was developed to a point (the last ancestral spirit world visit), and then after that the relationship between cousins seemed to take over.
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I agree with T’Challa for MC
IC : Nakia / Killmonger ( There is a handoff between these two ). Notice they never talked to him at the same time, yet both of them represented an alternate perspective on Wakanda embracing the world. Nakia’s influence is more subtle/lingering. Also notice it was Killmonger and T’Challa that had that “you and I are alike” moment.
OS: Preserving the way of life as it’s always been ( Concern of Doing )
RS: Being who’s best suited to rule Wakanda ( Concern of Being )
My thoughts.
On second thought, I think the IC is just Killmonger.
Nakia’s argument is still in the OS domain.
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But how was Killmonger’s perspective influencing him during the first half of the film?
It’s mostly at the beginning before Killmonger turns up. I think there’s a scene where T’Challa asks her to stick around in Wakanda, and she doesn’t want to, but suggests that they open up and she can use their tech to help fix problems around the world? I think. After Killmonger comes in, he takes over that throughline for pretty much the rest of the movie.
I think it’s hard to define what is IC and what is OS, because I’m VERY confident in what the Symptom/Response is and it can easily be conflated if worded incorrectly. I think that’s where W’Kabi comes into it, but I’ll explain my thoughts on that later.
Hm. You could be right, but the T’Chaka stuff feels more like the MC thoughline to me. Everything about T’Challa trying to live up to his father’s legacy and finding that it’s “hard for a good man to be king”. That stuff felt really personal to him. I could be convinced, though. I can’t remember a lot about what T’Chaka said outside of that one line.
Nakia’s out there in the world trying to help those who live outside of Wakanda’s protection. When T’Challa asks her to stay, she says she can’t – she has to do something for those suffering outside Wakanda.
Killmonger has the same view (though with a less sympathetic approach). He’s seen the suffering of African people throughout the world and wants to give them the power to fight against their oppressors.
I think you’d have a tough time making the case that the RS – the “heart of the story” – is between those two. There’s just not enough there – T’Chaka’s mostly in the background.
On the other hand, you can certainly find enough touchpoints: T’Chaka’s voice is right there at the beginning, telling T’Challa about Wakanda and showing what it means to be king. He appears in each act in one form or another, always seemingly guiding T’Challa. It’s not so much a father/son relationship as a mentor/mentee relationship, though both fall apart when T’Challa learns of his father’s mistakes.
So I guess it could go either way, though if the IC is T’Chaka, then I think the RS is kind of weak overall in terms of effectiveness.
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