French troops are seen looting the fictional African kingdom of Wakanda in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. Photo / Marvel
French troops are seen looting the fictional African kingdom of Wakanda in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. Photo / Marvel
Its military is made up of spear-wielding superheroes who can fly through the air in invisible aircraft.
But that has not stopped France’s Defence Minister from picking a fight with the fictional African kingdom of Wakanda and its creator, the Hollywood movie giant Marvel.
Sebastien Lecornu, France’s youngest Cabinet minister at just 36, has hit out at the representation of his nation’s soldiers as rapacious looters in the latest instalment of the Black Panther franchise.
“I strongly condemn this false and deceptive representation of our armed forces,” Lecornu wrote on Twitter, more than three months after the film’s theatrical release.
In the second instalment of the Marvel franchise, French soldiers appear at the United Nations after they were captured trying to steal vibranium from Wakanda. With their hands bound, they are ordered to kneel in front of the Queen of the nation, Ramonda, who calls out the visibly humiliated French representative in a powerful speech.
Lecornu’s intervention came in response to a series of posts on Twitter by Jean Bexon, a French journalist who has written regularly about what he calls the “anti-French” sentiment of the film and its director Ryan Coogler.
Calling the storyline “propaganda”, Bexon points out that the soldiers in the film are dressed identically to the real-life French soldiers who served in the anti-insurgent Operation Barkhane, which fought jihadist groups in the Sahel region and withdrew from Mali last year.
“The Marvel/Disney production took care to equip the ‘French-speaking paratrooper mercenaries’ with outfits worn by our soldiers in Mali. Those who play the role of the bad guys are thus dressed like our soldiers from the Serval/Barkhane operations,” Bexon wrote in a Twitter post.
Parts of the film are also set in Ansongo, Mali where armed forces intervened.
“France is clearly designated as a nation wanting to monopolise Wakandan resources in the outpost located in Ansongo, in the Gao region of Mali,” Bexon said.
Minister has not seen the film
French Defence Minister Sebastien Lecornu. Photo / AP
“There can be no revisionism about France’s recent action in Mali: We intervened at the request of the country to fight against armed terrorist groups,” a member of Lecornu’s team told the Huffington Post.
The minister had not seen the film, they added, but was moved by “personal” anger.
“It is the minister’s role to defend the results of operations Serval and Barkhane since one of the only countries mentioned by name and criticised in the film is France, with a uniform clearly resembling ours,” the insider said.
Emilie Guitard, an anthropologist at the national centre for scientific research, wrote in The Conservation of the film’s “virulence” in its charges against France.
She said it could be seen in the clip that attracted Lecornu’s ire but also in several “winks to the history of the struggles against slavery in French colonies and for independence in French-speaking Africa”.
Lecornu, who was named France’s new Defence Minister last May, agreed with Bexon’s assessment of the film as a “serious informational attack” that discredits France’s military presence in the region.
“I think of and pay tribute to the 58 French soldiers who died defending Mali at its request against Islamist terrorist groups,” Lecornu said.
The politician defected from the Right-wing Republican party to join Emmanuel Macron in 2017.
Public opinion in the Sahel region towards France’s military presence in African countries and former colonies has soured dramatically in recent years.
Growing conflict with Mali’s ruling military junta, and the country’s decision to bring in Russian mercenaries from the Wagner Group, led France to announce that they would withdraw troops last February.
Following their exit from Mali, anti-French protests erupted in neighbouring Burkina Faso and the junta demanded that France withdraw troops from their country also by the end of the month. About 400 special forces have been based in the former French colony.
Online, cartoons spread by pro-Russian accounts and influencers have shown France sending skeletons and a giant snake to “conquer all of Africa”, in videos analysed this month by AFP Fact Check.
Armed white men in Wagner combat fatigues are seen coming to the rescue of soldiers carrying the flags of Mali, Burkina Faso and Ivory Coast.
“We face a steamroller that plays with the perceptions of local people who are in existential difficulty,” a French military source acknowledged this month.
Russia’s growing influence in the region has also led to a divided response from African leaders towards Moscow’s war in Ukraine.
Of the 34 countries that abstained from voting on a draft UN resolution condemning Russia’s aggression and demanding the full withdrawal of troops from Ukraine last year, several were from African nations. They included South Africa, Mali, Mozambique, the Central African Republic, Angola, Algeria, Burundi, Madagascar, Namibia, Senegal, South Sudan, Sudan, Uganda, Tanzania and Zimbabwe.
Marvel has not yet responded to the French minister’s remarks.
