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Mario Van Peebles’s Panther and Popular Memories of the Black Mario Van Peebles’s Panther and Popular Memories of the Black

Panther Party Panther Party

Kristen Hoerl

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Mario Van Peebles’ Panther

Running head: Mario Van Peebles’s Panther

Mario Van Peebles’ Panther

but ultimately doomed social movement for racial and economic justice during the late 1960s.

Panther’s narrative indicted the white-operated police for perpetuating violence against African-

Americans and for undermining movements for black empowerment. As such, this film

represented a rare source of filmic counter-memory that challenged hegemonic memories of U.S.

race relations. Newspaper reports and reviews of Panther, however, questioned this film’s

veracity as a source of historical information. An analysis of these reviews and reports indicates

the challenges counter-memories confront in popular culture.

Mario Van Peebles’ Panther

The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense emerged in 1966 as a response to ongoing

brutality against blacks that took place in the wake of the civil rights movement. Party members

references to the Panthers in popular culture, including a small scene in the1994 film Forrest

Gump (Berlant, 1997) and news coverage of Huey Newton’s death (Lule, 1993), framed the

Panthers as violent and abusive.

Recognizing the dearth of public knowledge about the Black

Panther Party for Self-Defense (BPP), film director Mario Van Peebles made the 1995 movie

Panther. Van Peebles explained that he wanted the film to inspire, empower, and instruct the

current generation of young blacks living in urban ghettos. He told reporters that “kids today

knew the negative stuff” about the Panthers and “thought Huey Newton was a cookie" (Schaefer,

1995, p. O17). He added, “Few people know how they empowered their neighborhood”

(Graham, 1995, p. 3NC). Van Peebles directed Panther in order to tell a story about the Black

Mario Van Peebles’ Panther

also foregrounds the ways that filmmakers have constructed films for instrumental political

purposes. Panther met a surge of negative attention that questioned the veracity of its portrayals.

An analysis of both Van Peebles’s film and its news reviews sheds light on the possibilities and

characters to depict racism in the United States. Madison (1999) persuasively argues that

Hollywood films about civil rights struggles predominantly forefront white characters and

background black characters. Lee’s film Malcolm X (1992) is the only other Hollywood

entertainment film about historic black struggles with African-Americans in leading roles.

According to Van Peebles, Hollywood studio executives told him, “No matter what the story is,

it doesn't matter to mainstream America without a white star” (Schaefer, 1995, p. O017). Mario

Van Peebles directed and produced Panther based on a novel loosely based on BPP history

written by Mario’s father, Melvin Van Peebles. To maintain control over the film, Van Peebles

kept the film’s budget under $10 million and received support from British film company

Working Title, Gramercy Pictures, and from Robert De Niro's Tribeca company (Turner, 1995,

p. 11). Van Peebles explained why he wasn’t willing to compromise the film’s message to

Mario Van Peebles’ Panther

Hollywood’s penchant for creating movies amenable to the interests of white and affluent

audiences who make films profitable.

The film showed in theatres for a few weeks and earned

approximately $7 million at the box office, even less than the film’s small budget; it received

texts, popular memory, and political hegemony. Popular media create figurative spaces for

different groups to negotiate the meaning and value of past events. As Biesecker (2002) notes,

“well received reconstructions of the past function rhetorically as civics lessons” (p 394).

Scholars often refer to the representations of the past with social and rhetorical significance as

“public” or “collective” memories.

challenging corporate life and capitalist ideals are unlikely to receive widespread distribution or

support from the media industry. In order to avoid the implication that commercially mediated

representations of the past comprise the memories of publics, I refer to well-received depictions

of the past in commercial media as popular memories, as memories that are popularized by

Commercial media are preeminent sources of popular memory because they are widely

Mario Van Peebles’ Panther

reconstructions of the past with social significance. Although texts in popular culture provide

resources for understanding the past, not all reconstructions of the past are sources of popular

memory. Mainstream media texts become sources of popular memory though their widespread

the murders of civil rights activists James Chaney, Andrew Schwerner, and Michael Goodwin as

“the Mississippi Burning trial.” Accentuating the comparison between the film and the murders

of Chaney, Schwerner and Goodwin, these reports used footage from the movie in news reports

of Killen’s conviction (Cooper et al., 2005; Gibson, 2005; McLaughlin, 2005; and Sawyer,

2005).

Popular memory texts such as Mississippi Burning are significant not only because they

ascribe meaning to the past for audiences, but also because they are usable in the present.

“Societies . . . reconstruct their pasts with the needs of contemporary culture clearly in mind 

manipulating the past in order to mold the present” (Kammen, 1991, p. 3). Films representing

racist power structures. Madison (1999) argues that recent films about race including Mississippi

Burning, The Long Walk Home, and Cry Freedom reasserted the subordination of blacks by

relegating them to the background of stories about their own struggles. Brinson (1995) asserts

Mario Van Peebles’ Panther

that the 1988 film Mississippi Burning communicated the myth of white superiority to resolve

cultural tensions about the authority of the white power structure in the late 1980s. Winn (2001)

credits Spike Lee’s (1992) Malcolm X as the first film to give a voice to African-Americans in

life, several scholars have suggested that popular memories might also be constructed to

challenge prevailing hegemony. Cox (1990) theorizes memories of the past as resources for the

“invention” of discourses critical of dominant culture (p. 1). Cox cites Marcuse, who believed

that the practice of remembering could reveal ideological distortions embedded within dominant

narratives and serve as a force for social change. Lipsitz (1990) argues that hidden histories

excluded from dominant narratives constitute “counter-memories” that “force revision of

existing histories” (p. 213). For Lipsitz, counter-memories exist in popular novels that “address

tensions between grand historical narratives and lived experience” (p. 215). These cultural forms

“create conditions of possibility; they expand the present by informing it with memories of the

justice of dominant social institutions. By developing new attitudes and ideas about the social

order, counter-memories may also evoke insights and solutions to contemporary social struggles.

Mario Van Peebles’ Panther

Thus, such counter-memories may promulgate and solidify support necessary for movements to

create social change (Bowers, Ochs, & Jensen, 1993).

While Lipsitz echoes Marcuse’s enthusiasm for the emancipatory potential of memory,

that order. Thus, commercial media, a predominant site for memory, provide spaces for memory

and counter-memory and make available their competing claims about the past (Bodnar, 1992;

Sturken, 1997). Few studies have either interpreted films as sources of counter-memory or

explained how counter-memories in commercial media may be suppressed and contained. I

argue that Panther represented a rare source of counter-memory in popular culture. However, my

analysis of mainstream media reviews and reports of the film demonstrates that the popular press

deflected the film’s challenge to dominant hegemony.

The Textual Construction of the Panthers in Popular Media

I interpret Panther as a source of counter-memory by explaining how events it depicted

in the seven months surrounding its release (from March 1995 through October 1995). Nine

newspaper articles and twenty newspaper reviews appeared in U.S. newspapers with widespread

circulation. Transcripts from the two national broadcast journalism sources, the CBS network

Mario Van Peebles’ Panther

violence against blacks, providing a link between the BPP’s motives for collective organizing

and current problems facing contemporary black communities. By associating more

contemporary social problems with the history of BPP repression, Panther suggested that current

impact their lives. By depicting both real and imaginary events, this film represented an

oppositional consciousness rarely represented in mainstream media. Mainstream media reviews

did not embrace this consciousness though; instead, they questioned the film’s reliability as a

source of information about the Panthers.

Patterns of Reasoning in Reviews of Panther

Reports and reviews predominantly described the film as an untrue fiction. Frequently,

reporters covering the film’s release quoted ex-Panther Bobby Seale and David Horowitz, leader

of the conservative Center for the Study of Popular Culture, as the film’s most ardent critics.

Now known as the David Horowitz Freedom Center, the Center for Popular Culture was

Variety and Hollywood Reporter that castigated the movie for misrepresenting the BPP (Fine,

1995a, p. 1D; Sherman, 1995, p. 011). Reports of Horowitz’ and Seale’s complaints against the

film appeared during the second week of May, when Van Peebles responded to criticism. In

Mario Van Peebles’ Panther

these reports, Horowitz condemned the film as a “two-hour lie” (Carroll, 1995, p. 31; Charles,

1995, p. 29; Graham, 1995, p. 63; Leiieby, 1995, p. G1; Sherman, 1995, p. O11; Turner, 1995, p.

11; Vincent, 1995, p. E1); Seale denounced the film as “poetic lies” (“Black Panthers,” 1995, p.

noted Seale’s commentary that the Panthers were “part of a young black intelligentsia” that had

“studied the whole history of African-Americans” (“Black Panthers,” 1995, p. O17). Other

reports quoted Horowitz’ public statement that the film would “incite inner-city blacks” by

portraying “the Panthers as idealists and all the police as Nazis” (Carroll, 1995, p. 31; Charles,

1995, p. 11; Vincent, 1995, p. E1).

Both Mario and Melvin Van Peebles defended their choices by asserting that that the film

was not meant to be a documentary, but had a factual basis nonetheless (Fine, 1995a, p. D1;

Kim, 1995, p. NC3). Mario Van Peebles told USA Today that the film accurately depicted the

Panther’s main political message, “all power to the people” (Fine, 1995a, p. D1). Van Peebles

cited former Panther Earl Anthony’s memoir, Spitting into the Wind, to explain why he thought

the film’s depiction of the FBI’s collusion with the Mafia was realistic: “[Anthony] says he had

Mario Van Peebles’ Panther

the Black Panthers for themselves” (Fine, 1995a, p. D1). He added, “I didn't want to make a

three- or four-hour movie where, when you came out, you felt you deserved three college credits,

where the kids were wearing the hat but not getting the message,” (Fine 1995a, p. D1). For the

dismissed the film’s basis in BPP history using similar patterns of reasoning. Interlocking

themes appeared across different articles and reviews of Panther. Five themes stood out among

reviews condemning the film: Panther as biased, Panther as unreal, fiction as separate from

history, and Panther as “agitprop.” A competing theme, Panther as art, stood out among

reviews that defended the film. Below, I describe how these interlocking themes served as the

foundation for judging Panther’s credibility as a source of popular memory.

Condemning Panther as Biased

Criteria of balance and accuracy appeared frequently in reviews of Panther. When the

film was released to theaters on May 3, 1995, a wave of negative reviews appeared in

newspapers across the country. Several of these critics denounced Panther for characterizing the

Panthers as heroes and the FBI as villains. Persall (1995) wrote that the film’s characterizations

Mario Van Peebles’ Panther

film presented a “simplistic” (Denerstein, 1995, p. 11D, Ebert, 1995, p. 45), “burlesque”

(Murray, 1995, p. B7), and “one-note” (Maslin, 1995, p. C18) approach to understanding history.

These reviews echoed reporters covering the film’s release who described the film’s portrayal of

“one dimensional” (Fine, 1995b, p. 1D).

(Carroll, 1995, p. 31), “wildly irresponsible” (Charles, 1995, p. 31), “wild speculation” (Ross,

1995, p. 16), “deeply paranoid” (Barnes, 1995, p.3E), and “crazily narrow” (James, 1995, p. 2.1).

Only the Houston Chronicle suggested that the plot was “not so farfetched” (Jones, 1995, p.

YO5). Several reviews that described the film as biased also concluded that the entire film was

“outrageous” (Persall, 1995, p. 7), “invalid” (Millar, 1995, p. 12), and “untrustworthy” (Maslin,

1995, p. C18). USA Today (Fine, 1995b) concluded, “White villains are so one-dimensional and

revolutionaries so pure that none of it seems believable” (p. 1D). These latter reviews suggested

that the film’s partial depiction of the struggle between the BPP and the FBI discredited the film

entirely.

Distinguishing Fiction and History

A presumed distinction between fiction and history was central to many reviewers’

Mario Van Peebles’ Panther

(1995) warned readers that Panther’s “oversimplified, fiction-drenched account” was “definitely

a conspiracy theory than in presenting history” (p. 3E). Howe (1995) described Panther as a

warping history lesson” (p. C18). Denerstein (1995) wrote that Van Peebles’ “choice” of a

fictional character as the film’s major protagonist was a “major problem” (p. 11D). Kehr (1995)

described the movie as a “confounding jumble of accepted fact, fictional invention and wild

speculation” (p. 37). Ignoring the film’s accurate representations of FBI repression against the

Panthers, these critics suggested that Panther’s fictional narrative of the FBI’s collusion with the

Mafia discredited the film’s portrayal of racial discord in the 1960s.

Ostensibly, audiences would not learn the real history of the BPP by watching the film.

Millar wondered, “How valid is the film as a historical document?” (p. 12) and Gilbert (1995)

concluded that Panther “does not succeed at moving us any closer to the truth” (p. 33). Only

two reviewers challenged the assumption that the film was an illegitimate representation of the

BPP. Despite an overall criticism of the film, Persall (1995), suggested that truth is itself was

Mario Van Peebles’ Panther

Defining Panther as “Agitprop”

A notion that Panther constituted “agitprop,” or agitational propaganda, was a third

theme in reviews of the film. Several critics who decried the film as a fiction suggested that

For other reviewers, the film was particularly damaging for its potential to influence

African-Americans who might identify with the film’s protagonists. Working from the

presumption that the film misrepresented the FBI’s investigation of the BPP, several critics

lambasted the film as propaganda or “agitprop” for radical black activists. The Washington Post

reviewer Howe (1995) said the movie made “absorbing, agitprop entertainment” (p. N49), and

Ross (1995) stated that the movie was “wrapped in rhetoric, agitprop, and outlandish

accusations” (p. 16). Such agitational propaganda, some reviewers suggested, might threaten

American democracy. Carroll (1995) likened scenes in the movie to the “propagandizing and

sloganeering . . . that once characterized Soviet socialist realism” (p. 31). The Washington Post

non-democratic nationalist interests suggest that the film might provoke a new generation of

radical black activists. Carroll (1995) asked ominously, “Could a Black Panther Party arise

again?” (p. 31). These reviews echoed Horowitz’s complaint that the film was “an incitement to

Mario Van Peebles’ Panther

inner-city blacks” (Vincent, 1995, p. E1). Reviewers who anticipated that the film would agitate

inner-city blacks concluded that black audiences might be encouraged to identify with the

African-Americans in the film and challenge white hegemony. These critics simultaneously

that the film was a dramatic fiction; they suggested that the film should be valued for its artistic

merits.

Kempley (1995) noted that Van Peebles was as “entitled to his vision -- no matter how

controversial films such as Panther “can prod viewers to think about movies, to challenge the

blends fact and imagination” (p. 2.1). To protest the film on the basis of historical inaccuracy,

she wrote, is to ask filmmakers “to exercise a scary self-censorship and to create less daring art”

(p. 2.1). Reviewers who focused on the inherent value of artistic creation suggested that history

and art may be separate, but both have an important social function.

considering the film’s representation of the BPP as a legitimate portrayal and political analysis of

racial injustice in the United States, they suggested that no film should be considered as a source

of historical information. Reports about the film also indicated that the film should not be

Mario Van Peebles’ Panther

evaluated as a reconstruction of past events. Millar (1995) argued that the film succeeded,

despite its biased perspective of the Panthers, because “the Van Peebleses are neither journalists

nor historians” (p. 12). Howe (1995) suggested that the film’s misrepresentations should be

framing the debate about the film’s merits around the role of art and freedom of expression,

reviewers who defended the film as a work of art neutralized Panther’s political critique. They

further insisted that individual films have little, if any, consequence for audiences who watch

them. After all, they suggested, Panther was just a movie. Movies should be “outlandish,”

Stack (1995) asserted. This San Francisco Chronicle reviewer concluded, “If the old phrase ‘it's

only a movie’ weren't so widely accepted, folks would have torn down the big screen long ago”

(p. E1).

Reviews describing Panther as art also indicated that the film’s critics were

Panther, controversial films are “not schoolbooks” (James, 1995, p. 2.1). Favorable reviews of

Panther suggested that whether Panther was agitprop or edutainment was irrelevant. It deserved

to be treated as art, thus enjoying freedom of expression. The film’s role as a legitimate source

Mario Van Peebles’ Panther

for understanding the BPP’s struggle for racial justice and empowerment was never fully

considered. Appeals to the criteria of balance, accuracy, and the distinction between fiction and

fact reinforced repeatedly across multiple journalism reviews and news reports positioned

descriptions of Panther as biased and inaccurate suggest that the movie’s ability to incorporate

its counter-memories into popular memory was limited, at least in part, because it was not

accorded credibility as a legitimate depiction of the past. Thus, these critics suggest that media

texts that purport to depict the past do not automatically attain status as popular memory but

must also be widely recognized as sources of historical information.

While critics evaluated Panther according to its correspondence to historical events, they

also advanced an ideologically conservative understanding of the BPP. Although critics

correctly noted that not all of the events depicted in the film were based on BPP history,

Panther’s critics unevenly addressed the film’s correspondence to actual events. None of the

counterparts who infiltrated the BPP to spread distrust and encourage violence from within the

party (Churchill, 2001, pp. 89-98; Grady-Willis, 1998; O’Reilly, 1989). Consequently,

characterizations of the film as “untrue” obscured the film’s accurate representations of BPP

Mario Van Peebles’ Panther

activities and FBI efforts to repress them. Based on these reviews, audiences with little prior

knowledge of BPP history may have been led to believe that none of the film had a basis in BPP

history.

accounts of the FBI’s amicable relationship with the local police implicated in the activists’

disappearance (Cagin and Dray, 1988; Gitlin, 1980). According to Cagin and Dray (1988), FBI

agents were slow to respond to the case of the murdered activists until other civil rights

protesters brought evidence to their attention (p. 324). The contradictions between negative

reviews of Panther, a film that magnified political abuses by the FBI, and Mississippi Burning, a

film that minimized the FBI’s history of racial discrimination, suggests that reviews may be

more likely to support films that reflect dominant ideology. Because mainstream institutions

have particular power and authority to establish cultural meanings of the past, depictions that

affirm dominant ideology, even those that contradict the historic record, may be more likely to

critiques presented by popular media; when texts present a critical, or left-leaning view of social

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Mario Van Peebles’ Panther

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