4

Early in Black Panther, Prince T'Challa is shown in a control room, watching the regular news on a TV that has 6 sides instead of being rectangular. This is a mock-up of what I mean:

enter image description here

Is there any logic in the movie that makes a 6-sided TV screen make sense? Or is this just the rule of cool?

Improve this question
1

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
2

Considering the level of tech that Wakanda possesses in the film, it's reasonable to assume that they invented the television screen well before the rest of the world.

For whatever reason, they opted for a hexagonal shape rather than rectangular. The only reason we're used to one over the other is that all our screens are like that.

Improve this answer
4
  • I'm actually pretty sure it wasn't a Wakandan broadcast. It was from another country, English-speaking, and presumably broadcast as a rectangle. Warping the image to fit a hexagon would make it all distorted.
    – BrettFromLA
    Commented Feb 20, 2018 at 17:02
  • 6
    @BrettFromLA: According to the answer, the TV screen was Wakandan-made, not the TV show. (also, somewhat facetiously, warping an image would indeed make things distorted, since those are synonyms (see 1.1))
    – Flater
    Commented Feb 21, 2018 at 9:15
  • @Flater Copy that about warping = distorted! :-) My point was that either the Wakanda hexateevee would cut off the corners of the rectangular image, which would omit crucial information, or the rectangular image should be "letterboxed" (or something similar) within the hexateevee, with black areas around the rectangular image. If the rectangular image was curved to fit in the hexateevee then much of the image and text would be hard to view (because of all the warpy distortion).
    – BrettFromLA
    Commented Feb 21, 2018 at 16:49
  • 5
    @BrettFromLA it's worth noting that even our own TVs can chop off vital information when switching a standard resolution to widescreen (or vice versa).
    – Cooper
    Commented Feb 22, 2018 at 9:05
1

The television have 6 sides because the movie wanted to present the viewer with the technological development of the Wakanada, but in a different style.

Improve this answer
1
  • 4
    Can you point out a little more what the 6-sided screen has to do with the technological development of Wakanda or in which way it represents African culture?
    – Napoleon Wilson
    Commented May 17, 2018 at 8:56

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .