Wakanda is a proud country with a rich history, but it is going through a bit of a crisis of late. There is a fight over the country's wealth of resources and an internal debate rages about the role Wakanda should take on the world stage. This has led to a struggle for power and an attempted coup. So naturally, the public has opinions about what's going on there. The only problem is that Wakanda isn't real. But that didn't stop Jimmy Kimmel Live from getting people to talk about the crisis in the fictional country for another addition of the show's Lie Witness News. Take a look.
Television has a long and proud tradition of making people look silly and foolish, and few shows do this better than Jimmy Kimmel's late night show -- especially with the Lie Witness News segment. The questions the interviewer asks the folks walking around Hollywood are just great and set them up perfectly to deliver hilariously confident, yet uninformed responses. What's so funny with the first two people is how easily they give canned, political type responses to dealing with the crisis in Wakanda and bringing our troops home. The best though has to be the guy who believes Wakanda should not be compelled to share its Vibranium. Deeply unconcerned with the production needs of fidget spinners or golf carts, he strongly believes that the fictional country should not be made to share its fictional resource.
What is so funny about these is that they show not just how uninformed people are, but also how unwilling someone is to say 'I don't know', when a camera is pointed at them, opting instead to confidently answer and fake it till they make it. Though, to be fair to these folks (who are probably now realizing that just because someone is holding a camera, doesn't mean it's a good idea to talk to them), Wakanda has been in the news an awful lot lately. Black Panther has cruised to over $700 million worldwide, earning over $100 million domestically in its second weekend. The film is dominating the zeitgeist at the moment. Also, all of the questions sound just plausible enough that if Wakanda was real, the questions about the country could be legitimate.
It is also possible that with the constant 24-hour news cycle and through the osmosis of social media, these people are conflating the names 'Wakanda' and 'T'Challa' with the various real news stories that they are peripherally aware of. The interviewer probably could have asked 'Should we let in refugees from Wakanda?' or 'Do you think Wakanda is doing a good job hosting the Olympics?' and these people may have felt they knew enough to respond.
While the box office continues to say 'Wakanda Forever! and Black Panther continues its reign, Jimmy Kimmel can be seen hosting the 90th Academy Awards this Sunday night. For all the latest in uninformed opinions and the complex political struggles of fictional foreign nations, stay tuned to CinemaBlend.
