But astute observers, including Curbed's Diana Budds, caught that the style and pose mimicked this 1968 photo of Huey P. Newton, co-founder of the Black Panther Party.
Black Panther Party, Smithsonian InstituteA bit less popcorn-munching fun with this Black Panther.
T'Challa wasn't exactly the first guy to riff on the image, as everyone from Beyonce to John Waters has posed in a peacock chair. And while this chair is all future-y, the way it frames the Avenger still has the same enveloping peacock vibe. But why is that relevant, beyond the obvious fact that it looks cool?
Well, to give you a crash course in furniture politics, the chair has Asian origins, and it became popular in America because of its vibes of exotic royalty. It's easy to imagine sitting in that chair and being fanned and hand-fed fruit by nubile women, especially if you're the sort of person whose understanding of other cultures began and ended by skimming National Geographic nudes. Over the decades, the style was used in prop photography, became part of the Tiki craze (ask your grandparents), and eventually became a countercultural symbol among people whose interior decorating ethos matched that of Jeff Lebowski.
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