Luke Cage is a man who was made bulletproof, unbreakable and unstoppable after an experiment went horribly wrong. He tries to hide his powers from society and quietly works his small jobs in Harlem, New York. However, when things start to go wrong and people need a hero, he decides to help and realizes that someone has to step up and be there for the people who make Harlem what it is.
Also, his character is based in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. So, yes, you may someday seem him alongside The Avengers.
It's very easy to look at this show and call it a mature-rated Netflix original series about a superhero that you can now binge. However, Season 1 of Marvel's Luke Cage (released on September 30th) does a lot more than that. The show is lined with political undertones and raises several points about how black people are treated in society, some of which are extremely relevant when taking recent incidents into consideration. In this article, we're going to take a look at some of these issues, and discuss how this show makes them more important than the superhero aspect.
Before talking about Luke Cage, it's important to mention last year's show, Jessica Jones, which was about a girl who had super-strength but didn't use it often, and was working as a private eye. However, when someone with strong ties to her past--a man named Kilgrave--shows up again, she has to face her ultimate fears. Kilgrave has mind control powers. He can make anyone do what he commands, and Jessica is someone who was used by him and he made her do things with her superpowers, including kill someone (that someone is a character in Luke Cage, by the way). Also, living under this trance, she was sexually abused, with Jessica calling it rape upfront. These are themes that you wouldn't expect to find in a superhero comic, albeit a Netflix series or feature film.
Luke Cage deals, above all other aspects, racism. In the penultimate episode, a character asks "If he's innocent, why is he running?", to which the response is "Bulletproof always gonna come second to being black". When you look at things nowadays and read reports about unarmed black people being shot, you understand why many people are scared of authority. In many cases, for the public, it comes down to racism, and despite all arguments suggesting that "it was an accident", it's not easy to sway the public, especially since it happens so often nowadays, and it addresses the fact that there is something amazing about seeing a black man fight crime and be the hero, as a character states "There's something powerful about seeing a black man that's bulletproof and unafraid".
Again, the idea of fear because of shootings and other acts of violence towards people is brought up here, and this is an undertone throughout the entire show. There is also a damning subplot about a prison guard that is very brutal towards Luke and along with a handful of other guards, uses him in underground fights with other inmates to see how much fight he has in him. He even emotionally blackmails him to keep going by killing inmates that he knows and continuously beating him up with a stick. One might look at this and this and say--actually, no one can look at this and say anything else except "that prison cop is a real racist piece of s**t". With underlying themes such as these, does one still look at this as a simple superhero show?
Another theme the show deals with is politics. There are corrupt politicians underlying the streets of Harlem, being funded by the Mob and other gang syndicates and storing millions of dollars in secret hideouts, guarded like fortresses. The show tries to make a point of this by bringing it up several times and this is also a prominent plot point in the show above many others. The idea of the show is to present the ugly side of things, where there are no rules and politicians can be emotionally compromised and do dastardly evil acts in order to get their way around things, and the show does it best to not sugarcoat the fact that this happens.
But even when that aspect is being dealt with, it always goes back to talking about the representation of black people and how they are treated in society. The shootings of Terence Crutcher, Philando Castile and Alton Sterling amongst so many other cases coming up every single day prove that we are far from a solution to the problem. People make racist comments, shout racist slurs, ban people of color from entering places...these are all themes brought up in the show, a show in which a barbershop is treated as Switzerland, because it is the one place you have to be at peace and there is no discrimination, no violence and everyone is allowed to enter.
When such things are being brought up in a TV show that is supposed to be about a superhero, you realize how much things have changed and why Marvel's Luke Cage is so important in today's day and age. Yes, there are superhero moments (watch out for a scene where Luke plows through an entire militia inside a building with his bare hands) and references to the Avengers ("I got the whole incident on Blu-Ray! Tony Stark, that guy with the hammer, that old dude with the shield....!"), but it is about more than that, which makes it the most important show of the year. Check it out if you haven't seen it yet!
(Also, do make sure to check out the YouTube video below where I talk a little more about the show and why it's good!)
