It is altogether too rare in today’s day and age that television and cinema manage to engage in truly thoughtful social commentary. True, there are groundbreaking shows and movies that seek to defy stereotypes like Black-ish and Fresh off the Boat. True, there are films which expose prejudice like Zootopia or temper the fight against terrorism like The Dark Knight. But these shows and movies, while brilliant, are still too few and far between, dominated by cheesy sitcoms or more traditional dramas. This is not to say that art for art’s sake is bad, but the fact remains that the entertainment industry has yet to really tackle some of the tougher questions we face as a nation.
That is why is has been so refreshing to see the incredible work that is Netflix’s Luke Cage, which premiered its first season over the weekend. The show is simultaneously an incredible piece of entertainment (which I gladly spent my weekend binging when I should have been studying for my history midterm) and a powerful social commentary on the realities that the black community continues to face. Both the writing staff and the cast, which, in a rare twist for Hollywood, are predominantly black, have done an incredible job of creating a show that is the best of both worlds.
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It is hard to understate how earnestly black this show truly is; and that is exactly what makes it so important. Luke Cage is not meant to hide reality under the guise of being just another superhero show. In fact, there are many points of the show that are explicitly meant to initiate conversation.
Perhaps the most poignant example of this is that the protagonist of the show, Luke Cage, is a hooded black man who is bulletproof. In a time when videos of black men and women being shot and killed by police are all too pervasive, it can hardly be missed as a point of political commentary, or as Gena-mour Barret put it in her brilliant recent article, “It is well and truly a marvel.” Additionally, Mike Colter, who portrays Luke Cage, has said “If you’re a black person imagining a superhero, the first thing you would want is a bulletproof superhero.” In short, the iconography of a bulletproof black man from Harlem is simply too important to ignore. (Side note: Ms. Barret’s article really is fantastic, and much better than anything I could write, I highly recommend reading it all the way through.)
Yet there are indeed many people who either do not wish to acknowledge the commentary inherent to Luke Cage or who do not wish to recognize that the social commentary deserves to be there.
So let’s look at both of these criticisms one at a time to see whether or not they pass closer inspection. (Spoiler alert: they don’t.)
First, there are people who simply do not acknowledge the reality of Luke Cage’s commentary. This assertion is simply unfounded on every conceivable level. Luke Cage is a show that is deeply ensconced in black culture, from the outset of the pilot episode the revelation that this is the blackest thing marvel has ever done is inescapable. From the way the characters talk to the streets of Harlem, to the chain link fences of the basketball court, Luke Cage does not shy away from the culture it protrays. Late in the pilot, Luke is even seen reading Ralph Ellison’s masterwork Invisible Man: the quintessential novel about the experience of the black community in America.
What’s more, Cheo Coker, the show’s showrunner, has explicitly said that this was his intention, stating of shows about the black community, “Everyone expects them to be nice and PC and don’t wanna offend anybody, but you can’t make art like that.” That’s what makes Luke Cage so brilliant; it isn’t made to order, sanitized, PC black culture for a mainstream (read: predominantly white) audience. It is bold about displaying the nuances of black culture, with Coker saying, “you don’t have to hold back” if you really want to tell the best story you can tell. Simply put, to deny the existence of the commentary inherent to Luke Cage is to purposefully ignore the intended message.
Next, let’s look to those who, while they acknowledge the presence of commentary in Luke Cage, do not recognize its importance.
The main issue that I see with this viewpoint is that we collectively, as people who cannot possibly understand what it truly means to be black in America, nor I individually (as a practically fluorescent white guy), do not get to make the determination of whether or not someone else’s story is worth telling or whether their message is important to hear. To do so is to elevate our voices over those of the people who are actually experiencing the things they’re highlighting and to deem them unworthy of consideration without knowing the slightest thing about the reality they live.
For example, my parents never had to have a conversation with me about what to do or how to act if I got stopped by police officers while driving or while walking down the street. Yet that is an experience that is all too common for black teenagers in this country. Not having experienced it myself, how could I dismiss someone’s story about how that experience affected them? I could not. Nor should I. Being too quick to ignore other’s experiences, from all walks of life, is a surefire recipe to create more animosity and less understanding.
I think that perhaps the best encapsulation of why Luke Cage’s blackness matters is in an exchange in the comments of Ms. Barret’s original article.
White Person: “The man can stop bullets with his hand and you care about his fucking skin color?”
Black Person: “I do. Yes, I do.”
And if the people who actually have to face the bullets that Luke Cage showcases care about the fact that he is black, then those of us who don’t owe it to them to at least make an effort to understand why that is the case. If we do, we may find that our world opens up just a little bit more, our understanding develops a little bit further, and our lives are a little bit richer for it.
