National Post (National Edition)
CAGE before duty
WHAT DOES MARVEL’S LUKE CAGE HAVE TO DO TO BECOME A HERO IN HARLEM?
In simplest terms, the first season of Marvel’s Luke Cage looks an awful lot like the first season of Marvel’s Daredevil.
A somewhat accidental hero starting to explore the possibilities of his “abilities” — which are not just a gift, you see, but also a curse — goes up against a criminal enterprise hiding behind the facade of legitimate business (and political power) for the soul of a New York neighbourhood. Just like the Devil himself, Cage (played by Mike Colter, whose body is every bit as hyperbolic as a comic book character’s) has to learn a bit about what it means to be a hero and deal with the sacrifices that inevitably come with it. With a cadre of well-meaning but less-super-powered confidantes, why, he just might figure it out — all while kicking righteous amounts of ass along the way.
The rather broad-chested wrench in this particular framework, though, is that Luke Cage is a black man. If, at the time of his original conception, that was just a way to add some token diversity while capitalizing on the popularity of blaxploitation films — his catchphrase, “Sweet Christmas!” would seem to say as much about the odd funk of that ’ 70s genre as the fact he was, until this millennium, always written by white dudes — today, his skin colour comes with some serious weight. Executive producer and show runner Cheo Hodari Coker probably summed it up most poignantly when he told a ComicCon panel, “When I think about what’s going in the world right now, the world is ready for a bulletproof black man.”
If Cage’s impervious skin seems like wish fulfilment, there are plenty of other aspects of his story that could easily work as metaphors for the experience of black men in an America that is currently threatening to elect the No. 1 choice among white supremacists. He got his powers from experiments run on him while he was in prison — for a crime he didn’t commit. He’s also a former police officer, which is an awfully thorny role for a protector of the black community these days. Perhaps most importantly, he is, to date, the only onscreen Marvel hero who doesn’t have a mask or secret identity (not really, anyway), which seems like an unintended but pointed parallel to the idea that black men can never really be anything but black men in society’s eyes.
If that last one requires, admittedly, a bit of a walk, Luke Cage is pretty happy to explore a more direct path to it — sometimes as obviously as showing the hero tuck a copy of Invisible Man into his duffel bag or go on a sideline tangent about black poets.
More germane to the actual action, though, the show is openly concerned with what a black man has to act like to earn the mantle of hero in Harlem. Respectability plays a big part — big enough that, if this show wasn’t helmed by a black man, you might expect it to be heartily think-pieced about (it still might). There are multiple references to the importance of a black man working: at the start, Cage is making ends meet as both a cleaner at a barber shop and a dishwasher at a club. Cage (and at least one other character) is also unequivocal about the use of the n-word. “I’m never tired enough to let someone call me that word,” he tells a street punk at the end of a day that involved someone emptying two machine gun clips into his back.
The particular soul of Harlem, its importance to the black American experience, is also referenced throughout. Almost once an episode, Cage points out a notable landmark and waxes eloquently about what it means, or should mean, to the people standing near it. Even the bad guys here — slimy club owner Cornell “Cottonmouth” Stokes (Mahershala Ali) and his shady city councillor cousin Mariah (Alfre Woodard) — are trying to keep Harlem black, going off on the importance of its clubs and homes, and what black ownership means to each.
For as much as the black experience features in it, though, I’m not sure how much the series really has to say about it. You can’t avoid referencing these things in today’s climate, but, by virtue of every superhero story having to solve its problems with a fight, you’re also pretty limited in your ability to explore certain ideas. I am by no means the definitive or even a particularly instructive word on how you get under the skin of the black experience in America, but changing a hero’s costume and acting like it’s an entirely new take is by no means limited to Luke Cage as a series.
I might be alone in this — certainly a lot of people fall over themselves to praise something like Captain America: The Winter Soldier as a paranoia thriller or Guardians of the Galaxy as a space opera — but most of the Marvel cinematic properties strike me as awfully thin underneath their various cloaks. The message is essentially always heroes gotta act like heroes, the obstacles are just window dressing on the way to that particular point.
This is largely what makes these Netflix series feel like a bit of a slog. Jessica Jones has so far been the most successful, largely because it managed to subtly and honestly explore a tricky rape metaphor, the rare example of a Marvel property really diving below the surface of its premise. (Though, even it didn’t entirely escape the consistent problem all these series have of using three episodes to tell two episodes’ worth of story.) But for the most part, stretching the ol’ step up and be a hero narrative across 13 hours ultimately shows how thin it is.
Luke Cage is just another spin on that, albeit one that’s deepened and complicated by its main character’s race. That the mere fact of representation is a considerably big deal, and maybe enough to keep it feeling new, is certainly something worth exploring, but when you get right down to it, there’s only so deep you can go when your character has unbreakable skin.