Luke(warm) Cage
As we prepare for what may be Marvel Studios’ first major critical misstep, are we ready to admit that its last Netflix entry was… just okay? In the almost six months, none of Netflix’s Marvel series have gained as much positive critical attention as Luke Cage. For the most part, I agree that it is warranted. However, the show has shortcomings that are not only problems on their own, but also indication of Marvel’s larger struggle with including people of color in their cinematic productions.
I want to preface this by saying that I don’t hate the show. I legitimately enjoyed it while I watched it. The problems I will list below simply took the edge off of what could have been a potentially great show. There were quite a few things the show did right. The cast, crew, and production team were black, and the writing did not ignore that. The show was unapologetically black (more on that later), and often made references that would be understood only by its black audience. Mahershala Ali, the man who took over 2016, delivered a performance that turned heads. By far his Cottonmouth was the strongest character in the show. Even so, the death of Cottonmouth was rewarding, completely justified, and surprising in the context of the rest of the show’s narrative. Seeing a rape apologist get immediate comeuppance, despite the amount of time invested in his character, is something rarely seen in any television show. Mariah, Misty, and Claire were all complex characters, all collectively getting more valuable screen time than Marvel has given black women in the last decade. The show was fun, had some unforgettable moments, and contained impressive homages and cameos. Cheo Coker, the director, managed to meld Luke Cage’s blaxploitation origin with a somewhat modern Harlem setting. Cheo also managed to film the show on location in Harlem, and was reportedly adamant about that. The show was done with good intentions, but those intentions fell short in some very real ways.
The Characterization of Luke Cage
Throughout a series filled with complex and interesting characters, one of the weakest characters on screen was Luke Cage. To be frank, many of the series’ problems stem from the way the character is both written and acted. First of all, Luke’s character is inconsistent in his motives and motivations, all while playing a character who is supposed to be measured and careful. Or at least he says he’s supposed to be. What the character says, what the character does, and how he interacts with other characters sits in a place that is both frustrating and flat. The blame for this can be split evenly between Mike Colter, who plays Luke, and Cheo Coker, the director for the series. They both turned Luke into a self-insert character: a middle-aged respectable old-head who keeps to himself. This is different from the source material, in which Luke is a hard edge and kind of abrasive. It works in the comics because Luke, from the 70s version to Azzarello and Bendis’ interpretations, secretly cares about people. In short, he’s a jerk with a heart of gold. Colter’s Luke Cage, on the other hand, is a strong silent type who’s actually kind of a jerk. Colter most certainly looks the part; you’d be hard pressed to find someone who visually meets the criteria better. And the deviation from the source material is not the issue either. Almost all the other characters deviate in ways that improve upon their comic book counterparts. The problem with Colter’s Luke Cage is that the character doesn’t draw from the source in consistent way. Sometimes he matches comic book Luke, other times he doesn’t. Most times he inverts the character in an attempt to make him respectable, which ends up making him boring. An early and hotly contested news article stated that Colter’s Cage served better as a supporting character to Jessica Jones. The optics of that article were horrific: a white woman saying that a black man serves better as a background character is not a good look by any means. But her base point was actually correct. Colter’s Cage could not carry the show; his respectable old-head Luke was frankly boring. Fortunately, the black female characters save the show, even as we keep having to refocus on Colter’s blandness. Even so, they aren’t respected within the narrative or behind the camera.
Colorism and Casual Misogynoir
One of the things Luke Cage does well in its cinematography is capture Mike Colter’s dark skin effectively on camera. It’s honestly one of the first shows that I’ve seen that actually color draining out of a dark-skinned character’s face when he was losing blood. Unfortunately, this courtesy and care to skin is not afforded to the black women in the show. Colorism is pervasive in the show among the casting of its female characters. Simone Missick and Rosario Dawson are both light-skinned heroes, while Alfre Woodard’s villainous Mariah is the only main dark-skinned woman. The colorism even extends to the character of Luke, most frustratingly. Of all the Marvel heroes in the MCU, Luke has been shown with more sexual partners than any other (Five, between Jessica Jones and his own show). And not one, not a single one, is dark-skinned. In fact, none of the women in the show are the same shade as Mike Colter, not even the extras. A dark-skinned woman makes a pass at Luke in the first episode, and he rejects her only to sleep with Misty at the end of the same episode.
This is where the slides easily from colorism into misogynoir. Luke rejects a dark-skinned. black woman who explicitly voices sexual attraction to him, because that’s not “respectable.” But in the first episode of Jessica Jones he has anal sex with a random white woman who eyes him at the bar. This is a problem: the show does not make distinction between suave ladies’ man and horny womanizer. Part of the issue is the inconsistent characterization once again. Are Coker and Colter drawing from Azzarello and Bendis’ womanizing Luke Cage, who has and explicit fetish for women with superpowers? Or are we drawing from their original characterization, a charmer who just so happens to avoid touching anyone who doesn’t pass the Paper Bag Test? My theory is that Coker and Colter did not see a distinction, a fatal flaw borne of their limited perspective as cishet (cisgender heterosexual) middle-aged black men. Women were likely absent from the creative process, or otherwise were not listened to when concerns were voiced. This is further evidenced by the ways in which Luke’s interactions with women are never countered or confronted. Just as I thought Claire rejecting his advances was a refreshing subversion, she ends the series in a relationship with him. This is more insulting because Rosario Dawson has the lightest complexion in the series. The scene in which Cage talks about Zoe Kravitz (who would have been 19–20, based on the show’s timeline) are seen as funny, rather than leering or disturbing. Even his casual, yet predatory, misogynistic digs at Misty after sleeping with her are presented as justified because she lied to him about being a detective. A character whose entire story is lying about who he is and his past will passive-aggressively shame women who lie to him. How does that make sense? How is that not contradictory? These are the problems I picked up on immediately while watching the show. I waited for it to be confronted or addressed (past the Black Mariah/ “Colorstruck” exchange) but it never was in any substantial capacity. This is why, for me, the coffee metaphor falls short: we are presented with a Luke Cage who wouldn’t touch a woman the color of coffee. All the colorist misogynoir in the show only displayed the need for black women and black femmes to be deeply involved in the creation of shows like this. And speaking of exclusion…
The Absence of LGBTQ Black People
Cheo Coker championed Luke Cage as a “love letter to Harlem” and he pulled no punches in that regard. Except one crucial one: LGBTQ Black people are entirely absent. In a show that is entirely set in Harlem, and waxes poetic (read: preachy, more on that later) about its cultural landmarks and significance, the absence of queer black people is particularly offensive. Again, this is a casualty of the limited perspective of cishet black men. The Harlem Renaissance, among other things, was a place where same-gender loving and gender non-conforming black people were the primary producers of black art and culture. To be blunt, the Harlem Renaissance was queer as hell. So why Luke Cage’s Harlem so heterosexual? Why is the only queer character an unnamed, silent, and abused character known only as “Sister-Boy”? This is really just inexcusable laziness. The show had a sizable cast of recurring side-characters and all of them are straight, which is wildly inappropriate. Particularly, in a post-Moonlight world, settling for all-hetero black shows is out of the question. As with women and femmes, Season 2 would benefit with more fully realized roles for LGBTQ black people both in front of and behind the camera. At this point, the show can’t claim to be representative of blackness and Harlem while excluding vital parts of the black community. There is not Harlem greatness without queer black people, so queer black people should not be absent from Harlem. It’s preposterous that a bulletproof man is easier to put on film than a three-dimensional queer black characters.
Preachy Respectability
One of the most common criticisms of the show is that is falls into common tropes of respectability unchallenged almost immediately. From Luke’s unexplained aversion to being called “nigga” to sudden long-winded history lessons about Harlem, it seemed as though the show screeched to a halt to do a PSA. Not only did this interrupt the narrative in awkward, inorganic ways, it also perpetuated some dangerous ideology about black spaces and communities. The barbershop conversation about black boys growing up without fathers comes to mind. Not only is that a statistically-false myth, it is also annoyingly condescending because the show undercuts any counter-narrative from young black people. In fact, young black men are shown to be stupid, reckless, and largely disposable. Younger black women and girls barely exist at all. The history lessons and prolonged out-of-character speech about Harlem deflated tense moments. Luke’s aversion to being called “nigga” is never explained, and only serves as an uninspired way to make contrast him with the villains who use it freely. It is no secret that this particular facet of the show was Mike Colter’s input, as he choked on the word every time he said it on screen. (A little advice for season 2: pull back the reigns on Colter’s creative influence). The problem with the preachiness and respectability politics is that it is contradictory to both Luke’s character (at least some of the time) and the narrative direction of the show. Having most of the holes in his hoodies be put there by black men, while still erasing women and queer folks from the story is insulting. To put it shortly, the writing of this show isn’t smart enough to condescend to its young black viewer in the way that it does. If you’re going to talk down to me, come correct or don’t come at all.
Trayvon’s Hoodie
The idea to have Luke’s “super suit” be a bullet-ridden hoodie was, again, a Mike Colter idea. When I first heard it, like most others, I was excited by the prospect of that powerful imagery. I did not expect it to be cheapened in the way that it was. While I watched the show, I was amused on how many hoodies Luke went through. It seemed like 2–3 per episode, and at the time it seemed a little ridiculous. It was almost as if it was a running gag. But in the six months since, I realized that turning Trayvon’s hoodie into a gag at worst or ham-fisted imagery at best is inappropriate. If the hoodie being riddled with bullets had been restricted to one or two crucial scenes, it would have been very powerful. Instead it is cheapened as a gimmick for nearly every episode. Trayvon Martin was a real person whose memory should be respected, not peddled for activist relevance points. This was made clear, when the show told us explicitly what the hoodie represented, as if the audience could not put that together on our own. It did not help, once again, that most of the bullet holes were put there by black men. The implicit message being “what about black-on-black crime?” as the show continues to talk down to its audience. Once again, the show isn’t smart enough, nor does it have the emotional depth, to warrant that.
A Single Perspective of Blackness
At the root of the shortcomings of Luke Cage is the singular perspective of a broad experience. It tried to tackled gang/gun violence, corruption, prison, church, and family in Harlem all from the perspective of a straight, cisgender, middle-aged black man. And it showed in spectacular ways that this was the result, but not the intent. As I said before, the female characters of this show are written well. But they are not given sufficient space to shine because we have to keep coming back to the titular character. This parallels ways in which narratives about black people usually end up just being narratives about straight black men. And it is because of this that Luke Cage is frustrating for me. It is a reminder that the cishet black male experience is generalized within our communities, and the rest of us have to hope to find ourselves. That was part of the larger frustration with Marvel (which has carried over into the budding tragedy that is Iron Fist). The MCU’s overwhelming whiteness felt suffocating. In ten years, all we had were quippy black sidekicks and no black women. So I think that in general, black people were happy to have a superhero show for and about us. Many black people accepted and praised Luke Cage with open, even going so far as to overload Netflix in our rush to see. Any ill-will or dissent was shut down soundly and immediately. But at the end of the day intersectionally marginalized black people (disabled, women, LGBTQ) were still left wanting, like we always are, while the most powerful in our communities were centered once again. I wasn’t underwhelmed because the show was terrible, I was underwhelmed because its flaws could have been easily avoided. So I write all this not to bash Luke Cage, but instead to show flaws that can be avoided in future Netflix outings. Luke Cage can still be the hero for all black people, rather than the ones who occupy his subjectivity.
