Luke Cage: Bulletproof Love
I should have written about this ages ago. I had every intention to do just that. But life gets in the way. However, when I came home last night, the yellow vinyl LP of the Luke Cage soundtrack was resting gently against my door and my heart leapt. I hadn’t forgotten, just hadn’t decided what I wanted to say. In a divine coincidence, my friend messaged me out of the blue, and I saw his response to watching the show. He said quite simply: “This, THIS is how a show that is centered around Communities of Color should be done. Luke Cage is, in my mind, the new gold standard”.
With his words ringing in my ears, I realized. Luke Cage did something rare. It told a very black story. A very non-white story. And it did so without the cliches that non-POCs love. It seemed natural; the way we engage when no one is looking. The lives we lead when white people have forgotten we exist. The show addressed issues that seem--for us--eternal, and gave answers for the new battles we fight. No, it did not solve anything. That wasn’t its purpose. At its heart, it’s just a 70s comic book turned TV show. However, the people involved were wise enough to retool the story to the historical moment.
I heard Method Man’s rap about Luke (yes I feel familiar enough to say Luke), and felt the tears well in my eyes. On the track, Meth said he wished Trayvon had a gun to protect himself. I also hear in his silence that he wished Trayvon was bulletproof. In this moment, in all our moments, we wish our fathers, brothers, friends were bulletproof.
So what of the show? The show reflects something real in the midst of something supernatural. The city devours. Any city. All cities. That shit ain’t new for black folk. However, despite that, despite the despair that plagues us, there’s Luke. The show downplays his powers. He is normalized. Every character is--they seem like folk you see at the barber shop, the hair salon, running through the fire hydrant when we all know that wasn’t supposed to be opened but some smart kid figured it out. And we should chide them, but our childhood (stripped away too soon) comes flooding back, so instead we get soaked and chase children to dash them in the cold, powerful water. That is the show. That is what I feel.
I want to talk about the history. I want to talk about how naturally our icons are dropped in casual conversation in life and in the show--Ralph Ellison, Crispus Attucks, Donald Goines. Stuff we know. Stuff everyone else forgets. Stuff that feeds us. I felt a flood when I saw Invisible Man on Luke’s bed. Right before I binge watched it, I had just taught my World Literature class and the subject was the Caribbean author, Caryl Phillips’s short autobiography “Growing Pains”. He wrote about reading Anna Karenina. “‘My God.’ His stepmother calls him downstairs for dinner. He sits at the table in silence but cannot eat. He stares at his brothers, at his father, at his stepmother. Do they not understand? Anna has thrown herself in front of a train.” I looked at the world like that after Luke Cage and thought, how can you be so calm? This, this thing exists. Do you not know? A bulletproof brotha?! Do you not see? I understand Caryl better now. He was overwhelmed, as we often are not, with visceral emotion. I know this is scattered.
But all I want to end this with is it’s “blackety black and black y’all”.
