Mr. Coker, 45, discussed the new season’s female directors and Caribbean influences, his disregard for respectability politics and his unabashed love for all things musical.
The star of the new Netflix series was reimagined as a modern black champion. The show's creative team looked to current events to ground Cage in reality from a specifically African American perspective. They wanted the show to fulfill “comic-book geek sensibilities” while also digging into subjects such as police brutality, the gentrification of Harlem (where the show takes place), and even the privatization of prisons.
In the official teaser for the show, Cage dons a hoodie just as Batman would put on a cowl or Thor would don a cape. But in a post-Trayvon Martin world, that image—of Cage pulling the hood tight around his face—is a loaded one. And all of this imagery comes in a series that centers on Luke Cage’s wrongful imprisonment.
Context is crucial to the politics of a narrative, always. In the context of the #BlackLivesMatter protests, and the increasing public focus on police brutality toward particularly African American communities in the U.S., it is important to ask how the fantasy of Luke Cage – a black man who is “unbreakable” – fits into the current socio-political landscape.
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