Page - 147 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 03/01

Bulletproof Love: Luke Cage (2016) and Religion | 147www.jrfm.eu 2017, 3/1, 123–155 society. David Walker prophesied that God would wipe white supremacy off the face of the earth in wrath. the exodus story of slaves set free by plagues and the parting of seas served as the mythic model for the liberation of the enslaved in the south and, later, for a second exodus out of Jim Crow in the Great Migra- tions. Martin Luther King Jr. insisted that African Americans “as a people will get to the Promised Land”, even if he also admitted, on the eve of his assassi- nation no less, that he might “not get there with you”.60 And Luke Cage (2016) brings a world into being where a Black man in a hoodie is impervious to the bullets of police officers and gangsters alike, where that hoodied hero unites his beloved community (harlem) against the death-dealers set out to destroy them from without and within. Coker characterizes this open-ended orientation as a sort of wish fulfillment, noting “superheroes to a certain extent are always wish fulfillment”.61 Another way to think about the show, though, would be as an example of what robin D. G. Kelley calls “freedom dreams”. Reflecting on the significance of the im- agination in the Black radical tradition, Kelley quips, “call me utopian, but i in- herited my mother’s belief that the map to a new world is in the imagination, in what we see in our third eyes rather than in the desolation that surrounds us”.62 When we view Luke Cage (2016) through the lens of African American religion, we begin to see the ways in which Black superhero narratives can function as religion, especially in the present moment when one must insist that Black lives matter in the face of a society that too often insists otherwise. “ALWAys fOrWArD, fOrWArD ALWAys.” the content of Luke Cage (2016) demonstrates what one could call an “ulti- mate concern” in the tillichian sense. it looks through the unconditional as- pects of the existential situation of the context within which it is situated and subtly and overtly voices the situation through summarizing its multiplicity into themes/questions/problems that can be addressed.63 in other words, we enter into the dynamic social, political, economic, racial, and other dilemmas of the New york City where the story is set without an explanation of those problems as problems, but with a heideggerian “thrownness” right in the middle of the “action” from which the concerns that need to be addressed emanate.64 Luke Cage’s role in this context is one of synthesis: he embodies the ulti- mate concern as displayed in the whole of the fucked-up situation manifested 60 King 1991 [1968], 286. 61 Kim/Shifflet, 2016. 62 Kelley 2002, 2–3. 63 tillich 1951, 10–11. 64 heidegger 1996 [1927], 127.