Page - 148 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 03/01

148 | Ken Derry et al. www.jrfm.eu 2017, 3/1, 123–155 in the struggle that ensues between Cornell and the drug kingpin Colon (e01), the political maneuvering of Mariah as a disguise for her own balancing act between the legal and the illegal for personal benefit (E01), and the campaign of extortion of local businesses executed by both Cornell and Mariah (e03). in the embodiment and synthesis of this multiplicity, Luke Cage becomes a God in the Whiteheadian sense, a deity that is both involved with and affected by temporal processes. he does not create an answer ex nihilo, but takes the jagged bricks of his context and theopoetically makes a house of liberation in which harlem residents “relocate” and experience a transformation of their understanding of themselves, their worth, and their potential for greatness, even in the midst of the multifaceted oppression plaguing them.65 in the words of Jerome stone, this might be thought of as “minimalist transcendence”, a humanistic response/intervention that replaces the need for a divine response, or at least the affirmation that transcendence described in this way is more logically defendable due to an empirical experience and location of such trans- formation.66 Luke represents the “creative transformation” that John Cobb describes as “the call forward”,67 a notion echoed by Pop’s sacred mantra/dy- ing words: “always forward” (e02). One of the most interesting themes of Luke Cage (2016) that goes large- ly unstated is that of the “world within a world”. the harlem as presented has autonomous existence in the way that indigenous communities in North America have a sort of sovereignty: it is dependent on the world from which it comes in a peripheral way, yet operates on its own rules. it has its presi- dents and its pawns, its members with social capital and those without. this is Whiteheadian interconnectivity. the parent world’s racism, poverty, classism, sexism, and other deities of white supremacy that converge in the “event” of harlem all play a role in how harlem functions.68 But the blatant existence of this parent world and its diseases are rarely made explicitly evident. One key example is Cornell’s identification of what in his exegesis is the curse/bless- ing of the underestimation of Afro-diasporic individuals in the parent world of the United states in his statement, “it’s easy to underestimate a nigga. you never see them coming” (e01). Another is the recurring appeal to literary works written by people of Afro-diasporic descent born in the United states as a source/instance of reclamation of identity, such as those of Langston hughes and Walter Mosley (e01). the liberation strategy here is processual, emphasiz- ing in glimpses how the humanistic wise use of the thematic background of a 65 Whitehead 1978 [1929], 346. 66 stone 1992, 109–110. 67 Coleman 2008, 87. 68 Massumi 2009, 5–6.