Page - 151 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 03/01

Bulletproof Love: Luke Cage (2016) and Religion | 151www.jrfm.eu 2017, 3/1, 123–155 is intended to provide a kaleidoscope of different perspectives, each lens allow- ing us to see new pieces and shifting our vision of the whole. the sections of this article share what can be read in smith’s formulation as a dialectic of hope and disappointment. in its conscious engagements, the show has potential to offer subversive alternatives to the expected messages of mainstream entertainment. Luke is a more thoughtful, more human Christ- figure than usually found within superhero narratives, yet the genre’s default to purifying violence ultimately proves impossible to completely escape. the series introduces not one, but several compelling characters who are women of color, but also at times disempowers them in conventional and therefore perplexing ways. the image of a righteous Black man in a hoodie, immune to bullets, is a Messianic dream in this moment in which “Black Lives Matter” is a supposedly controversial statement. yet the image can also be twisted into white-supremacist sadism. the harlem of the show represents an autonomous alterity, but does so by appropriating a real, thriving African American commu- nity into a fictional vision largely of deprivation. There are so many ways that the show is invigorating, entertaining, and inspiring and so many ways in which it inevitably falls short. Discussing together is part of the way we reconcile the gap. tracing religious elements within the show, putting the series in relationship to cultural phenomena with which it is in dialogue, and considering its trajecto- ries of influence demonstrate that Luke Cage (2016) wrestles with some of the Fig. 16: Misty tries to see the whole picture. Film still, “Manifest”, Luke Cage (2016), S01/E07, 10:45.