Seite - 141 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Band 03/01

Bulletproof Love: Luke Cage (2016) and Religion | 141www.jrfm.eu 2017, 3/1, 123–155 as smooth as protagonists from seventies’ soul cinema, showing each other up, engaging in repartee parallel to that between Luke and the major female characters, and vying for the soul of their fictional Harlem. Through the male- desiring gaze, they can be read as competing suitors, the tragically Luciferian Cornell and the reluctantly messianic Luke, but also, therefore, as completing each other. the homoeroticism between the two must remain subtext, however. this message is reinforced by the continued rhetorical use of the term “bitch” as an insult for men, angrily ascribed, for example, not only by Cornell (e01), but also by Misty (E07) and Turk (E12). The word’s repression specifically of women is symbolically subverted by the clear inclusion in the series of powerful women, is made light of when Claire successfully recovers her bag from a mugger, and is explicitly challenged when Mariah tells shades, “that’s the last time you will ever call me a bitch” (E08). Yet the word’s specifically homophobic power is never challenged, whether subtly or directly, as it would be by the visible pres- ence of openly LGBtQ characters. the foreclosure of latent desire between Cornell and Luke comes not only as Cornell is removed, but also with the simultaneous arrival of Diamondback, with his Old testament rules and punishments. An erotically charged story of rival Brothers is overwritten with a literal one of rival brothers, explicitly pre- sented in the show as a Cain and Abel story. however, behind this story of hate and fratricide is also an isaac and ishmael story, sons of the same man by dif- ferent women. As Delores Williams has deftly demonstrated, peering behind the androcentric and patriarchal narrative actually gets us to a story of two women, mothers to sons from the same man, that is, to the shadows of hagar and sarah.47 in Williams’ analysis, hagar’s story is the story of African American women’s historical experience. hagar’s appearance here only as back-story in the conflict between two powerful men is consistent with the historical andro- centrism of Christianity, shared by the Black Church, that Womanist theologians such as Williams deconstruct. Predictably then, the shadow mothers also set up some “yo mama” insults (e13). finally, consideration of gender and sexuality in the series would be incom- plete without a meta-view about the place of the show in its broader social context. The series features numerous significant roles for people of color and, more specifically, for women of color. In a media landscape in which roles for actors of color are often both deliberately and unconsciously limited,48 Luke 47 Williams 1993. 48 I am thinking here of critiques of “white washing” characters as other media forms are adapted to film, of the marketing concern that more than one significant character of color will pigeon-hole a show (e.g., as dramatized in “indians on tV”, Master of None [Netflix, US 2015], S01/E04), and of the lack of recognition for actors of color who do manage, in spite of systemic racism, to land important roles (#OscarssoWhite).