How do you feel about the politics of Luke Cage?
- Thread starter Dirty Hipsters
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To be fair, it's not certain that "The alien/norse god Loki mind controlled lots of government agents of an organization that wasn't publicly recognized to open a portal in the sky" was global, public knowledge. The fact that there was an alien invasion, yes, but the very fine details? That is something I could easily see being covered up by the ever effective "government hush campaign squad" that covers up all that kind of stuff.Benpasko said:
Now, granted, after seeing that, and seeing a guy walking around calling himself Thor, publicly, and a giant green guy, etc, personally, I would be more open to the idea that someone could mind control other people. But I don't recall that ever being established as being public information, so I can buy some level of skepticism about it.
To be fair, if that were the case then literally anyone could claim they were being controlled by mind powers. I bet MCU is a legal hell hole.Benpasko said:
Which is why they need an unnamed psych- uh, hero of justice to punish the wicked.
In all fairness some of them were different people and the same people who were in the rally just got taken hostage by DiamondbackLostCrusader said:
It wasn't a great show/season. Not terrible, but not particularly good. Most of the dialogue was utter nonsense and the story was pretty silly and really didn't get me invested. There were some highlights, in particular the solidarity drive with everyone wearing hoodies with bullet holes. It was a tremendously powerful scene and had a powerful parallel with real life and the BLM campaign.
I don't think the story was interesting enough that it needed a show made for it. The actors were fine and Luke Cage is interesting enough, but it was really a lot of nonsense with little to no actual drama, character development or world building.
I don't think the story was interesting enough that it needed a show made for it. The actors were fine and Luke Cage is interesting enough, but it was really a lot of nonsense with little to no actual drama, character development or world building.
I remember that point, I thought people would need more convincing on the "give the cops bigger guns" pointDirty Hipsters said:So having finished Luke Cage on netflix, I really have to say that I have no idea what the political message of the show was.
I mean, it clearly had one, there was a whole monologue in the last episode slapping you with it, but I felt like the writers actually couldn't figure out what they wanted to say.
The whole show is about the relationship between police and African Americans as well as black on black violence, and how a corrupt system makes it difficult to get justice. The problem is that these themes never come together in a way that makes sense.
There is a scene in the show with a rally taking place inside the Harlem's Paradise nightclub after a police officer illegally beats a young black student that was in custody. During this scene Mariah, the counsel-woman, proceeds to give a speech about police misconduct, and how the people of Harlem have to join together to stop it. Then in the next sentence she starts talking about how Luke Cage is a menace, and how the police should have bigger and more powerful guns to stop him, and everyone in the crowd cheers.
How did this scene make sense to the writers at all? A crowd of people that are pissed off about police misconduct cheering for police to get more powerful weapons and become more militarized?
While I enjoyed Luke Cage, I have to say the show often had a really broad dissonance between the messages that it presented episode to episode and scene to scene, like the writers couldn't really decide what they wanted.
I think her main point made sense, though. Everyone thought Cage was a cop killer and a vigilante who killed whoever crossed his path. Her point was that they needed the cops now more than ever, that the cops had to stop beating up random black kids to find Luke Cage and needed to protect the community from Luke Cage
I don't think you were meant to take a specific political message from it, though.
...Listen I understand your arguement, butundeadsuitor said:
FUCKING ALIENS.
Once you got a freaking alien invasion and LIVING NORSE GODS running a muck in your reality, the idea of what is plausible for that universe goes out the window
I completely agree. Just because a show takes place in a black neighborhood with incidents of police violence doesn't mean it has to be commentary on police violence, it can merely just be part of the plot. The police were scared of Luke Cage and rightfully so due to both Luke himself and framing. The community doesn't really know Luke Cage either so they definitely aren't in the mindset that they have a hero and most probably feel they have a villain (from the media). Thus the push to give cops weapons to combat Cage makes sense to both the cops and the community because if the cops aren't scared, they aren't going to beat up kids trying to get information on Cage. Luke showing up at the rally and demonstrating who he is was the 1st time the community really saw Luke in action.DrownedAmmet said:
It gets a leeeeeedle bit better.BloatedGuppy said:
The dialogue still causes me to make puking noises at the screen about once every two minutes though.
The action scenes are rubbish. Worse than Daredevil, about on par with Jessica Jones, if you've watched those.
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There's only so many times you can watch a bullet-proof man walk slowly into a hail of gunfire before it gets routine and boring.Zhukov said:
That number is 3. It however happens in almost every episode multiple times an episode.
That's pretty much the extent of the action.
It'd be a missed opportunity, given all the high-profile fuck-ups between police and African-Americans in the past few years. Plus, Luke Cage has always been a politically charged character. Doing otherwiseinu-kun said:
From the OP, it seems like the bigger problem is that they've fumbled the issue to an incredible degree. I mean, if you're going to make an artistic work political, it has to either put forward a political position or, at least, disassemble an opposing political position. You can't just say "Stuff is bad, but stuff can also be good, because things can also be stuff, and sometimes, stuff can be two things, one or more of which may be bad."
As for other black superheroes who don't get political, you've got War Machine and Falcon. But they're more like sidekicks. Which is part of the problem, I guess.
Now I'm putting my hands up, I haven't watched Jessica Jones, however it has been explained to me that in matters of law there's a difference between knowing something and proving something. If Jessica's plan is expose the sumbitch and the threat of mind control as a legitimate variable in crime and legal proceedings then killing him at the moment is counter-productive and you know makes her the one who killed someone that for all intents and purposes was a non-threat because he's already in a jail cell. Once his potential has been proven and the hypothesis confirmed (and providing the CIA doesn't whisk his ass off for black ops) then by all means curbstomp the little bastard.DudeistBelieve said:
The writers took a complex issue with differing opinions on both sides, and more or less left it at: it's complicated. And for the most part the way they handled the human sides of the tension were pretty good. 'There are no easy answers' is a legitimate point.
And then they plonk comic book supervilliany into the mix, and it just doesn't sync well with the rest of it. Mariah's speech was weird, especially considering Luke was up until that point very much a public hero. I guess it and Diamondback's manipulation of the police could be allegories of outside forces using unrest to their advantage. But there isn't an obvious example of that in real life, so the allegory just fizzles among the otherwise nuanced depiction of current police/community relations.
And then they plonk comic book supervilliany into the mix, and it just doesn't sync well with the rest of it. Mariah's speech was weird, especially considering Luke was up until that point very much a public hero. I guess it and Diamondback's manipulation of the police could be allegories of outside forces using unrest to their advantage. But there isn't an obvious example of that in real life, so the allegory just fizzles among the otherwise nuanced depiction of current police/community relations.
