Bulletproof Love: Luke Cage (2016) and Religion

There are many ways to think about religion and popular culture. One method isto ask where and when we see what might be commonly understood as “religioustradition(s)” explicitly on display. Another is to think about superhero narrativesthemselves as “religious”, using this term as a conceptual tool for categorizing andthereby better understanding particular dimensions of human experience. This articletakes a variety of approaches to understanding religion in relation to the recent televisionseries LUKE CAGE (Netflix, US 2016). These approaches take their hermeneuticalcues from a range of disciplines, including studies of the Bible; Hip Hop; gender;Black Theology; African American religion; and philosophy. The results of this analysishighlight the polysemic nature of popular culture in general, and of superhero storiesin particular. Like religious traditions themselves, the show is complex and contradictory:it is both progressive and reactionary; emphasizes community and valorizes anindividual; critiques and endorses Christianity; subverts and promotes violence. Dependingon the questions asked, LUKE CAGE (2016) provides a range of very differentanswers.