The Luke Cage Syllabus
June 23, 2018 2:16 PM Subscribe
"Books are such a significant part of the dialogue in key scenes, and how often does any show feature a Black man with an affinity for books — as any character, much less the lead?" (The comments actually are mostly pretty good and have additional information!)
This is neat, thank you!
The literary references are actually one of my favorite elements of Luke Cage, (and something I enjoy about Black Lightning too, as filthy light thief mentioned). A lot of them run right past me, but I'm just pleased to see books so central to him and the people in his life, read purely because they all *want* to. Not grudgingly consulted to get a plot coupon, not to justify technobabble, but for personal enrichment.
It feels like much needed pushback on the anti-intellectualism prevalent in a lot of action properties, and I hope to see it in more stories going forward.
posted by mordax at 5:06 PM on June 23, 2018 [4 favorites]
The literary references are actually one of my favorite elements of Luke Cage, (and something I enjoy about Black Lightning too, as filthy light thief mentioned). A lot of them run right past me, but I'm just pleased to see books so central to him and the people in his life, read purely because they all *want* to. Not grudgingly consulted to get a plot coupon, not to justify technobabble, but for personal enrichment.
It feels like much needed pushback on the anti-intellectualism prevalent in a lot of action properties, and I hope to see it in more stories going forward.
posted by mordax at 5:06 PM on June 23, 2018 [4 favorites]
That's really interesting, thanks for posting it!
posted by languagehat at 5:32 PM on June 23, 2018
posted by languagehat at 5:32 PM on June 23, 2018
The article's author is Tara Betts, a pretty great poet.
posted by eustacescrubb at 7:11 PM on June 23, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by eustacescrubb at 7:11 PM on June 23, 2018 [1 favorite]
Luke Cage S2 E1 Fanfare thread posted now. (I don't want to read any Luke Cage essays/general discussion threads until I've finished watching the new season for fear of spoilers, but I'll definitely loop back around to read this one once I have, sounds interesting.)
posted by oh yeah! at 9:20 AM on June 24, 2018
posted by oh yeah! at 9:20 AM on June 24, 2018
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Black Lighting (FanFare series link, possible spoilers in episode summaries) had some Black literature sprinkled through the show, but I didn't find any helpful summaries like this for it.
posted by filthy light thief at 2:44 PM on June 23, 2018 [2 favorites]