Luke Cage: The good and the bad of season 1

For the culture

I asked a buddy of mine what he thought of Luke Cage and he said, “It was un-apologetically Black.” This might sound like a negative, but it was far from it. Everything about the series promoted Black and African American culture. First, there was the soulful music full of icons like Raphael Saadiq and Faith Evans and newcomers like Jidenna. Another very cool thing was every title of the series was a song from Gang Starr. One of my favorite moments was Method Man in the corner store where Luke Cage stopped a robbery.

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Maybe the most important part was probably the message of togetherness as a community. Urban areas have lost a sense community. Luke Cage promoted this throughout the series. Pops’ Barbershop being a neutral area was a prime example. No matter what, you could always go to Pops’ Barbershop and be safe. There were also powerful moments like the young kid trying to rob Luke. Luke explained what it meant to have a building named after Crispuss Attucks and why that kid using the n-word was something he was NOT going to tolerate. It even dealt with issues of police violence. Luke could have killed those cops. Instead, he chose the hard way.