THE BULLETPROOF BLACK MAN: CONTEXTUALIZING SUPERHERO LUKE CAGE THROUGH MASS INCARCERATION and BLACK RADICALISM in the 1970S and 2010S
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THE BULLETPROOF BLACK MAN: CONTEXTUALIZING SUPERHERO LUKE CAGE THROUGH MASS INCARCERATION AND BLACK RADICALISM IN THE 1970s AND 2010s A THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE DIVISION OF THE UNIVERSITY OF HAWAIʻ I AT MĀNOA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS, IN HISTORY MAY 2017 BY Misha Ann Matsumoto Thesis Committee: Margot Henriksen, Chairperson Suzanna Reiss Njoroge Njoroge Keywords: Comic books, Black Radicalism, New Black Radicalism, Mass Incarceration, Luke Cage, Marvel Comics, Netflix, Black Lives Matter, #BlackLivesMatter TABLE OF CONTENTS: LIST OF FIGURES ........................................................................................................................ ii INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................................................... 1 CHAPTER ONE. #BlackLivesMatter: the Inequalities of the Ameican Justice System ............. 10 It Began with a Hashtag: #BlackLivesMatter, Establishing a Movement, Not a Moment ....... 11 Synthesizing Black Radicalism: from the Civil Rights Movement to 2016 ............................. 19 Black Radicalism and Incarceration in the 1970s and 2010s ................................................... 24 Intersectionality and Social Mobilization’s Role in Developing the BLM Movement ............ 27 CHAPTER TWO. Mass Incarceration: The Fourth Peculiar Institution ...................................... 31 The Legalized System of Oppression ....................................................................................... 31 1970s: The Civil Rights Movement’s New Fight for Social Justice ........................................ 36 The Prison Industrial Complex: The Lasting Effects of the Prison System ............................. 42 Black Radicalization and the Prison in the 2010s ..................................................................... 49 CHAPTER THREE. The Bulletproof Black Man: Contextualizing Superhero Luke Cage in the 1970s and 2010s ................................................... 58 Creating Luke Cage, the Hero for Hire ..................................................................................... 58 The Power of Cage: Bulletproof Skin in a Bullet-Prone Age ................................................... 64 Racial Stratification and the Criminalization of Space ............................................................. 77 Institutionalized Racism: Racial Profiling and Mass Incarceration .......................................... 92 CONCLUSION: .......................................................................................................................... 101 BIBLIOGRAPHY ....................................................................................................................... 107 i LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1: America's Incarceration Rate Compared to Global Numbers ...................................... 49 Figure 2: A Sample of State Break Down of Police Violence. .................................................... 55 Figure 3: Cover of Hero for Hire #1. ........................................................................................... 58 Figure 4: Hero for Hire and Marvel's Luke Cage's portrayal of Mariah. .................................... 63 Figure 5: Quirt's abuse of solitary confinement protocol. ........................................................... 68 Figure 6: Rackham's abuse of power against Shades and Comanche. ....................................... 70 Figure 7: Mike Colter, as Luke Cage, paying homage to Trayvon Martin, donning a grey hoodie. ................................................................................................. 76 Figure 8: The wrongful conviction of Carl Lucas (Luke Cage). ................................................. 80 Figure 9: The social degradation in Cage's Harlem ..................................................................... 81 Figure 10: The cinematic representation of Cottonmouth as king of Harlem. ............................ 82 Figure 11: Cage's meeting with the Faceless One on Doom's planet, Latveria. .......................... 85 Figure 12: Harlem police department's harassment of the black community after ..................... 87 Figure 13: Lonnie's interrogation in Marvel's Luke Cage ........................................................... 88 Figure 14: Lonnie as a victim of Harlem’s .................................................................................. 90 Figure 15: Carl Lucas' adoption of the name Luke Cage. ........................................................... 95 Figure 16: The legal death of Cage and the corresponding removal of citizenship rights of naturally born American citizen due to incarceration. ............. 96 Figure 17: Dr. Noah Burnstein's experimentation on Carl Lucas in Luke Cage: Hero for Hire. 99 Figure 18: Dr. Noah Burnstein's experimentation on Carl Lucas in Marvel's Luke Cage ......... 100 ii INTRODUCTION “When I think about what is going on in the world right now, the world is ready for a bulletproof black man.” -Cheo Hodari Coker, Marvel’s Luke Cage creator1 2017 marks the five-year anniversary of Trayvon Martin’s death. Martin’s story continues to be a source of inspiration and power for movements like Black Lives Matter, which recognize the continuities of racial injustices throughout American history. Solidarity for Martin continues into 2017. Professional athletes have worn hoodies in memory of Martin; mantras like “I am Trayvon Martin” highlight how Martin’s experience could be any young black man’s experience; former president Barrack Obama was quoted as saying, “If I had a son, he would look like Trayvon”; and celebrities have tweeted, hashtagged, and posted “hoodies up” memorials in support of the Trayvon Martin Foundation.2 Martin’s death has become a symbol for the deeply embedded history of the oppression of blacks in American society, emphasizing racial targeting, race-based biases in law enforcement, and the mass incarceration of African Americans. Connections between the mass incarceration of African Americans and black radicalism is established in both Marvel’s 1972-1973 Luke Cage: Hero for Hire comic book series and Netflix’s 2016 Marvel’s Luke Cage television series. After being wrongly incarcerated on a narcotics charge, Luke Cage is subjected to prison guards’ abuse of power, deplorable living conditions, and medical experimentation. In hopes of attaining parole, Cage volunteers for Dr. 1 Verne Gay, “Colter superb as superhero ascending, ‘Luke Cage,’” Honolulu Star Advertiser, 1 October 2016, D3. 2 Darran Simon, “Trayvon Martin’s death sparked a movement that lives on five years later,” CNN, 26 February 2017, accessed 26 February 2017. http://www.cnn.com/2017/02/26/us/trayvon-martin-death-anniversary/. Maeve McDermott, “‘Hoodies up’: Celebrities honor Trayvon Martin five years after his death,” USA Today, 26 February 2017, accessed 26 February 2017. http://www.usatoday.com/story/life/entertainthis/2017/02/26/celebrities- honor-trayvon-martin-five-years-after-his-death/98452544/. 1 Noah Burstein’s biometric altering experiment. While in the bio-chamber, a rapacious prison guard, Captain Rackham, takes advantage of Cage’s confinement and increases the chemical solution to maximum exposure attempting to kill Cage. Instead, Cage emerges from the bio- chamber with newfound powers of augmented strength and bulletproof skin, making him virtually indestructible. Luke Cage: Hero for Hire is representative of the increasing problem of African American mass incarceration and the rise of black radical ideas. Following the life of Cage, the comic book series shows the struggles African Americans face in a white society: unjust prison sentences and racialized targeting of black men. As the first black American hero to have his own eponymously titled comic-book series, Luke Cage and his story only lasted sixteen issues; however, with the creation of Marvel’s Luke Cage, Cage has gained appeal with a new generation and has become a pertinent character once again.3 The 2016 Netflix series openly addresses the proliferated racial targeting of African Americans and the prominence of a new black activism in the twenty-first century: the Black Lives Matter movement. The struggles Cage endures, and the symbolic representation of his powers in both series, are relevant reminders of the significant historical intersections between this character and the emergence of black radical movements and an increasing focus on the prison industrial complex. In both Luke Cage: Hero for Hire and Marvel’s Luke Cage, Luke Cage represents an African American prisoner who is able to use his strength, masculinity, and impenetrable skin as powerful tools to fight crime as a reluctant hero while also raising awareness of the deplorable conditions of the prison, the struggles of African Americans’ fight for social equality, and the development of the fourth peculiar institution emerging in America. Sociologist Loïc Wacquant 3 The Black Panther is the first African superhero to appear in an American comic book. The Black Panther character first appeared in Marvel’s Fantastic Four #52 (1966), and in 1976 he gained his own title series. Black Panther serves as an alias for T’Challa, a monarch of the fictional African kingdom of Wakanda, a scientist, and a former educator. 2 argues in “From Slavery to Mass Incarceration” (2002) that mass incarceration emerged as a new peculiar institution in the 1960s that racially