Fahad Asat

English 115
Professor Lawson
20 November 2016
Research Paper Draft 1
Word Count: Not Finished
Not the Hero We Deserve but the One We Need?
From Iron Man, Thor, Captain America, Ant-Man, The avengers, to Daredevil, Jessica
Jones, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Agent Carter, and Luke Cage, the last ten years has given a rise in
both Marvels superhero movies and television series. While Marvels is in no way lacking in its
super hero versus villain action filled storylines, they are now also starting to reach out and
connect cultural and social issues to their television series. A recent television series released
through the video streaming site netflix, Marvels Luke Cage, focuses heavily on not just the
typical crime-fighting hero, but also connects its audience to the African American community.
Through the use of characters, setting, and connection to real-life events Marvels Luke Cage
realistically represents the racial, social, and economical matters of the African American
community.
A relatively new show, Luke Cage, was released in Sept. 20, 2016 with the intent on
being a live-action representation of the 1970s comic; Luke Cage: Hero for Hire. (Source 1) Set
in the Marvels cinematic universe this live action adaptation takes place in Harlem, a
neighborhood in New York City. Harlem boasts itself in having a historically high african
American population which is still present to this day and is paralleled in the television series.
(Source 2) The show follows Luke Cage through the streets of Harlem while he takes on various

criminals, gangs, and even cops as he tried to the right thing for himself and the people of
Harlem. Cage uses his super powers of strength, impenetrability, super regeneration, and other
super human talents that he got got in a prison lab experiment in his uphill battle against crime.
In doing so the audience is forced into the eyes of Cage and by default into the eyes of black man
as he confronts the stereotypes and stigmas that surround the African American community.
Luke Cage presents the audience with the usual cast in superhero esque shows. The hero
with his/her support group, the villain with his/her cronies and finally the unsuspecting people of
the city who jump on the team the media portrays to be better. While the cast isn't anything ord
of the ordinary the audience is however presented with a cast starring African American actors.
While this may not be a significant factor upon a second glance a cast dominated by African
American actors is a highly rare spectacle as proven in a research study conducted by Venkat
Kuppuswamy from the University of North Carolina who took 732 films released from 2011 to
2015 that met the criteria for the Academy Award and of those films they concluded only 83 of
those movies have more than one African American in the lead cast. (Source 3) Luke Cage
completely breaks this mold by giving the audience a whole array of African American actors
from the lead role to the extra who's walking down the street. In doing so Luke Cage reveals to
us the relationship between diversity and Hollywood. Luke Cage makes the audience question
why they feel different towards the actors in this particular show compared to others and thats
because it is different. Dr. Stacy Smith from the University of Southern California studied 700
films from 2007-2014 excluding 2011 and found out that the diversity of the film industry has
ultimately remained unchanged. With 78% white and 13% African American in 2007 to 73%
white and 13% African American the statistics the researchers found stayed virtually consistent
throughout the years. (Source 4) With almost the full lead of African Americans of both men and

women the show tries to combat this racial inequality that is full in both movies and television
shows in the United States and the UK. [Provide more commentary] Since the audience is
statistically not used to a large African American cast that portrays the universal expressions of
the American people and not just the ethnic expression of the African American, the show tells
its audience that if you find its cast unusual it's because in hollywood it is.
[Paragraph on setting]
The Harlem setting presented to the audience from the show is also a representations of
the actual community set in New york.
While Luke Cage is a fictional super hero show with a lot of aspects on the unrealistic
sense, we are still presented with a real-life parallel.
[Counter Argument]
[Conclusion]