Meet Kamala Khan, aka Ms. Marvel, the sixteen-year-old Pakistani American school girl/newest Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) Superhero to fly across the TV or streaming device in your hand. In Pakistan, where the series is partly set, it has been accorded feature film status and screened in cinemas to a large rapturous response. In a comment that was echoed through the social media and online universe, @fatimafarha noted on Twitter (June 9), “The first Muslim superhero being introduced in the MCU [Marvel Cinematic Universe] & she’s a young Pakistani girl at that. This is special. Especially for the brown girls who grew up feeling like they would have to abandon their culture to be accepted & loved. This is for us.” Following the screening of the first episode, PardesiBlog posted, “As a Pakistani woman myself, this small 50-minute episode made me feel more seen than I ever have in my entire life.”
The celebration is understandable, even if some of the responses ring a tad close to cultural cringe. But then, Muslim, Pakistani, and South Asian communities, both diasporic and within South Asia, have long been chafing under the cultural imperialism of western media conglomerates that have, for far too long reduced to us enemies, exotica, or entertainment if we were present at all. So yes, we have had gains with work from Gurinder Chadha, Mira Nair, Mindy Kaling, Dev Patel, and Riz Ahmed, et al but they are arguably relegated still to the niche, art house sector.
But the Superhero franchises are not only central to mainstream American culture, but they are also a global pop culture phenomenon. Making Ms Marvel a Pakistani Muslim girl was a pretty radical leap forward. It jumped us post 9–11, Islamophobia notwithstanding, from the margins bang into the mainstream
Kudos to Marvel for taking that jump. But then they knew that given the recent hypersensitivity around race, gender, and sexuality representation, they had some catching up to do. Marvel has had a spotty history around racist, stereotypical depictions or just an absence of cultural diversity (let’s not count aliens — as representative of cultural diversity). There are theses written on the subject.
Besides the glaringly all-Caucasian leadership group of the Avengers: Iron Man, Thor, The Hulk, and Captain America, Marvel got into deserved trouble for whitewashing the character of the Ancient One in the film Dr. Strange (2016) by casting Tilda Swinton in the role, and in early 2022 there was more trouble brewing when Marvel released a new comic centered around the Black Hispanic character Miles Morales that got backlash for its stereotypical depiction of Black characters and neighbourhood.
On the other hand, it was Marvel who got CEO Kevin Feige to issue a very public apology for the Dr. Strange casting debacle, got it very right with Black Panther, got it right again with Teyonah Parris in Wandavison, and with Zendaya as Mary Jane in Spider-Man Homecoming and in having celebrated indie filmmaker Chloé Zhao direct the multiracial cast in The Eternals (2021).
With Ms. Marvel, the studio must be lauded for trying to get it right in diversifying its line-up.
The comic book character of Kamala Khan, the Pakistani American teenager from Jersey City with polymorphing abilities who takes on the mantle of Ms. Marvel from her blonde, blue-eyed All-American idol Carol Danvers, was created by Sana Amanat a Pakistani American then comic book editor and now Marvel’s Director of Content and Character Development working with Muslim writer G. Willow Wilson. Between them they created Marvel’s first Muslim character to headline her own series winning a Hugo Award for best graphic story (2015) in the process.
Amanat has been clear that Kamala Khan was drawn on her own experiences as a child of Pakistani immigrants living in suburban US and she assembled a production team to deliver. The writer’s room was headed by Bisha k Ali, the British Pakistani stand-up comedian and screenwriter, and included poet and writer Fatimah Ashghar of Brown Girls fame. The supporting cast behind the 18 year old Pakistani Canadian Iman Vellani as Kamla Khan, is largely Pakistani including Nimra Bucha, Samina Ahmed, Mehwish Hayat who are regulars on Pakistani TV. (Having said that, the casting of Indian actors Zenobia Shroff and Mohan Kapur as Kamala’s parents has some Pakistani critics pointing to Bollywood imperialism.) The featured director was Oscar and Emmy award-winning Pakistani Canadian journalist and filmmaker Sarmeen Obaid-Chinoy, renowned for her work on women’s rights issues in Pakistan.
The issue of ‘authenticity’ was clearly a central concern for this production. It has won a huge amount of praise across the chattering classes for its nuanced, detailed, respectful, realistic portrayal of a Muslim, Pakistani, American family living in suburban US. The way the family interacts with each other, the Urdu and English mix of languages, hero worshipping Sharukh Khan, the suburban shopping experiences and the gossiping aunties, wedding preparations, the particularities of a girl’s place in mosques, the aggressions micro and macro still facing Muslims all ring surprisingly true for viewers. Then there is the music. Rohan Naahar in an article for The Indian Express (July 16, 2022) Ms Marvel: How The MCU show uses music to cure generational pain, repair cross-border tensions” points out that show is savvy in the way it uses music not just as a cultural signifier but with a Desi insiders’ perspective of the way classics mix with contemporary tracks. From the 60’s Pakistani classic “Ko Ko Korina” in an early shopping montage to Naseebo Lal and Abida Parveens, “Tu Jhoom” in the segment on Partition to Pakistani rapper Eva B’s “Rozi” for the end credits the music is designed to resonate across generations emphasising the centrality of Pakistani Muslim culture as central to Kamla Khan’s sense of identity.
In a change from the comics, the TV series places Kamala Khan’s Pakistani roots and particularly her maternal lineage -her mother, grandmother, and great grandmother- as the source of her power with the seismic trauma of the horrors of the Partition of India in 1947 at the heart of the narrative. More kudos to Marvel for covering this far-too-rarely addressed foundational event and its role in establishing Pakistani and Indian identity. Even if the Marvel version of the world’s largest forced migration tends to the disingenuous and simplistic in muting the real violence and horror inflicted on millions, the inclusion of this seismic event that is slipping into the fog of history is laudable.
While the series is trending positively in audience reviews with 82% approval on Rotten Tomatoes and 6.2 out of 10 on IMDB, the comments aren’t all complimentary. The South Asian community at home and the diaspora have embraced the show, however the world of the Marvel fandom has been less enamoured. Too slow, too much backstory, not enough story, too juvenile, not enough action, and not engaging are some of the complaints. We don’t know yet if there is going to be a second season of the TV show, but Marvel has already indicated that Iman Vellani, aka Kamala Khan, will be making her big screen debut in the forthcoming The Marvels with Brie Larson and Teyonah Pams. The character is here to stay Bring on Ms. Marvel, the very first American, unapologetically Pakistani, unapologetically Muslim, and very unapologetically Female superhero. About bloody time.
