The “Worlding” of the Muslim Superheroine: An Analysis of Ms. Marvel's Kamala Khan (original) (raw)
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African Journal of Gender and Religion, 2018
Over the past decade, we have witnessed a comic book renaissance. The impact of this renaissance can be described as threefold. First, we have seen comic books emerge as a compelling component of popular culture; second, as a "hybrid" form of texts and graphics, comic books have attained a new level of literary acceptance; and third, we have seen the advent of comic studies as an academic discipline in various higher education institutions. In addition, by drawing on myth and history, fantasy and reality, comic books have reproduced society's values, ideals, prejudices, and aspirations, thereby producing various ideological contestations. It is within this context that Marvel Comics' latest creation Ms. Marvel (Kamala Khan), portraying a first-generation American Muslim female teenager, born of Pakistani immigrants as the legendary Ms. Marvel-an American superhero-offers a unique opportunity to unpack the socio-cultural and political nuances embedded in comic books. Hence, by drawing on Ms. Marvel (Kamala Khan) as a case study, this paper seeks to provide a critique of the intersections between religion, race and gender in contemporary comic books. To do this, we employ "social constructionism" as an interpretive and analytical theoretical approach to a selection of scenes from the Ms. Marvel corpus. Our hypothesis is that the intersections between religion, race and gender as "played" out in Ms. Marvel (Kamala Khan) serve to foreground a socially constructed reality of religious (Islamic) bigotry; immigrant socio-cultural and political assimilation 1 Johannes A Smit is Professor and former Dean and Head of the School of Religion, Philosophy and Classics at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. He is the founding editor of the SAPSE journal Alternation and served as research chair of the Humanities in the early 2000s. He teaches Comparative Religion (focus Christianity), and is the head of the Programme in Religion and Social Transformation since 2002. He has a lifelong commitment to interdisciplinary learning and critical research capacity development in the Arts and Humanities. Email: Smitj@ukzn.ac.za. 2 Denzil Chetty is an academic and researcher at the University of South Africa (UNISA) in the College of Human Sciences, School of Humanities, Department of Religious Studies and Arabic. Much of his work focuses on contemporary religion; religion and popular culture; religion, technology and civil society; religion, subalternity and resistance; and the digital humanities. He has published and presented several papers both locally and internationally within this niche. He is also an Abe Bailey Fellow (United Kingdom), a Shanghai Open University Visiting African Scholar (China), and the recipient of UNISA's Excellence in Teaching and Learning Award. Email: Chettd@unisa.ac.za. 2 Smit and Chetty predispositions; and gender and power disparities embedded in both Muslim immigrant worldviews (internal) and American social ideals (external).
Girlhood Studies journal , 2015
This article examines the production and operation of Kamala Khan, a muslim, American-Pakistani superheroine, of the Ms. Marvel comic series to glean what she reveals about Islam and muslims, with particular attention to representations of muslim masculinities. We argue that Ms. Marvel’s invitation of visualizing muslim girls as superheroes is framed by a desire to interrupt rampant Islamophobia and xenophobia, yet in order produce such a disruption it relies on, and (re)produces, stereotypical conceptualizations of muslim masculinities as conservative, prone to irrational rage, pre-modern, anachronistic, and even animalistic. However, as the series progresses we notice the emergence of complex and complicated muslim masculinities that cast doubt around tired representations, making way for comics to undertake the pedagogical work of resistance. Hence, we see these novel comics, like the shape-shifting Kamala herself, as wielding potentially dynamic and transformative powers in social imaginaries.
The Muslim Superhero in Contemporary American Popular Culture
Heroism, while universally valued, is not unanimously conceptualized, with one culture’s hero lacking the qualities sought in another’s. The American comic book superhero features nearly all races, creeds, and nationalities (at least in passing). It is no surprise, then, that Muslim characters have appeared any number of times within the genre (though their presences have frequently been fleeting and feeble). Over the last several years, however, the roster of Muslim superheroes has grown as has the thoughtfulness of their depictions. Beneath the surface of their inclusion lies the underlying question of whether Muslim morality meshes with the superheroic principles of the U.S.-based genre. Ultimately, while some gulf does exist between Islamic ideals of heroism and the superheroism of American comic books, it is no wider—and should be no more incongruous—than the principles of a model Jewish or Hindu champion and those of the pop cultural superhero.
Veils and Vigilantes: Burka Avenger and Representations of Muslim Girlhood
Postcolonial Text, 2019
In this paper, I use Burka Avenger, the Peabody Award-winning Pakistani cartoon series, and its play on the superhero genre as an entry point to consider anew questions of feminist agency and empowerment. I examine the transformation of the burqa into a superhero costume in Burka Avenger as an attempt to question the limited binary of oppressive-liberatory that is typically applied to Muslim veiling. Secondly, I argue that the abstracted quality of the cartoon images and the significance accorded to the child’s perspective cultivate a formal naivete central to the pedagogical and ethical projects of this self-consciously transcultural text. Since visual narrative genres like the cartoon series are especially conducive to theorizing forms of agency available to children—subjects who are, by definition, unemancipated—I bring my close reading of Burka Avenger into dialogue with critical debates over Muslim girlhood, freedom, and autonomy.
Using the concept of phantasm, this article examines the media stories by Naif Al-Mutawa, the creator of The 99, which is touted as the first 'Islamic' cartoon superheroes. His stories attempt to globalize The 99, but in a manner that veils Islam. His global phantasm, therefore, upholds the visual policy of Islam, but it also makes The 99 no longer Islamic. This is how the global phantasm is induced—by making in/visible Islam but makes questionable the super-heroic status of The 99.
The Woman in Hijab as a Freak: Super(Muslim)woman in Deena Mohamed's Webcomic Qahera
Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics , 2017
This article examines the representation of the woman in hijab as a freak in Deena Mohamed’s webcomic Qahera. In creating Qahera, a hijab-wearing superheroine, Mohamed reconstructs difference as a performance of Homi Bhabha's Third Space. Instead of becoming an objectified spectacle that affirms normative bodies, Qahera’s visibility as a freak disrupts binary oppositions naturalised by the hegemonic discourses of Arab patriarchy and Western feminism regarding what constitutes a ‘normal’ body. Her freakery challenges the discourses that try to silence her because what makes Qahera a superheroine is not her superpowers but the transformational force of her hijab. It becomes a discursive tool turning dichotomising discourses on their ear and establishing agency over the representability of her body. Relying on Freak Studies, gender theories, and Postcolonial Studies as a theoretical framework, this article problematises the representation of Muslim women by the dialectical discourses of Arab patriarchy and Western Feminism.