MS. MARVEL (2022)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *sociological*

Half of the six-part MS. MARVEL streaming series is just a low-impact validation of Muslim-American culture. In contradistinction to the many invidious portraits of Muslims in American film and television, all of the Muslims in MARVEL-- mostly if not entirely of Pakistani extraction-- are absolutely virtuous in every way, so much so that they all register as fundamentally dull.

Validation of a marginalized culture doesn't have to be dull. In the early 1970s, one saw a small handful of movies dealing with African Americans living largely average lives with no pimps or gangsters in evidence. Two of these, SOUNDER (1972) and CLAUDINE (1974), are strong melodramas with appealing characters. However, MARVEL is able to manage no more than an unimaginative, standardized "hero's journey" in which Muslim-American Kamala Khan, upon getting super powers from a mysterious object, fights various vaguely conceived opponents while connecting with her Pakistani forbears. 

Online reviews of this adaptation of Marvel Comics' first well-known Muslim hero (no love for the Arabian Knight, I guess) have attacked the series on issues I find irrelevant. For one thing, in early issues Kamala displays powers comparable to the stretching powers of the Fantastic Four's Mister Fantastic-- though usually she only turns her hands into colossal fists. Attempting to translate this kind of comic-book power might not only be prohibitively expensive, it might not even look all that good in a live-action format. So it does not bother me that the producers behind the series gave Kamala energy-powers that often have the same basic "stretchy" effect. For a second thing, though I understand the business-related reasons as to why Kamala was designated an "Inhuman" in her early comic-book career, and why she's now being called a "mutant," neither designation makes any difference to my estimation of the streaming series.

I might have given MARVEL a passing grade regarding its mythicity just for its celebration of the normative world of Muslim-Americans. However, as usual Kevin Feige's MCU cannot pass up any opportunity to distort real-world politics. Thus, when Kamala begins to make contact with the Pakistani world of her deceased grandmother-- who is also the source of the aforesaid power-imbuing object-- the heroine experiences some of the violence of the 1940s period called "The Partition," during which Pakistan was established as a state separate from the parent country of India. But from this series one would barely know that the violence stemmed from conflicts between Indians and Pakistanis as the respective groups either departed from or headed toward the future state of Pakistan. 

At that point in history, the British were removing their forces from India, specifically because both Indians and future-Pakistanis wanted them out. Some historians believe that the former administrators of India should have stayed in India long enough to oversee the Partition, and that's a possible fault that the series might have explored. But the flashbacks to the Partition barely if ever mention the presence of Hindus, and includes a scene in which British soldiers are for some reason bombarding helpless Pakistanis. Why would the Brits be doing this? MARVEL does not care to give specifics; violence is just something Evil White People commit, even when they have nothing to gain from their Evil Acts. Feige's MCU cannot admit that two POC groups might have conflicts that result in the sort of destruction that can only be levied against the White Patriarchy.

And of course American authorities have continued the Evil Whiteness of the Brits. Though a few episodes have Kamala menaced by a POC terrorist group, her primary opponent is a government agency, Damage Control, which is out to capture Kamala because she's unpredictable. (I'm surprised that the Registration Act of CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR is not evoked, but that political briar patch seems not to have any effect on the streaming serials.) For once, the leader of the nasty agency is a female-type woman, but she's painted as an unregenerate racist in that she claims she wants to keep powers away from "the wrong type of people." She immediately clarifies that she means anile teenagers, not Muslims, but the writers know how their audience will read the remark. The most I can say of MS. MARVEL is that its woke politics aren't nearly as lazy and predictable as those of FALCON AND THE WINTER SOLDIER, and that star Iman Vellani gives her limited role a lot of gusto.