By: Ricardo A. Serrano Denis
Storytelling, no matter how much it indulges in its fiction, can never truly escape reality. Social tensions, cultural anxieties, historical continuity, all of these things cling to fiction and demand that their presence be felt in comic books, film, and video games. The same goes with different genres. During the Cold War, Westerns dominated pop culture because they resonated most, in discourse and representation, with the ideological battle that the United States waged against Soviet Russia. The good guys (cowboys) were American bred, morally righteous, and white. The bad guys (Native Americans) were foreign to the ways of the good guys, antagonistic to American expansion, and red (labeled as such by the good guys and ironically compatible with the Soviet enemy). Who knew Native Americans could so easily fit into a metaphor for Cold War Communists? After Westerns, different genres took the mantle of Cold War politics and created stories that best reflected the different phases of said conflict (see Cold War science fiction and horror for some of the best examples), taking into account new developments and their wavering meanings. What was interesting was that each genre had its hero. Westerns had cowboys, combat films had soldiers, noirs had broken detectives, and thrillers had their spies. So, in a sense, one can say that genres define heroes the same way heroes define genres. But what of the heroes that stray from the classic formulas of Golden Age comics? What of those heroes of the post-9/11 world that are not a part of the Avengers or the Justice League? What of heroes that are Muslim, Latino, or Asian? What do they make of their genre, the superhero genre? And what does the genre make of them and their identities?
Like a direct answer to these questions comes Ms. Marvel, written by G. Willow Wilson and illustrated by Adrian Alphona. Ms. Marvel tells the story of Kamala Khan, a 16 year-old Pakistani-American from New Jersey who idolizes Carol Danvers, the first Ms. Marvel from the comic book world. Kamala Khan is the fourth character to take the name of Ms. Marvel, inserting herself into Marvel’s current Marvel NOW! series—a semi-reboot of the Marvel universe intended to pull in new readers. Kamala is young, of color, and a minority, two elements that not only dictate identity in a very fierce manner but also inform the social tensions that define the post-9/11 world. She is also Muslim, a character trait (come 9/11) that automatically communicates persecution and antagonism. This does not even have to be alluded to textually for the reader to comprehend the character’s current state of affairs. Kamala’s religion is inherently added into the mix of components that makes her identity so reactive.
Now, being a comic that deals in identity so directly, it is important we recognize the elements that make that topic drive the character into being a superhero. Those elements come out of Carol Danvers, the first female character to take up the name of Ms. Marvel. Kamala Khan idolizes Carol Danvers. This idolization comes through her fan fiction writings in the comic. Kamala’s characters are all supreme metaphors for American values. Captain America, Iron Man, and Carol Danvers/Captain Marvel all make their appearances in her fantasy superhero stories. Captain America represents American war, Iron Man represents American freedom through economical gain and freedom, and Danvers represents a very traditional female image built into American conceptions of beauty and its power. She stands for a sort of female normalcy that plays second fiddle to male predominance in heroic deeds. It is of no wonder, then, that Kamala finds refuge in Danvers.
Danvers is a white, blond bombshell that dresses in a skimpy black outfit with a yellow thunderbolt symbol across her chest. She was usually drawn the traditionally sexist way Marvel and DC drew (and continues to draw) their female characters, breasts bigger than her head and barely covered by a modified swimsuit (see most iterations of Wonder Woman and Elektra). This image extends well into the comic book culture of the 90s and early 2000s and makes up a sort of sexually misguided tradition that kept female superhero characters a step behind their male counterparts. They were objects readers could drool over instead of idols and examples they could follow or wish to become. Kamala falls under the second tier of followers by wanting to be Danvers in image, spectacularly sexualized though it may be. But Kamala’s intentions are far from sexual. They are cultural. They speak to identity, American identity.
Ms. Marvel #1 opens with Kamala coveting, as she says, “delicious, delicious infidel meat.” She’s in a convenience store with friends when two, American, classmates come in and go through the now customary passive-aggressive culture bashing. We immediately meet a Kamala that desperately wants to fit in, to be “normal”. Of course, being normal means going out to parties and drinking with boys. The comic never directly associates normalcy with being American, but it is heavily implied. Kamala’s obsession with Carol Danvers further hits the nail on the proverbial coffin. Consider Kamala’s claim to normalcy after her very traditional father prohibits her from going out to an outdoor party:
It’s just one party. It’s not like I’m asking their
permission to snort cocaine…Why am I the only one who
gets signed out of health class? Why do I have to bring
Pakoras to school for lunch?...Everybody else gets to be normal.
Why can’t I?
The discourses are simple enough: foreign girl wants to fit in. Her culture and the traditions that define her family’s identity hold her back. That she resists them is not only logical but expected given Kamala’s family is far away from home, and that sense of home cannot be expected to fully migrate into American soil intact. Kamala’s discursive rebellion follows an actual act of rebellion when she escapes to the party her father forbade her from going. At the party Kamala drinks, throws up, and is made fun of by the same classmates that teased her in the convenience store scene. She is ridiculed, making her identity stand out all the more. The stage is set for the transformation.
As Kamala walks back to her house Terrigen mists descend upon Jersey City, swallowing up Kamala into a cocoon that transforms her into an Inhuman. The Terrigen mists are part of Marvel’s Infinity event, where the Inhumans and Thanos unleash a force that seeks out beings with Inhuman genes to encase them in cocoons that awaken their powers. Inside the cocoon Kamala is visited by three superhero hallucinations: Captain America, Iron Man, and Carol Danvers (now as Captain Marvel). They are the same characters that appear in her fan fiction. They question her intentions, her drive to be normal. They look like gods, speaking to their universal traits rather than their nationalistic ones. This is important considering the three heroes represent Americanism in one of its most intense forms. They are heroes we aspire to be. But they are heroes that never stray from their nationalities. Danvers asks the ultimate question: “What do you want to be?” To which Kamala answers: “I want to be you. Except I would wear the classic, politically incorrect costume and kick butt in giant wedge heels.” Kamala challenges her identity, reasserts her right to make up her identity as she pleases (a very American ideal should it stick to its utopic underpinnings), and makes the decision. Danvers answers, in a very wise manner, “It is not going to turn out the way you think.” Kamala wakes up, breaks out of the cocoon, and stands into the light a blond superhero in a skimpy black outfit, the same one she wanted. She became an American superhero.
According to Thomas Schatz, in his book Hollywood Genres: Formulas, Filmmaking, and the Studio System (1981), genres are privileged story forms in which social tensions are brought to life in narratives and are ritualistically resolved. But popular genres, he explains, are those that can best animate and resolve social tensions through their metaphors. Comic books are popular culture products carrying within their pages iconic characters that proudly represent, and define, the superhero genre. Their power, the thing that makes comics matter, comes from the fact that the superheroes that live in the comic book pages can convincingly resolve social tensions, suppressing, if only marginally, the things that feed off of them. Superheroes are metaphors for a better way of life, for a way to do things the right way. That is why we want to be them, just like Kamala.
Ms. Marvel is a powerful comic for various reasons, many of which I have explored here. But in the end, we find that Kamala is not so different from the average comic book reader. She wanted to be something different and she succeeded in doing so. Her reasons are complex, not too alien from things we have felt more than once in our lives. She becomes a superhero to fit in, to be a part of something that does not understand her. In looking for normalcy she further distanced herself from it. Her metaphor is one of change, of acceptance, and of diversity. She contemplates the possibility that equality is too naïve an aspiration. Instead she represents an alternative. In a world where identity can label heroes and villains too freely, Kamala speaks for diversity as a superpower rather than a weakness. For Kamala the word Muslim does not mean terrorist or not-normal, it means superhero.
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