Traumadvise: This column may not be suitable for those who hold religion in holy horror. It could also upset Islamophobes. We prefer to let you know.
Posted at 11:00 a.m.
There is a new superheroine in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (the famous MCU). She is 16 years old, her name is Kamala Khan, she lives in Jersey City and has Pakistani origins. Would she – trigger warning, as young people say – Muslim? Yes.
Her superheroine name is not Muslimwoman, but Ms. Marvel. She is the headliner of the six-episode miniseries of the same name, which arrived on the Disney+ platform on Wednesday. She is a dissipated high school student, marginalized geekette, more interested in meetings of superhero aficionados than in her math or biology exams, much to the chagrin of her parents, who are rather conservative immigrants.
I saw the first episode of Ms.Marvel with Fiston, who seemed less interested in the adventures of this teenager of his age than in those of Obi-Wan Kenobi, who nevertheless has mine. “Because it’s a girl?” I asked him. “No, because she’s a Muslim!” “, he replied tit for tat, with an extra layer of irony. I understood that it was the cliché of the teenager-who-is-being-bullied-in-front-of-her-locker at the very beginning of the episode that he found, with good reason, hackneyed.
Fortunately, Ms.Marvel, a charming series that incorporates elements of animation, is not limited to that. It’s the story of a sassy teenager who worships Captain Marvel, alias Carol Danvers, key character of the Avengers. Her goddess is her. When one day she discovers a mysterious bracelet sent by her family from Pakistan, Kamala inadvertently transforms herself into a superheroine.
Ms.Marvel is not limited to the clichés of series for teenagers, even if it embraces the codes. And it is no more limited to the caricature that Christian or atheist militants wanted to make of it. This week, a private Facebook group of some 16,000 members, Christians Against Ms.Marvelpoured his gall on the Disney + series because it depicts a Muslim family.
Others were indignant at what they interpreted as a first incursion of religion into a universe, that of superheroes, which had hitherto been exempt from it. A detail: it is false. You don’t have to know anything about the culture of comic books Americans and their television and film derivatives to claim that its characters, themselves considered demigods, are non-religious.
The latest superhero in a Marvel Disney+ series, Moon Knight, is Jewish, as are Magneto and Kitty Pryde from the X-Men. Captain America is Christian, Daredevil too. What do they have in common that it could not bother anyone or inspire any chronicle?
No matter how hard I think, I can’t quite put my finger on it. Wait ! No, it doesn’t have to be that, that would be too simple. Could it be because none of them are… Muslim?
Two pieces of a robot, as Tony Stark, aka Iron Man, would say. Ms. Marvel is Muslim. There is little mention of it in the first episode, but – another traumatic warning for those who see religion in their soup and for whom the sight of a veil causes fainting – the teenager prays at the mosque in the trailer for the series. They will recite a hundred Hail Mary (in Latin) to exorcise the image I have just described. With a little holy water, it should pass. Pastor’s word.
What I find deliciously ironic in the speech of those who are indignant that a superheroine can identify with Islam – like some 2 billion of her co-religionists – is the beam of the crucifix that they do not see in their own eye, as a man called Jesus once said.
It takes practicing willful blindness with an apostolic zeal not to realize how many MCU movie scenes shot in churches or cemeteries, which feature Christian religious rites. I know, I’ve seen all the MCU movies and series.
A columnist was shocked by the scene of a prayer in the mosque, but not by that of a prayer in the church? God knows what the difference is. I seek, I seek. Could the columnist consider that HER religion, Catholic secularism, is more a cultural heritage than a religious practice? Would it be for her a form of religious neutrality? What is good for Pitou would therefore not necessarily be good for Minou?
Kamala Khan, played by Toronto’s Iman Vellani, does not perpetuate any prejudice about the submissive Muslim woman that some like to portray. She does not wear the veil except at the mosque, unlike her friend, who does it by choice. She is a gentle rebel who challenges the strict traditional values of her parents, who overprotect and nurture her more than her brother, because she is a girl, she believes.
She dreams of Manhattan and a handsome dark man, listens to The Weeknd and worships the Avengers. She does not deny her ethnic heritage, however, takes pleasure in choosing a new sari and going to the Pakistani grocery store in her neighborhood with her mother.
“We are going to see children of immigrants who are proud of their culture,” explained Iman Vellani this week to my colleague Pascal LeBlanc.
Ms. Marvel lives in Jersey City, but she could have lived in Markham, the young actress’s hometown, or the Parc-Extension district in Montreal. It is not political correctness or “diversity fad” to feature characters who are not white, male and Christian. It is to bear witness to realities that are too often concealed, it is to get out of its majority ruts, it is to give a more faithful account of the society in which we live.
I was just talking about it this week with members of the Group of Thirty, young ambassadors of Montreal’s ethnocultural diversity, who still don’t recognize themselves enough in our television and cinema. They are right, even if, fortunately, things are changing.
A final traumatic warning, for xenophobes this time: according to the 2016 census, more than a third of Montreal’s population was born abroad and more than half is an immigrant. You will have to get used to seeing young brunette women, in life and on screen.