By: Kathy Wu
On June 17, 2022, the recently produced Marvel Studios television series, Ms. Marvel, caught the eye of many Avengers’ fans from around the world. More importantly, the fictional main character, Kamala Khan (played by Iman Vellani) is Marvel’s very first Muslim character to be the spotlight of her own comic book. The show portrays an ordinary Muslim girl who can do the extraordinary. Although I was originally not a big Marvel fan, I can guarantee that this novel cinematic representation has changed my opinion completely, rating this new original a full five out of five stars.
This piece of artistic media deserves full points simply because of how it teaches humans from around the world to accept one another. It points out the neglected so that stereotypical people can realize their wrongdoings. “For too long Hollywood and the media have relied on reductive, one-dimensional monolithic characters, as well as lazy sign-posting,” said Rifat Malik who runs American Muslim Today, a non-profit news outlet that challenges the media’s negative stereotypes about Muslims.
In addition, G. Willow Wilson, a Muslim herself and the one with the idea to remake Ms. Marvel as a Pakistani-American teen said that she wanted to create artistic media that children of numerous ethnic groups could turn back to “to see that they are not alone,” which is a true experience from myself that lies near and dear to my heart.
Lastly, inspiration obviously takes a big part in the movie to show what people can do to change the world. “I really do think this is going to kind of inspire more Muslims and South Asians to tell their story because, you know, this is one singular representation of the Muslim experience if you will,” Vellani told the national public radio network of the U.S. NPR news.
Ms. Marvel is only the start of many upcoming television hits, which can teach people to accept one another, allow children of numerous ethnic groups to see that they are not alone, and trail inspiration into the world so that people can change the world just like the movie did, all by itself. Is this the one big hit that will create the many successful productions in the future? The only answer is yes.
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