Bunch of babies…
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I think you need to think more carefully about when and why “appropriation” is problematic. No one character can represent everyone’s experience in a group, after all, and trying to do so would end up with a weird “average person” character that no one likes very much.
The situation with Raya - where the asian elements seem to be (allegedly, at least) used to generate an exotic “fantasy” backdrop to the story without necessarily saying anything much about those cultures, seems very different to the situation with Kamala - where there’s an intentional push to get people to relate to and tell the stories of a particular minority group.
Besides, even in the screenshot, Kamala lusting after the “infidel meat” is contrasted with her sister who is not. Within the story there is a theme that Kamala feels challenged in terms of deciding what her identity really is, including her initial decision to model herself on Captain Marvel.
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Hey! She is a bright little star in that show!
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Well that’s a good sign!
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How much appropriation is going down if the people represented are making it.
I can see discomfort with the way a very big media company credits themselves for it. But what we have here is a property about a Muslim young woman, mostly driven by a bunch of Muslim women. Who not only got this thing made, but pulled it off well (in terms of the comic. we haven’t seen most of the show), and got a very big company very on board with backing it. Despite a lot of resistance, pushback and continual criticism on both ends of it.
A lot of the criticism we’re seeing now is identical to what was seen over the comic over the years. A lot of these questions have been asked and answered, discussed by the creative team repeatedly. Like the hijab thing. Wilson has said they considered it, and ultimately went without because the majority of American , Muslim teens do not wear them. They did that despite knowing it would anger some people, and going the other way would anger other people.
Meanwhile I don’t think I could imagine a major media company getting as behind a young performer like Iman Vellani as Marvel has. I don’t think I could imagine the Hollywood press gushing about what a star she’s going to be the way they have been. Before right now or without a project like this.
Criticisms are valid, nothing is perfect. But some aspect of this around Ms. Marvel has always seemed like frustrating discussion in a vacuum.
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Which is why I say much of this seems to be “manufactured outrage” for the eyeballs (clickbait) several posts back.
Generally Muslim girls don’t wear hijab until they hit puberty anyway. Again, Muslim is not a monolith, despite some fanatic’s attempt to make it so. But then, we can say the same about many different religions.
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In other words, they’ve gone beyond “representation” and have actually done what writers should be doing which is to develop interesting characters for their work.
An actual character is going to interact with the plot in a way that the bland, identikit “representative” will never do. They’ll go through conflict, and may even critique elements of their background in ways that make others that share some of that background (especially cultural conservatives who think they can gatekeep what it means to be “one of us”) very uncomfortable indeed. And that’s what good writing should do, no matter what.
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