Category A, Prompt a
On page 16 of section 3 of Ms. Marvel, Kamala is called to deal with an armed robbery. In this moment, she is puzzled as her powers are relatively new to her and she has not yet dealt with crime. Kamala receives a 911 text and seems unable to reconcile what her role is in responding to the call. She sits and thinks, “wait a minute. I have super-powers. I saved somebody’s life on friday. But-- everybody’s expecting Ms. Marvel from the news with the hair and the spandex and the avengers swag. Not a sixteen-year-old brown girl with a 9pm curfew,” as she questions what this new superpower part of her identity entails. Here, the theme of the novel is pronounced because Kamala still sees herself as a distinct product of her parents’ household. More specifically, she is troubled by her status as a “brown girl” who does not fit the sexy, blonde, skinny stereotype that she associates with superheros. Despite her self-consciousness, Kamala rushes to the crime as her friend, Bruno, is the one who is at risk. Kamala then transforms into Ms. Marvel, and tells the robber, “step away from the cashier, you wannabe hipster punk,” and later scares him away after holding him up with one hand alone. After this encounter, Kamala identifies her powers as “scary but good” and feels a sense of purpose in the greatness of her superpowers. The sense of purpose that Kamala feels in her superpowers tie to the sense of purpose that her parents wish for her to have in the form of school and discipline. This passage is interesting because it brings in the values that are tied to Kamala’s cultural identity like discipline and hard work, and applies them to Kamala in the form of Ms. Marvel. Ms. Marvel seems to serve as an alter-ego in which Kamala is not confined to her religion or culture or parents. It is an opportunity for her to become a sexy superhero with an aryan face, and save the day. This can be read as a projection of what she wants to be, but we later learn that Kamala comes to terms with her identity as she wears a birkini as her costume rather than the sexier original costume. This passage represents what later leads to Kamala marrying her culture and Jersey origins to the fantastic Ms. Marvel.
I liked your focus on Kamala's identity and her costume choice. It brings into the fact that Kamala later meshes her various identities together in the end of the comic.
ReplyDeleteHi Lexi,
ReplyDeleteI agree with your assessment that Kamala learns to set aside a sexy blonde alter ego and instead embrace the "super" side of her own cultural identity. Ultimately, it all comes down to her conception of what can be "super" in our society. As she comes into her own at the end of this value, she has realized that she can be a superhero and an adolescent, brown, Muslim girl, not either or.