Here's an idea.
Kamala Khan can teach us just as much
about comics as she can about the world.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
So in the world of superheroes and fantasy,
there is a lingua franca of bodies-- tough, taut,
and toned, mostly white and, with very few exceptions,
either male or arguably-- very easily arguably,
in fact-- designed for men.
That this is a central feature of video games,
much of popular cinema, and comic books,
which is what we're going to be talking about today,
is silly for like a million reasons, all of which
we're going to talk about in a minute.
There are indications though that it is slowly
getting better.
And by better, I mean portraying the world
like it is-- diverse, colorful, and full of ladies-- no,
real ladies.
Marvel, for instance, recently introduced a new Spiderman
in Miles Morales, a black-Hispanic teenager.
Simon Baz is the new Lebanese-American incarnation
of the Green Lantern.
Most notably though, and with the wildest excitement
and loudest squeeing, Kamala Khan is the new Ms. Marvel.
With issue one ranking 24th in North American sales,
Ms. Marvel is a big deal not only because Kamala
is a teenage girl, but because she
is a Pakistani-American teenage girl, and she is Muslim.
She is, in fact, the first Muslim heroin
to headline her own title.
And if you were to think that this bodes well
for comics but also maybe media in general,
you might be called optimistic.
But I wouldn't necessarily call you wrong.
However, before we get too much further,
let's talk a tick about why this kind of thing matters
and who cares.
Spoiler alert-- it's lots of people.
And if you don't, you probably should.
So lots of popular media catches flak for what's
called poor representation.
That means that there are tons of people
in the actual world that are not represented
in the fictional world portrayed by that media.
So we see lots of straight white guys, like me-- well, not
exactly like me-- and comparably few not straight,
not white, not guys, who are anything
more than set pieces, eye candy, or troubling stereotypes.
There is no shortage of reasons why
this might be-- the historically white male-dominated media
industry in the West, the camaraderie
between the male gaze and capitalism,
critical misunderstandings of culture and history,
the troubling construction or downright myth of the wholly
white male-dominated audience, and so on.
The point being that it's bad because it portrays
a world that doesn't exist and, in so doing,
suggests that the actual world isn't the way
that it actually is.
But whoa!
I hear some of you saying.
If we are supposed to portray the world as it exists,
then aren't you also saying that superheroes themselves are bad.
They don't exist.
Good point.
But I'm not, because from a very young age,
we're taught to recognize fictional characters
and abilities but not fictional interpersonal relationships,
social dynamics, or portrayals.
Like we're told that superheroes are not real,
but we're not told that portraying every Muslim
or Middle Eastern character as a terrorist is equally unreal.
We're not told that a female character
is make believe when she is only ever shown
talking to men or to other women about men.
Footnote-- Bechdel test, dooblydoo.
Lots of us, especially those of us who aren't women or Muslim,
might think that these characterizations are
either invisible or just how things are.
This is an attitude that's based on deeply
complex personal experiences and biases but not the truth.
And if you are a woman, Muslim, or black, or gay, or trans,
or part of any other historically underrepresented
groups, hi, and thank you for bearing with me
while I try to describe tons of stuff
that you experience every day.
I hope I'm doing it justice.
So when we make media like this, we are sometimes inadvertently
and sometimes vertently saying that the world is like this.
And that is bad.
This is why Kamala Khan is such a big deal
and why so many people, myself included, obviously,
are excited.
Sure, there are fairly portrayed female characters in comics.
Sure, there are even Muslim characters.
There are characters struggling with their superpowers,
coming of age, their race, their heritage.
But Kamala is all of these things in a major series.
And she's earnest, complicated, and maybe
a little confused by but ultimately proud of who she is.
Like when momentarily transformed
into what she thought she wanted to be,
a normal, blonde, Caucasian, thigh-high boots sporting
heroine, she realizes that looking
the way superheroes tend to look doesn't
make her more confident.
Rather, to be able to save people,
to be able to rush to someone's aid in a bad situation,
that is what's meaningful-- which makes sense,
because Kamala is a diehard superhero fan after all.
She writes Avengers fan fix.
Carol Danvers as Captain Marvel is her personal hero.
After that first shapeshift, she says
being someone else isn't liberating.
It's exhausting.
She's realizing that though she thought being a superhero
and looking like a stereotypical superhero were a package
deal, maybe they're not at all.
In other words, there is no reason Ms.
Marvel cannot be Pakistani or Muslim.
And crucially, if she is she can teach us
more about comics and-- whoa.
Hold onto your hats-- maybe the world than if she wasn't.
Here me out.
In a TEDx talk, Ms. Marvel editor Sana Amanat
talks about how Kamala's story is partly
about working against the labels foisted upon her.
So in that sense, Kamala's story is everybody's.
She says,--
She came together in response to that global subconscious
desire for representation, for those Muslim-American,
bacon-sniffing, short, nerdy girls,
like me, and for anyone else who just
feel like misfits themselves.
I mean, 13-year-old me certainly felt like a misfit,
like an invisible nerd, just totally unrepresented.
And 13-year-old me also didn't know
that Pakistani-Americans exist.
Seeing Kamala and her family in a comic
would have been a huge learning experience,
but also, maybe admittedly, an abstract one.
Like maybe I would have thought, this is interesting.
But how does it fit into the actual world
that I live in with my body?
Where is the concrete learning experience?
Well, for a 13-year-old Sana Amanat
it probably would have been on every page.
For people like me, well, it's in the letters column, which
is in the back of every issue.
It's full of Muslim and Middle Eastern kids, families,
mothers, daughters, all comic book readers, members
of the Kamala Korps, writing in to say
how important this comic is to them, how great it
is to finally see themselves in this universe
they love so much.
Sana Amanat, writer G. Willow Wilson, artist Adrian Alphona,
the whole crew have organized the space
in comics for the underrepresented.
And in doing so, they've also organized a space for them
in the minds of other comic fans,
including my own, as just a general part of the superhero
fandom and, maybe most importantly,
as part of the comics industry as a whole.
Philosopher Richard Rorty wrote that, "The process
of coming to see human beings as one of us rather than as them
is a matter of detailed description of what
unfamiliar people are like and of what we ourselves are like.
This task is not for theory but for genres
like the ethnography, the journalist's report,
the comic book, the docudrama and, especially, the novel."
Though as Michael Saler suggests in his book "As If,"
where my pal Patrick found this Rorty quote,
the agency for change is really in communities
and not the media itself.
Ms. Marvel or any other piece of media
alone is unlikely to un-bigot a bigot.
But as far as the goal of fiction
is to provide something for us to think
with, to portray a world offering fun
and challenging experiences, and those experiences happen
within communities, I think Ms. Marvel
is an awesome, bendy, shapeshifty step
in the right direction.
What do you guys think?
What are the positive effects of good representation in media?
Let us know in the comments.
And in addition to subscribing to Idea Channel,
you should also go to your local comic bookstore
and subscribe to Ms. Marvel.
There have only been two issues, so it's very easy to catch up.
I think it's very good, obviously.
I feel like I should make a "How I Met Your Mother" joke,
but all that's coming to mind are insults and complaints.
So instead, let's see what you guys
had to say about television technology and narrative.
Zetsumainaito, Joshua Jones, and Philosophy Tube
all make really great comments about the intersection
of culture and technology influencing
the narrative of TV shows.
Yeah, and anime and British television
being great examples of those things
and how they are very different from stuff
that is broadcast in America.
And I would have loved to talk more
about VCRs being sold as a way for you
to not miss your favorite shows, but there's
only so many minutes in the day.
And by day, I mean YouTube video, I guess.
String Epsilon writes a really great comment
about the interconnectedness of things making ARGs possible
and how that is another forward step in narrative
related to technology.
And yeah, this is a thing that we haven't talked nearly enough
about.
And yeah, I should really add this to the list.
Laura Weltreich and Nerd Girl mention EverymanHYBRID Hybrid
and The Lizzie Bennet Diaries respectively as stories
which not only are maybe based on the connected technology,
but also make use of it in that there
are Twitter accounts and Wikis and all other kinds of things
that, as fans, you can dive really deep into-- which, yeah,
that's stuff that I always find really exciting.
And then relatedly, Lloyd Cloer talks
about how hypertext allowed the most extreme expression
of branching narratives.
And actually, in Matthew Kirschenbaum's book,
"Mechanism," that I quoted in the archive episode,
he talks a lot about "Afternoon: A Story,"
which is really famous, maybe the first piece
of hypertext literature that is crazy interesting.
And if you don't know about it, you should check it out.
Evan Conley writes a really interesting comment
about how maybe the growth in the serialized content
is bound up in the growth in edgy narratives as well.
And I think that maybe that's also synonymous
just with the growth of finding more interesting stories,
because I think, for the most part,
broadcast episodic content is supposed to be bland.
Right?
It's supposed to just be like TV gruel.
To Yoann Bourse, and maybe every other French viewer--
this is really interesting to me.
I had no idea.
Can someone maybe say a little bit more about why?
And why?
IvanRSaldias writes a really awesome comment
about the shifting nature of influence between us,
our media, and our technology that you should just
read all of.
So we'll put a link to that one and all of the other comments
in the dooblydoo.
To TimmahDee, funny story.
It actually means exactly what it says.
The way that we do comment responses
is that I will grab comments that I
like throughout the week, and there's a little link.
And sometimes, if I forget to get the link,
we'll go back to try to take a screenshot of it,
and the comment will just be gone.
So yeah, sometimes YouTube will just eat a comment.
I don't know why.
Maybe it's powered by comments.
To Gheistlich, I think this is really interesting.
I personally never go back to rewatch jokes
just after they've happened.
But I did recently start rewatching "Cheers."
And it is very frustrating to me how much time
they leave for the laugh track.
So there might be-- you might have a point here.
You might be onto something.
This week's episode was brought to you
by the hard work of these members of the Kamala Korps.
We have a Twitter, an IRC, and a subreddit links
in the dooblydoo.
And the tweet of the week comes from Rickey Anderson,
who points us towards a video about the history of the movie
preview, the trailer.
It's very good.
[DING]
And finally, as promised, this week
we will be doing a record swap.
We are going to be replacing Bartok's Hungarian folk songs
with Hindemith's Concert Music.
Adios, Bartok.
Welcome, Paul Hindemith.
[DING]