No Lives Left

  We're at the halfway point of the first season of Ms. Marvel Season 1. I think I've come to peace with the... style ...this show is going for. I realize that Marvel is trying to bring a new superhero into the MCU, so they trying to cram her origin story and make her develop into a real character so that she can be involved in other MCU affairs. Yet, other shows like Daredevil and Jessica Jones (I know, they are Netflix shows) were able to provide a compelling story in their inception shows.  In this weeks episode, Kamala is now dealing with the fallout from her mistakes when saving the boy at the mosque minaret. A video of her goes viral, the Damage Control starts snooping around her mosque, and Bruno might be leaving for caltech. Not to mention that she is befriended by people known as the Clandestines (or Djinn?)that know who she and her great grandmother are. They have a simple request: To use Kamala's power to get back home. Kamala finds out that its dangerous and the...

I am going preface this post like I did with the first one:  I do enjoy seeing Muslims depicted with  more nuance than one dimensional villains. It's great to see Muslims as characters who have lives with decisions and struggles just like any other demographic in America. It's a great method to get non-Muslims related to Muslims without really knowing  a Muslim.  However, another word of caution is that I don't recall if I could relate to all the things 16-year old Kamala went through as a teenager. I didn't have as big of a Muslim community growing up and didn't have many Muslim friends that I went to school with. I'm over 30 years old but some things I will mention are coming from a person who isn't "cool with it" anymore. Also I never grew up into desi culture. I was an Indian-born white boy through and through. I don't know Urdu and don't know Bollywood at all.  That being said, I didn't like episode 2. I was optimistic from the ini...

It's been a while since I talked about Muslim representation in the big and little screen. Ramy was the last show I watched and I ended up feeling conflicted about where it landed in my headspace. On one hand, it's cool to see a main character who is Muslim and struggling to be more religious and practicing  (something I can always relate to). On the other, watching some dude committing explicit acts and also deal with some suggestive and unnerving situations kind of goes against your own religion's teachings-even if it's "only acting."  I have made peace with Ramy since then and am glad to note that I do not have ill will toward Ms. Marvel. In fact, I somewhat enjoyed the first episode. It reminded me of a teen Nickelodeon show mixed with the tone set in most MCU movies. While it's only been one episode, I wanted to muse about what I thought was good and what wasn't. I also wanted to overreact a bit since, well, it's what I like to so. I definitel...