The Music of ‘Ms. Marvel’ Has a Lesson for Hollywood
When I heard the faint notes of the hit South Indian song “Oh Nanba” in the first episode of Ms. Marvel, I thought I was imagining them. But then, as I kept watching and kept hearing songs that I grew up listening to in the background, I realized that, no: This was really happening. A Marvel show was really playing an actual South Asian song in a show about a Desi superhero.
When Marvel announced it was granting comic book hero Ms. Marvel, a.k.a. Kamala Khan, her own show I—a brown, Indian girl, was elated. Finally: a superhero that looked like me, with a background not unlike mine. But with that euphoria also came dread. While the series was affecting and authentic on the page, I wondered how Marvel would translate a brown, Pakistani American superhero onto the big screen. Would the show make a mockery out of South Asian culture, as many other American-made TV series have in the past? Would Marvel whitewash the show both on- and off-screen by casting white actors, like they did when they cast Tilda Swinton as the Ancient One in Doctor Strange? Would it employ white writers to try to tell our stories? Would it force an awkward dance number, set to that generic sitar stock music usually saved just for brown characters?
Now that its six-episode first season is over, Ms. Marvel has proven to be a sensitive, heartwarming depiction of Desi culture. The show balances an authentic portrayal of what it’s like to be South Asian-American with the requisite superhero stuff—and it all comes together as a true celebration of Kamala’s culture. Watching Ms. Marvel, I asked myself: Is this how white people feel all the time while consuming content? Because I’d like to feel like this all the time too.