Comics and Orientalism
the Marvel case
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.15448/1984-4301.2023.1.44276Keywords:
Comic books, Children’s literature, Colonization, Orientalism, Marvel.Abstract
Created in the 19th century as an “evolution” of cartoons, comics have occupied a kind of non-place in contemporary theoretical studies as they depend on multiple arts (drawing, script, final artwork, etc.). Consumed in Brazil mainly by youths, as a recent Pró-Livro’s survey (FAILLA, 2021) revels, comics end up approaching an equally marginalized academic field, children’s literature, whose epistemological obstacles have already been demonstrated by Rose (1988) and Hunt (2013). Aware of these issues, I propose, in this essay, to study what I call the “Marvel case”, in order both to point out the historical approximations between comics and literature, and to understand what specific aspects differentiate two Muslim female characters created by Marvel: whether Dust (Sooraya Qadir) exemplifies a case of “failure”, both for its rejection by the public and by critics, the teenager Kamala Khan is considered the biggest recent success of the company, yielding, to its creators, in addition to several awards, a television adaptation produced by Disney streaming. In addition to the fact that the arguments bequeathed by Said (1996) are fundamental to justify these differences, the new Ms. Marvel summarizes the identity assumptions studied by Hall (2003), Bhabha (2013) and Spivak (2010).
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