Shannon Keel
Dr. Francis
Feminist Reading of Culture
October 19th, 2017
Ms. Marvel: “No Normal”
Reading “No Normal” was my first ever experience with the “Ms. Marvel” spinoff, and I absolutely loved it. I think choosing a sixteen year old, Pakistani-American, Muslim girl as the main hero was a bold move for the American comic book giant Marvel, but I believe it truly paid off. In “Ms. Marvel: No Normal,” Kamala is a wonderful representation of female empowerment through self identity. The main plot point of the comic is that Kamala, (a Muslim high school girl struggling with her faith and identity) is asked if she’d like to attend a party where alcohol will be served, which is a violation of her religion. As she contemplates
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However, this image also doesn’t truly show Kamala as herself. Although I myself am a white woman, I personally felt empowered when Kamala’s father tells her, “you don’t have to be someone else to impress anybody. You are perfect just the way you are.” As she tries on her different identities, she realizes that she doesn’t fit into either image, both American and Muslim. Using her own wit and motivation, she creates her own identity instead. I really enjoyed the representation of female strength in this comic.
One portion of the plot that I thought was very interesting was Kamala’s personal identity intersecting with her sense of strength. When Kamala finally “accepts” her true self, she’s forced to shrink into a tiny version of herself. Although this was pivotal to the action-packed plot, I thought this specific metaphor was interesting. I connected her finally “accepting herself, (for she hadn 't yet, not completely,) to have to being reborn, or a type of hero’s journey where she has to reemerge as her true self, fully realized, in order to succeed. It’s only in the fifth and final volume that Kamala is capable of mastering her powers, after being shrank. With Bruno’s help, she physically, (and mentally) grows into a giant, her truly realized, heroine form to save the day.
“Ms. Marvel: No Normal” is a great read that really connected with me. Kamala
The most prevalent and popular stereotype of the post World war II era in America is one filled with women abandoning their wartimes jobs and retreating into the home to fulfill their womanly duties. In Joanne Meyerowitz’s Beyond the Feminine Mystique: A reassessment of Postwar Mass Culture, she shows how far women departed from this one dimensional image. While Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique is reflexive and focused on the mainstream, Meyerowitz’s analysis is a broader and more inclusive exploration of media, as she draws upon multiple sources. Although Friedan effectively unveiled the thought process and reasoning behind society's belief that the message of media was to make women think that their place was to be the happy housewife, Meyerowitz expanded her media archives and found a differing message in analyzing both female responses to media and exploring their stories.
Culture often thrives off of polar opposites—hot and cold, bitter and sweet, male and female. By setting up these opposing constructs, one can easily find a set definition for each. A hot surface could scorch someone or a cold temperature could cause them to shiver. In the same way, a bitter substance would be less enjoyable to eat than a sweet one. These terms are often defined by mentioning their antitheses. Because it’s comfortable to embrace specificity and certainty, topics such as gender and gender expression often get simplified into binary existences—however, they don’t quite operate under the same parameters. In an essay entitled “Bad Feminist”, Dr. Roxane Gay explores and warns against the dangers of binary thinking. Throughout
Feminist theory is the advocacy of gender equality in terms of respect, opportunities and social rights. The Crucible by Arthur Miller represents the conventional feminist gender struggle, through the medium of an androcentric patriarchal society built on the ideals of religion. In Salem, woman are portrayed as the lower class of society, patronised by men such as Proctor “I am looking for you more often than my cows!" comparing Mary to a farm animal is indicative of their perceived place. Furthermore, the violent way the men within Salem converse with woman “You will confess yourself or I will whip you to death, Tituba! demonstrates the lack of impartiality and feelings that theyhave on a woman’s fundamental rights. Miller’s use of
“La Feminista”, an article written by Anna Nieto Gomez in 1974, discusses the conflicts and struggles surrounding the Chicana identity and the Chicano movement. The feministas are consisted of a group of minority Latin women, the Chicanas, who are “Spanish-speaking, culturally different and non-Anglo group” (Anna Nieto Gomez 183). They suffered racial discrimination from not being white which was the only race superior to all others at that time. Worse still, they encountered sexism in a patriarchal society that gave power, authority and privileges to the male. The formation of the minority group the femenistas can be traced back to the Chicano movement that took place in 1970s. During the Chicano movement, Chicanos, who were racially oppressed
The Puritans were a religious group who left the Church of England because they wanted to have more freedom with their religion. They thought the Church of England was “too Catholic”. They believed the Bible and its rules were the number one thing to go by and that all humans were evil and had to overcome their sin. Women had to cover their whole bodies in clothing. They couldn’t show their ankles or wrists. They also had to wear their hair up and out of their face at all times, except if they were in a room alone with only their husband. They always were on one side of the church away from the men or in the back on the church. These women in the society that will be talked about have broken laws and have been misjudged.
Kamala soon becomes Siddhartha’s lover, and she helps him learn the ways of the city, leaving his ascetic life as a Samana behind. She then has a child that is from Siddhartha, whom Siddhartha had never met. Kamala does not have a very spiritual life, and Siddhartha influences her to seek a more spiritual lifestyle to better herself. She becomes tired of being a courtesan and realizes she can be a better person. The author brings Kamala back into the story when the news of Gotama’s advancement towards death breaks out into the villages; “One day, when very many people were making a pilgrimage to the dying Buddha, Kamala, once the most beautiful of the courtesans, was also on her way. She had long retired from her previous way of life, had presented her garden to Gotama’s monks, taking refuge in his teachings. . .” (Hesse 90). Kamala is one of the most important characters in the book because she is able to teach Siddhartha about physical love, and lead him to spiritual enlightenment.
Siddhartha begins to deviate from his holy walk in life when he meets Kamala. In Siddhartha Kamala is a pleasure woman who owns a beautiful grove outside of a larger town. “Siddhartha saw how beautiful she was
(Frank 153) Kamala is “No Normal” Superhero, she is a brown Pakistani-Muslim girl, she is not ”white and blonde”* like Captain Marvel (Carol Danvers). The family dynamics that Kamala Khan's expresses is, as G Willow Wilson says in an interview, is a reflection of “I just really tried to show that all of that same stuff exists in Kamala’s family. It’s sort of the dynamics that people can recognize. They might be speaking a different language. They might have a different religion, but the dynamic is something that almost anybody recognize.” What Wilson means is that for all of the diverse and unique communities, there is an aspect of the same family dynamic that almost everyone has experienced despite your color, race, religion, and ethnicity. (McGlynn, “Why Kamala Khan Is The Most Important Superhero In The World”) Kamala proves the fact that she is “pre-wired to achieve and create success stories in their lives” (Lowry 501) despite being a Pakistani-Muslim-American girl, a “brown girl that gets to struggle with normal teenager stuff and her superpower is built on wanting to change how you look.” (Jameela, “Kamala Khan As ‘Ms. Marvel’ Is The Greatest Thing To Happen To
Picture a child sitting in front of a television watching the Wizard of Oz. To them, it is an assortment of magical beings, a land filled with wonderful places, with varieties of different colors. They do not picture it as something with far more meaning than just a plain fairytale. On the other hand, gender/feminist critics have been able to analyze the Wizard of Oz as well as Wicked, in order to find a more elaborate meaning behind the story itself. They have discussed what lies behind the story when it comes to the issue of sexism and masculinity towards the book itself as well as the characters. There are many concepts as well that help to further explain feminism and gender criticism. The four concepts that will be discussed
Barbara Perry’s article “Doing Gender and Doing Gender Inappropriately” addresses violence and gender, and how gender is influenced through the way it is perceived in society. The construction of gender comes in polar extremes, with masculine dominant men and feminine subordinate women. Gendered violence is used to control women as a class. It is a systematic tool used by men to reinforce gender norms and patriarchal ideas of masculine superiority and feminine inferiority. It “terrorizes the collective by victimizing the individual”. Like any dichotomy, it has scripts, and to deviate from these scripts will leave you labeled as ‘unnatural’ and ‘immoral’. These scripts “constrain everything from modes of dress and social roles to ways of expressing emotion and sexual desire”. In Judith Lorber’s “A World Without Gender” we are introduced to the possibility of eliminating gender and how “degendering [would] undercut the patriarchal and oppressive structure of Western Societies”.
Kamala, is the main, and indeed, the only female main character in the novel Siddhartha, by Hermann Hesse. Kamala, a wealthy courtesan, is the bridge between the lay people reading the novel and the main character Siddhartha, who is more of a holy man, than a relatable character. Kamala is a kind, yet selfish women who allows for the reader to connect to Siddhartha, by making him more imperfect. Later in the novel, even after Siddhartha has left town, she unintentionally brings Siddhartha, his son, and again provokes him to react as an imperfect human rather than a holy man. Thus, Kamala, while not necessarily a large character, she is integral to the plot and to the reader's ability to connect to the novel.
From peaceful protest songs in the 50s and 60s to the socially conscious rap from groups like N.W.A. and public enemy, music which has become popular has had the capacity to voice social revolution in the melody and rhythm of their songs. In the book “Gaga Feminism: Sex,Gender, and the End of Normal”, J. Jack Halberstam makes a case for the famous pop singer Lady Gaga to be considered in these terms for bringing out the inner thoughts of society. Helping her audience come out of the closet and represent their bodies and gender how they want to and to bring about a possible “end of normal”.
The novel Siddhartha written by Hermann Hesse is a philosophical novel that explores the journey of life and to enlightenment. This is done through the narration of the life of a young boy – the eponymous Siddhartha by a third-person omniscient narrator. My goal in this essay is to explore the role of the most important female character in Siddhartha, Kamala.
In the late nineteenth century, after the American social and economic shift commonly referred to as the "Industrial Revolution" had changed the very fabric of American society, increased attention was paid to the psychological disorders that apparently had steamed up out of the new smokestacks and skyscrapers in urban populations (Bauer, 131). These disorders were presumed to have been born out of the exhaustion and "wear and tear" of industrial society (Bauer, 131-132). An obvious effect of these new disorders was a slew of physicians and psychiatrists advocating one sort of cure or another, although the "rest cure" popularized by the physician S. Weir Mitchell was the most
The yellow wallpaper is a story about John and his wife who he keeps locked up due to her "nervous condition" of anxiety. John diagnoses her as sick and has his own remedy to cure her. His remedy s to keep her inside and deterring her from almost all activities. She is not allowed to write, make decisions on her own, or interact with the outside world. John claims that her condition is improving but she knows that it is not. She eats almost nothing all day and when it is suppertime she eats a normal meal. John sees this and proclaims her appetite is improving. Later in the story, the woman creates something of an imaginary friend trapped behind the horrible looking yellow wallpaper in