May 2008 Archives

Downtown Bellingham is like a little outdoor theater. People watching from someplace like Avellino's is probably one of my favorite pastimes. Living next to the Shangri-La also provides a number of amusing experiences and sound bytes. There's the frequent drug busts in parking lots, watching six cops show up to arrest one drunken driver, the guy who asked me if he could trade me his sweater for a crack rock, and countless others. There have been none, however, as entertaining as what happened to me Friday.

Walking up the road home on my way from work, a guy probably in his mid-forties was walking towards me down the hill. I have seen him on the street a couple times before and he usually smiles and I smile back. On this particular occasion, the scene proceeded as usual: he smiled and I smiled back. His response this time, however, was to throw his hands in the air and exclaim "Probably a lesbian! You are, aren't you?...You think?"

I was really torn about being offended by the stereotype and his clear homophobia or hysterical laughter. I chose to simply smirk at him, keep walking the remaining ten feet to my apartment door, and then laugh and promptly call Jenn.

So I realize that I have been incredibly absent here lately. Last quarter of your senior year of college does that to some people. Like me.

But I'm back with a bang. This evening, on Channel Surfing the Apocalypse, I bring you comic society news that doesn't reflect very well on my (pop) cultural group, but provides some great social commentary. At the very end of April, Newsarama, a prominent comic industry news website, ran an interview with Paul Cornell, writer of Captain Britain and MI:13 about a new Marvel character named Faiza. Faiza is a Muslim British teen, described as "a fast-talking British superhero fangirl teen whose Muslim faith is an everyday part of her life" by Girls Read Comics' Karen Healey.

Part of the interview, and all comment posts relating to it, were pulled without explanation by Newsarama admins, admitedly to try to sneak it out before anyone noticed it. Here's why:

NRAMA: With the current worldview on Muslims and terrorism, what was her life like prior to the Skrull invasion?

PC: Pretty normal, really. I'm trying to paint the life of an everyday British Muslim person. They'd be touched every now and then by stereotype and racism, obviously, but it's not their life, or even the major part of it. The relationship between minorities and mainstream culture in Britain is a little different to how it is in the States, so I'm hoping to show that. Faiza hasn't got a radical brother who'll spit on Captain Britain's costume. (See, I note the cliches in advance, so I won't do them, hopefully.) She just sees herself as British, in the way that the person she's named after, England cricket Captain Nasser Hussain, probably does. I'm hoping Faiza will be loved for who she is: a boggled, talking nineteen to the dozen, fan of British superheroes, reader way in character. I also wanted to present an offhandedly, everyday, religious character, for whom faith is not their whole existence, and will only be mentioned when it would be. She's not here to fulfill a quota or represent an entire culture, though she won't be letting anyone down. She's a young hero. She's our Kitty Pryde.

NRAMA: Did she join this team with motives of her ow? Is she on a jihad mission, going on an all-out holy war against...what?

PC: You *what*?! I typed something much ruder in answer to that originally. What the hell?

NRAMA: Oh, blimey! We're all doomed!

Holy crap. Seriously. Really inexcusable racist bull. How do you even come up with a question like that? More importantly, how did this guy have the guts to ask it? I really like Cornell's response, though. And, as Karen Healey said, the whole thing was despicable, but it has turned me on to Faiza, who I'm definitely going to have to check out because she sounds pretty awesome.