Bisha K Ali, British-Pakistani standup comedian and creator of the much-acclaimed Ms. Marvel miniseries has shared how the partition became an essential part of the show’s narrative.
Speaking to a media house, Bisha said the idea of toying around with partition came, “very, very, very early,” to her. It was in the first week itself that this happened.
She said: We put up a timeline of when we’ve seen events take place generally in the MCU. I started looking back on some of the other movies, at Captain America: The First Avenger. That’s essentially a period piece, and I was like, “Okay, so after World War II, what was happening in Kamala’s (lead character) family?” (sic).
Explaining her thought process, Bisha continued: So 1945, World War II. 1947 is when partition happens. So if World War II exists in the MCU, and that part of our history can be canonised, then why not ours? When I laid that timeline out to [Marvel Studios President Kevin] Feige, he was like, “Oh, cool! I get what you're doing!” The history of the world isn’t just [of] this one place. There are other places with histories too (sic).
Bisha described Kamala’s superpower as of the four generations of women of her family: We wanted to make it about looking inwards, and looking into your own family. Rather than the central storyline being about, ‘I don’t fit into this world because of who I am,’ I wanted it to be like, ‘I don’t know who I am, and I need to go and figure that out.’ That conflict’s more internal rather than ‘us versus them.’
She added: I’m not really interested in them, because they already minoritised us. They’ve already marginalised us. Cool. We’ve seen versions of that, which are brilliant. That’s not what we wanted the show to be. We really want it to be about the ‘us.’ So, that was always the intention from the beginning.
Recollecting what she felt when she took the idea to the Marvel office, Bisha said: I felt bananas going in and being like, ‘hey, so have you guys heard of partition?’ There were some interesting conversations there.
Ms. Marvel follows the adventures of Kamala Khan, an Asian-American teen trying to fit in until she gains her own superpowers. The show stars Iman Vellani in the lead role and is streaming on Disney+ Hotstar. Iman has received praise for her portrayal of the character. The show features many actors of Asian origin, including Fawad Khan and Farhan Akthar. The series’ first season aired its sixth and final episode on July 13.