The Long Overdue South Asian Superhero

Matt Schiavenza: Prior to these episodes of Ms. Marvel, you’d devoted your career to directing hard-hitting documentary films. What was the most challenging aspect about transitioning to a scripted show?

Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy: Over the last two decades, when I worked in documentary filmmaking, animation, and other media, I always worked on my own schedule. With a documentary, you’d film for a couple of days, pause, then film again — while animation is just an extremely lengthy process. Live action is very intense. You leave your family and your world and are immersed on set for months on end. You become a part of that world, and don’t step out of it at all. I had to get used to the fact that I was working on a very rigid schedule — something that COVID made even more difficult.

Other than that, I’ve been a storyteller for so long, and the storytelling aspect of Ms. Marvel came naturally to me.

Ms. Marvel really exemplifies how much more attention American pop culture pays to representation nowadays. In addition to Ms. Marvel, we’ve seen your former high school classmate Kumail Nanjiani have a prominent role in a Marvel film. What does this representation mean not only to people in South Asia but to those in the diaspora in the United States and elsewhere?

I think our definition of superheroes is changing. Black Panther opened the floodgates, I think, and reminded us that there’s a whole world out there embracing the idea that anyone can be a superhero. When Kamala Khan and her family entered the Marvel Cinematic Universe, our viewers wanted to listen to the music she listens to, eat the food she eats, and to celebrate her culture. And that is truly special. By falling in love with the Khan family and rooting for Kamala during her adventures, you’re introduced to a whole different world you wouldn’t have normally been able to experience. Once we rethink the way we see superheroes, it’ll be easier for us to tell these stories.

I have to give Marvel credit: Not only are they telling the story of Kamala Khan and Ms. Marvel, they’ve also assembled a crew of people whose experiences help tell this story authentically. They’re not just paying lip service to having a brown, immigrant, Muslim superhero. You can see our storytellers’ experience in the series, through the colors, the music, just the way that the story is told.

Was it difficult striking a balance between authenticity and appealing to an audience that may not be knowledgeable about South Asian culture?

The heart of it is Kamala’s family. When you draw audiences into that family, when you hear their arguments about curfew, what she is and isn’t allowed to wear, and how she failed her driving test, and how her mother quickly puts food together to share — you begin to realize that there are elements of this family dynamic in your own family. The passive aggressiveness in the relationship between Kamala’s mother and her own mother — I’ve heard from viewers who say that this is how their mother behaves around them.

If you make audiences fall in love with this family, if you make them fall in love with Kamala Khan, then they’ll be willing to go on this adventure and embrace everything that comes with it.

Growing up in Pakistan, who were the superheroes that most inspired you? What influences did you draw upon when directing the episodes of Ms. Marvel?

When I was growing up, Pakistanis had no visual representation. And much like Kamala, who’s always thinking of the Avengers and wants to be Carol Danvers, I grew up watching superheroes that didn’t look like me on screen. What attracted me, though, were superheroes who fought for something that was bigger than themselves. Throughout my career, in telling the truth and in holding up a mirror to society, I’ve always fought for something bigger than myself. That’s what I’ve drawn inspiration from.

Now that I’ve watched Ms. Marvel, and I’ve seen my daughters watch the show and laugh at the jokes and take delight in the conversations Kamala has with her mother, I know that if I had had Kamala Khan growing up, it would have meant so much to me — that I could do anything, and that it didn’t matter where I came from. Visual representation is so important because I think anyone growing up around the world should feel that they, too, can be a superhero, and that the definition of a superhero is fluid.

There’s a memorable moment in episode four featuring Partition, which occurred 75 years ago this year. As someone who is from Pakistan, how present is Partition in the culture today? Is it something that still affects the perceptions of younger people?

I think stories of Partition are dying with the generation that lived through it, a generation that had connections on both sides of the border. After 75 years, it has become increasingly important to remind people that at one time, India and Pakistan were one, and that there are so many similarities between the two. As much as we’d like to think that we’re very different, we’re also very similar. I think it’s worth celebrating that.

In unpacking the story of Kamala Khan’s family, we go back to a deeply traumatic time for the Indian subcontinent that has seldom been visualized on screen — especially in Hollywood. In telling that story, I wanted to pay close attention to the fact that millions of people had to leave their home, and that it was as much deeply personal as it was political. When Kamala is walking on that platform, she’s bearing witness to history. The snatches of conversation she hears remind us of the original oral histories of the people who lived through it. She can feel the anguish of a father too ill to travel, or of two friends who were to never see each other again. I think it’s important that when you talk about Partition, you talk about the stories of people and how every family was affected.

You’ve spoken before about how in the South Asian diaspora, the differences between nationalities within the subcontinent tend to erode — you have Indians and Pakistanis and Bangladeshis eating and living side by side. This contrasts with rising nationalism in India and elsewhere in the region and around the world. Did you feel any concern that the character of Kamala, who’s Pakistani, would generate controversy among viewers, say, in India?

We’ve drawn from the entire subcontinent. While Kamala is Pakistani, she’s a first-generation American from New Jersey. The shops she visits with her mother are both Indian and Pakistani, and at the mosque where she eats sweets, you have Indian Muslims and Pakistani Muslims and Bengali Muslims. The experience we’ve shown comes from both sides of the border.

The show really is a celebration of South Asia. And I think it’s about time, 75 years after Partition, that we talk about the things that unite us rather than divide us. As filmmakers and storytellers and entertainers, sometimes we must lead the way in doing that. Ms. Marvel has been embraced on both sides of the border, in part because we have big names from both India and Pakistan. One minute you’re listening to an Indian song, and one minute a Pakistani. I think the series is a true celebration of what it means to be brown and Muslim. And, of course, a superhero.

One striking thing about Kamala is that, like a lot of first-generation Americans, she sometimes seems stuck between two cultures. There’s the scene in the first episode where her classmate scoffs at her necklace, which has an Arabic inscription, and then of course in the episode you directed that takes place in Karachi, Kamala wilts in the heat because she didn’t know it was unwise to wear jeans. As a person who grew up in Pakistan and came to the United States to attend Smith College, how did Kamala’s experience resonate with your own?

I think it’s common across all kinds of nationalities. I have Italian friends who grew up in New York who struggle to reconcile their values with those of their parents. When you’re an immigrant in a country, you think a lot about integration and assimilation. You try to hold on to parts of your parents, but you also have to forge your own identity. Kamala does this very well in Ms. Marvel. She holds onto her parents’ culture by eating their food and saying “bismillah,” but at school she’s obsessed with Carol Danvers and her best friend is Bruno and so she’s very American. Most immigrants straddle two worlds like this.

Kamala’s experiences embody the real struggles that exist. The world her parents want her to exist in is not her world. And sometimes, it hurts. Her parents want Kamala to hold onto their culture, because they think of this as her roots. But Kamala’s roots are in New Jersey. That’s why she was such a fish out of water in Karachi. She’s sweating, always getting lost, can’t haggle the right price, gets taken for a ride when she goes shopping.

Ms. Marvel is being screened in cinemas in Pakistan. What kind of reception has it gotten there, in the conversations you’ve had?

It’s a watershed moment — just to see the visual representation of their city, their language, their murals, their culture, and their music depicted on screen. Typically, Hollywood productions use a yellow filter when showing South Asia. The first thing I said to my director of photography was that we weren’t going to use a yellow filter. That’s why the scene in Karachi looks bright, peppy, and colorful, and is as vibrant as the streets really are. It’s really a different way to depict Pakistan from what had come before.

There’s a perception of Pakistan that it’s dark and dreary, that the women are all covered, and that everything is eerie and spooky and that there are terrorists on every corner. When you have a filmmaker from that place telling the story, you get a truer representation. In Ms. Marvel, I am showing the streets I walk every day, and I’m taking people on an adventure of a city that I call home.

This conversation was edited for length and clarity.