Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks – just ask the Americans with their ‘Roe vs. Wade’ cancellation. I genuinely don’t know what they were thinking: if this is just the first step to cancel everything else, including interracial and same-sex marriage – it’s one thing, then we’ll have some sort of American Civil War take II, no problem. But if it is not, however – then it is just pointless aggravation of the American civilian society, one that the D.C. crowd probably does not need, not with all of the Jan 6 hysteria and all. What will come out of it, I do not know, though the fact that the American (Western?) mass media is beginning to downplay this, (sort of), may play some role…
The Ukrainians, of course, are hanged-out to dry, as
the Americans still give them minimum aid while extracting maximum publicity
out of this; and Finland & Sweden have joined NATO – and Putin does not
appear to care about it very much. Erdogan, conversely, have acquired at least
some political benefits for himself and his regime – but we are being
sidetracked; let us talk about ‘Ms. Marvel’ instead.
Only not, as this week’s episode – ‘Seeing Red’ – is…
wait. Let me try again. As people have pointed out to me since my last entry,
Clan Destine aren’t InHumans, but are rather human-djinn hybrids with their own
story, and Damage Control has its’ own missive as well. Fair enough, but my
actual point was that story-wise, Destine
is standing-in for the InHumans, and Damage Control – for either S.H.I.E.L.D.
or S.W.O.R.D., take your pick, please. Here, in ‘Red’, we got more gifted
people in-fighting, between Clan Destine, and the Red Daggers, (and Damage
Control doing their wild card thing too, I suppose, in the bigger picture), and
there’s mention of monsters, and world-changing plots, and government agencies,
and-
-and we all have had it before, in AoS. I’m surprised
to admit it, but I am rather tired of getting back to AoS in almost every
single review of MM – but the truth is that AoS has had its’ initial plots
recycled in every later season – and MM has the same problem; in addition-
In addition, lately I got a feeling that Disney/MCU is
actually trying to downplay MM – first so that it would not compete with O-B-1,
and now – with the upcoming ‘Thor’ film. That may be so, but there’s also the
feeling that Disney/MCU is try to actually keep MM under the radar, because it
isn’t sure just as to how well it does resonate with USA’s Islam community,
(and especially the Pakistanis). The Red Daggers, especially, have a rather
assassin-like feeling to them – and that RPG prestige class was based on RL
Middle East characters – but we digress.
Here is thing. Disney/MCU is all about the money – it
loves to make money, it hates to lose money, and it has figured out that a
controversy is one of the best ways to lose money, and so it does its’ best to
avoid controversy, as its’ settlement with ScarJo regarding the ‘Black
Widow-2021’ shows: it probably could’ve won legally, but in PR terms this
would’ve been a (controversial) disaster, and so Disney/MCU opted to settle out
of court and give-in first.
So, how does that fit onto ‘Ms. Marvel’? Well, like it
or not, but it is controversial – sort of – simply by existing: it is a show
about an Islamic community that lives in the U.S., and given that U.S.’
relationship with the Islamic world has never been easy, and after the end of
the Afghan cycle, (2001-2021), even more so – therefore, it isn’t too
surprising that Disney/MCU has opted to downplay MM rather than vice versa: you
never know as to who will get offended!.. Anything else?
No, not really – if Disney/MCU itself is trying to
downplay MM, then who am I to upplay it instead? Therefore, let us end this for
now – but I must warn you: real life being what it is, (see the opening
paragraph), I will not be able to review MM episode 1x05 for RL reasons next
week. Ah well, see you all soon all the same! Until then – cheers!
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