Looking for the Arab Superheroine: Layla El-Faouly, Marvel’s Moon Knight, and the Imperial Gaze
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.37536/reden.2023.5.2236Keywords:
Arab women, gender stereotypes, imperial gaze, the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Moon Knight, superheroineAbstract
Seen through Hollywood’s colonialist and masculinist lenses, the Arab woman is exoticized as a veiled, taunting belly dancer, eroticized as a licentious slave concubine confined to a harem, and monstrified as an alluring temptress or a conniving terrorist. Excluded from any possibility of a dialectical response, this Othered damsel in distress is reduced to a commodity first gazed upon and then (ab)used by the Western man. But, what happens when the Arab woman returns the Westerner’s voyeuristic and fetishistic gaze and avoids his gendered stereotypes? This paper pursues the answer to that question by scrutinizing Layla El-Faouly’s depiction in the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s sixth television series, Moon Knight (2022), wherein the Egyptian explorer, archaeologist adventurer, and superheroine engages in what E. Ann Kaplan terms “the looking relation” (1997, xviii, original emphasis) with the overzealous American leader of the Disciples of Ammit, Arthur Harrow. The paper traces Layla on her “complex intellectual/psychic journey” through Harrow’s “objectifying imperialist gaze,” concluding that she effects the “renewing process of inter-racial looking relations” (Kaplan 1997, 14) for the Arab woman by refusing to be perceived as voiceless, passive, and foreign.
References
Abdo, Diya. 2002. “Uncovering the Harem in the Classroom: Tania Kamal-Eldin's ‘Covered: The Hejab in Cairo, Egypt’ and ‘Hollywood Harems’ within the Context of a Course on Arab Women Writers.” Women’s Studies Quarterly 30 (1/2): 227-238. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40004649.
AlAwadhi, Dina. 2021. “The Evolution of the Occidental Gaze in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.” GCO Conference Blogs (blog). ImageText. 2021. https://imagetextjournal.com/the-evolution-of-the-occidental-gaze-in-the-marvel-cinematic-universe/.
Appadurai, Arjun. 1990. “Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy.” Public Culture 2 (2): 1-24. https://doi.org/10.1215/08992363-2-2-1.
Baruh, Bradford, dir. 2022. Marvel Studios: Assembled. Season 1, episode 9, “The Making of Moon Knight.” Aired May 22, 2022, on Disney+. https://www.disneyplus.com/en-gb/video/9f76359d-a399-4043-9d24-3add659508a6.
Bernstein, Matthew. 1997. “Introduction.” In Vision of the East: Orientalism in Film, edited by Matthew Bernstein and Gaylyn Studlar, 1-18. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.
Collet-Serra, Jaume, dir. 2022. Black Adam. Burbank: Warner Bros. Pictures, 2023. Blu-ray disc.
Diab, Mohamed, dir. 2022a. Moon Knight. Season 1, episode 6, “Gods and Monsters.” Aired May 4, 2022, on Disney+. https://www.disneyplus.com/en-gb/video/d7a12a99-143e-4b49-b294-1433a9d98474.
---. Moon Knight. Season 1, episode 3, “The Friendly Type.” Aired April 13, 2022, on Disney+. https://www.disneyplus.com/en-gb/video/f229b378-942c-4c51-a4b8-450d98436c5b.
Flint, Hanna. 2022. “May Calamawy Is Doing Moon Knight Her Way.” Elle, April 20, 2022. https://www.elle.com/culture/movies-tv/a39756507/may-calamawy-moon-knight-interview/.
Kaplan, E. Ann. 1997. Looking for the Other: Feminism, Film, and the Imperial Gaze. London and New York: Routledge.
Kaye, Don. 2022. “Moon Knight: The Secret Origin of Scarlet Scarab.” Den of Geek, May 11, 2022. https://www.denofgeek.com/tv/moon-knight-secret-origin-of-scarlet-scarab/.
Marvel. 2023. “The Scarlet Scarab Comes to Marvel Comics in ‘Moon Knight: City of the Dead’.” Marvel, April 19, 2023. https://www.marvel.com/articles/comics/moon-knight-city-of-the-dead-scarlet-scarab-comics-debut.
Miller, Leon. 2023. “RUMOR: Marvel Has Major Plans for Moon Knight’s Breakout Hero.” CBR.com, May 19, 2023. https://www.cbr.com/marvel-major-plans-scarlet-scarab/.
Moorhead, Aaron, and Justin Benson, dir. 2022a. Moon Knight. Season 1, episode 2, “Summon the Suit.” Aired April 6, 2022, on Disney+. https://www.disneyplus.com/en-gb/video/902a7b8b-705d-400b-81c4-87dd7a02125a.
---. 2022b. Moon Knight. Season 1, episode 4, “The Tomb.” Aired April 20, 2022, on Disney+. https://www.disneyplus.com/en-gb/video/d0ba2e1d-6ced-4a8a-ac0a-b28b60a101fc.
Mulvey, Laura. 1975. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Screen 16 (3): 6-18. https://doi.org/10.1093/screen/16.3.6.
Paige, Rachel. 2022. “‘Moon Knight’: May Calamawy and Sara Goher on the Magic of Bringing Egyptian Super Hero Scarlet Scarab On-Screen.” Marvel, May 4, 2022. https://www.marvel.com/articles/tv-shows/moon-knight-may-calamawy-magic-of-egyptian-super-hero-scarlet-scarab.
Pratt, Mary Louise. 1992. Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation. London and New York: Routledge.
Rebeiz, Mireille. 2022. “Orientalism and the Erasure of Middle Easterners in Black Adam.” The Markaz Review, November 7, 2022. https://themarkaz.org/orientalism-and-the-erasure-of-middle-easterners-in-black-adam/.
Said, Edward W. 1978. Orientalism. New York: Vintage Books.
Salih, Swara. 2019. “Young Justice’s Failed Promise of Middle Eastern Representation.” But Why Tho?, September 26, 2019. https://butwhytho.net/2019/09/the-failed-promise-of-middle-eastern-representation-of-halo/#google_vignette.
Shaheen, Jack. 2000. “Hollywood’s Muslim Arabs.” The Muslim World 90 (1/2): 22-42. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1478-1913.2000.tb03680.x.
---. 2003. “Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People.” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 588 (1): 171-193. https://doi.org/10.1177/0002716203588001011.
Shohat, Ella, and Robert Stam. 2014. Unthinking Eurocentrism: Multiculturalism and the Media, Second Edition. London and New York: Routledge.
Shohat, Ella. 1990. “Gender in Hollywood’s Orient.” Middle East Report 162: 40-42. https://doi.org/10.2307/3013287.
---. 1997. “Gender and Culture of Empire: Toward a Feminist Ethnography of the Cinema.” In Vision of the East: Orientalism in Film, edited by Matthew Bernstein and Gaylyn Studlar, 19-66. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.
Slater, Jeremy (@jerslater). 2022. “It’s a great profile about the amazing May Calamawy, but I do want to clear up one inaccuracy. Marlene was never a part of our show. Diversity was incredibly important to our writers room, and Layla was created our very first week. (Although she was originally named Zayna Faoul.)” Twitter, April 22, 2022. https://twitter.com/jerslater/status/1517597644545175552?lang=hr.
Sopchockchai Bankard, Jen. 2022. “Moon Knight Ep. 3 reclaims a post-colonial Egypt.” The Long Take, April 19, 2022. https://thelongtake.substack.com/p/moon-knight-ep-3-reclaims-a-post.
Young Justice: Outsiders – The Complete Third Season. 2019. Developed by Brandon Vietti and Greg Weisman. Burbank: Warner Bros. Pictures, 2019. Blu-ray discs.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2023 Zvonimir Prtenjača
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
