Why Naqib in The Boys sucked
Image
description: fictional character Naqib in Amazon Prime’s show The
Boys. (Is
the fire in the background an excuse to use racist Yellow Filter to
show how exotic he is? Hmm.)
WHY
NAQIB SUCKS.
Image description: fictional character Naqib in Amazon Prime’s show The Boys. (Is the fire in the background an excuse to use racist Yellow Filter to show how exotic he is? Hmm.)
WHY
NAQIB SUCKS.
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This was the first post here on my blog back in Dec 2020, and as I've just added the same post to my new tumblr account, I've done some very minor edits and added links to my other posts.
And I'm going to keep talking about Naqib in The Boys, because nobody else does.
So, without further ado:
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I was a big fan of The Boys season 1; I love superheroes, I love deconstructing a genre. Sure, it has its problems, but overall I enjoyed season 1 and thought the show had potential.
(That’ll learn me for being hopeful!)
When season 1 ended with this big build up of mostly nameless brown and background characters as Muslim terrorists (deep sigh) we the audience are left thinking this one Muslim character, Naqib, whose superpower is to blow himself up repeatedly (insert another long deep sigh here) is going to be The Big Bad of season 2.
I had my misgivings about that direction.
Firstly, as you can see from the image of Naqib, he is highly exoticised and is walking around bare chested with Arabic writing on his chest.
He looks more like a generic western media depiction of a genie than he does a supervillain.
And yet he's the first prominent Muslim character in superhero media I've seen in YEARS.
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(Note: see my post about MENA and Muslim character good guys, including Joeplayed by Marwan Kenzari in The Old Guard, which is technically a comic book movie but it’s not what I’d call ‘caped and costumed’ superheroes so it’s more... superhero adjacent.)
I follow superhero content closely and as far as I'm aware the last time we saw any named Muslim characters in superhero movies WITH SPEAKING LINES was:
Instance 1) Iron Man 1 back in 2008 with The Ten Rings in Afghanistan, showing multiple Muslim characters as baddies/terrorists, but only two of them as a named character and with any meaningful lines to say.
And despite one of them, Yinsen, being a good guy he still dies! Which is common in western media for Muslim and MENA characters.
Image description: characters Ho Yinsen and Tony Stark in Iron Man 1 (2008). And another example of the MCU's Yellow Filter at use even inside a cave, rip.
Note: fellow Iron Man 1 castmate, actor Sayed Badreya, said in this GQ article: "I die in Iron Man, I die in Executive Decision. I get shot by everyone. George Clooney kills me in Three Kings. Arnold blows me up in True Lies…" (x)
Instance 2) A more recent instalment in Batman V. Superman in 2016, with some unnamed 'General' character and mercenaries/terrorists in Nairomi, Africa, referred to only as "the desert" throughout the movie.
All reference to the General's actual name are available in anextended/deleted scene only, so a very poor and vague depiction in the final cut.
Instance 3) The generic and badly written ‘bad guys’ in Wonder Woman 1984 (2020 movie), which was honestly such a racist depiction of Arabs and Muslims that many critics pointed out we hadn’t seen a depiction this terrible since 1994′s True Lies.
(At least most critics were in agreement that WW84 movie was generally terrible, so there’s that.)
And that's it, those are the only major instances showing any Muslim actors or characters in a caped and costumed superhero movie.
Some other fleeting glimpses of Muslims onscreen:
Glimpse 1) I spotted a character wearing a hijab among the nameless and unspeaking background characters of Peter Parker's class in Spider-Man: Far From Home (2019). A first for Marvel movies, apparently.
Glimpse 2) Disney Plus show Falcon and Winter Soldier (2021) had two nameless Muslim characters walk by in a scene that’s supposed to be Tunisia (using Yellow Filter), and ‘thank’ the present American Air Force (eye-roll).
Glimpse 3) Netflix show Jupiter’s Legacy (2021) had a nameless Muslim sailor conversing with one of the main characters in a scene, with meaningful dialogue about racism. (WOW. Really good.) Bonus: no yellow filter. It’s a pity he’s a nameless background character because this brief instance is the least problematic MENA rep I’ve seen in ages, but it is very brief.
This is pretty pathetic overall, these small crumbs, especially compared to better rep and probably the only instance of legit MENA superheroes in a ‘costumes and capes’ style superhero show, the Tarazi siblings on DC’s Legends of Tomorrow.
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Anyway, now I’ve listed what crumbs are available across the live action superhero genre, back to The Boys.
I was intrigued about how season 2 would handle Naqib and any characters relating to him, and what storyline they'd use.
Was I excited at the possibility of seeing Muslim supers onscreen? Damn straight I was. Did I mind that they were baddies? Well, yes and no.
When you only ever get crumbs or no crumbs at all, you tend to get excited over one stale old crumb.
After the build up for season 2, I eagerly sat down to watch the first episode, only to have the first five minutes of episode 1 Trigon him.
Note: who's Trigon, you ask? Well if you didn't watch the DCEU's Titans show, Trigon was The Big Bad who was hyped up throughout season 1, introduced in the season 1 cliff-hanger episode as this big 'oh shit!' moment for the cast of heroes, only for him to fizzle out like a wet fart in the first episode of season 2 while the show pivots wildly in another direction.
Exactly what happened to Naqib in the first five minutes of The Boys season 2.
Erm, so, Naqib. Farewell, I guess?
As a character Naqib only briefly appeared in 2 episodes across 2 seasons, portrayed by a different actor in each (Krishan Dutt, and Samer Salem).
It seems the writers used Naqib as a plot device when they needed a cheap cliff-hanger for a direction that ultimately went nowhere.
Am I disappointed? Yeah, I am.
Overall I thought season 2 of The Boys was weaker than season 1, but I'm not here to talk about the whole season: I want to talk about Naqib and this missed opportunity.
The Boys and its showrunners sell the show as being a satire of recent and well known superhero content, of all the big movies and TV shows.
There's been a lot of patting themselves on the back for calling out overused tropes in superhero media (and sometimes they've done this satire well: see the LGBT marketing scene with Queen Maeve in season 2), but my issue with the show on their Muslim rep, or should I say lack thereof, is if your show has even less Muslim character rep than the content you're trying to parody, how is this a win for satire?
Naqib and that whole angle came across as a lazy, half-assed swing from the writer's room. Sure, perhaps a lot of the non-Muslim and non-MENA audience won't even notice, as we've been ignored by western media or made into nameless, generic, vacuous baddies for decades now.
Non-Muslims and non-MENA just accept that we're always the baddies for no particular reason at all (which feeds into Islamophobia, by the way) and The Boys' writers could say they are simply satirising the tropes already present in media...
But, and this is a big but, the media that The Boys is satirising has already made a step toward better inclusion and representation: Ms. Marvel (Kamala Khan), Marvel comics' first Muslim superhero, is entering the MCU as a lead character in her own Disney Plus show, debuting in 2022.
Ms. Marvel/Kamala Khan is also cited to appear in upcoming Captain Marvel sequel, The Marvels (2022), which will be a major movie.
The MCU has also cast a Muslim actor (Mahershala Ali) as the lead in a reboot of Blade. That's going to be big news when it starts filming.
So to the showrunners on The Boys, I say this: now you've done this small angle of 'all Muslim characters are terrorists, yuckity-yuck!' like we've seen in major superhero movies thus far, and you've brushed that aside in favor of focusing on other whiter villains, my question is will you come back to Muslim and MENA characters again?
Or is that all you got?
Because if that was ALL, then the current score is Disney/MCU:02, Netflix:02, DCEU:02, and The Boys: a big ZERO as far as Muslim and MENA rep goes.
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Reblog this post about Naqib on tumblr.
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If you, like me, are always on the lookout for onscreen Muslim and MENA characters in superhero media, and have spotted any characters in superhero TV shows I haven’t watched yet, let me know about them!
Visit me on twitter, or on tumblr.
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Here is my post on good guys, featuring Old Guard’s Joe, and Blindspot’sRich Dotcom.
Here’s my post about the Tarazi siblings on DC’s Legends of Tomorrow TV show.
And, if Marvels’ Eternals gets released on schedule for 2021, we will have a MENA actor portraying a supporting character. I just hope Marvel gives him a name.
