Muslim Supervillains: a tired stereotype
Image description: Supervillains clockwise from top left, Iron Man 1 (2008), The Boys TV (2020), Batman vs. Superman Dawn of Justice (2016), and Wonder Woman 1984 (2020). Please note the frequent use of Yellow Filter. Muslim Supervillains: A tired stereotype in the superhero genre. - I realised I haven't yet written about British Muslim actor, activist and all round great person, Riz Ahmed , appearing in a superhero movie. Of course as soon as I thought about his character in Venom (2018), I remembered that Ahmed is playing a supervillain, a bad guy; which is a typecast all too common for Muslim and MENA actors. So I decided to list all the times Muslim and Muslim background actors (also referred to as SWANA and/or MENA, which stands for South West Asia and North Africa, and Middle East and North Africa) have been given the role of 'supervillain' in live action superhero movies. Spoiler: it's a lot. It's also more times than any Muslim actors have appeared...