Veils and Vigilantes: Burka Avenger and Representations of Muslim Girlhood

Abstract

In this paper, I use Burka Avenger, the Peabody Award-winning Pakistani cartoon series, and its play on the superhero genre as an entry point to consider anew questions of feminist agency and empowerment. I examine the transformation of the burqa into a superhero costume in Burka Avenger as an attempt to question the limited binary of oppressive-liberatory that is typically applied to Muslim veiling. Secondly, I argue that the abstracted quality of the cartoon images and the significance accorded to the child’s perspective cultivate a formal naivete central to the pedagogical and ethical projects of this self-consciously transcultural text. Since visual narrative genres like the cartoon series are especially conducive to theorizing forms of agency available to children—subjects who are, by definition, unemancipated—I bring my close reading of Burka Avenger into dialogue with critical debates over Muslim girlhood, freedom, and autonomy.