Is Hollywood Using Hijabis As Props?

Fans of the Harry Potter movies will remember the now successful actor, Alfred Enoch, as the black kid who always stood in the background and rarely, if ever, spoke.

Despite appearing in the majority of the franchise’s eight films, Enoch only had a handful of lines in all of the films combined.

He was inarguably treated as the nameless, faceless Token Black Kid.

This is far from an isolated incident in Hollywood movies.

Alfred Enoch was Hogwarts’ Token Black Kid.

In the past, prior to the Age of the Internet Armchair Activist, Hollywood had a habit of relegating People of Color to wallpaper in their lily-white films.

Instead of humanizing them by providing them actual roles or even just a handful of lines, Hollywood preferred to make them mute representations of their communities under the deceptive banner of diversity and inclusion.

Fortunately, Hollywood has made strides this past decade by providing People of Color more prominent roles, which translates to better (and more genuine) representation; a change undoubtedly brought about by Hollywood finally acknowledging the pulling power of the Black and Brown Dollar.

But old habits die hard in Hollywood, which has shifted away from marginalizing Black and Brown people and has now designated Hijabi women (women who wear a headscarf) as their prop du jour.

In the last few years, an increasing number of music videos, TV shows and Hollywood films have strategically placed Hijabis in their shots. Much to our chagrin, none of these women show even the slightest hint of a personality.

Hollywood Hijabis either stand or sit erect in silence, like good, obedient statues.

I first caught a glimpse of this in music videos namely socially conscious UK indie-pop band, 1975’s “TooTimeTooTimeTooTime” and Maroon 5 music videos. Granted, all music videos’ extras are limited in their roles. Still, there’s an irrefutable air of corporate calculation in the inclusion of shots of marginalized communities in Western pop music videos.

“Hollywood films and TV shows use Hijabis as extras to gain woke points.”

I then started noticing Hijabis popping up in blink-and-you-miss-it shots in various TV shows, specifically Sex Education (EDIT) and Kenya Barris’ one too many preachy shows – shows that heavily market themselves as woke but contradict themselves when they include silent Hijabi extras but not Hijabi characters.

But the worst offenders are the Tom Holland Spider-Man movies. The first one, Homecoming, has a shot of a random Hijabi student dancing at her high school prom. The cameras strategically place her in plain view (next to Zendaya) but she doesn’t speak.

Hollywood’s Hijabis are nameless, faceless representations of their communities. They either sit or stand erect in silence, like good, obedient statues.

Its sequel, Far From Home, features another Hijabi, a classmate of Peter Parker’s, a bit more prominently. She is placed in more than one shot, but again, she is given little to no lines.

To make matters worse, the Marvel Cinematic Universe had the audacity to go on PR overdrive to promote her on popular, left-leaning Gen Z publications like Buzzfeed and Teen Vogue with articles with clickbait headlines like “Marvel’s First Hijabi!”

If Marvel’s first Hijabi has no lines, then what does that say about Marvel?

Fellow Palestinian social commentator, Amani Al-Khatahtbeh (who is a Hijabi) also noticed how problematic this was and penned a well-thought-out article about it. She strictly mentioned Spider-Man, not perhaps realizing that this is a pan Hollywood problem.

I agree with the majority of the arguments but her statement that minorities are “starved for representation” is concerning. Minorities should never be “starved for representation” in mainstream media, especially since the majority of Hollywood’s efforts of inclusion and diversity feel irrefutably disingenuous and calculated.

We don’t need to be invited to the cool kids’ table to feel validated, to feel good about ourselves, especially if Hollywood isn’t woke enough to place us at the head of the table.

The Tom Holland Spider-Man films, brownwashed all of the characters of the original comic books like Flash and MJ but kept Spider-Man white.

Similarly, the progressively try-hard Netflix reboot, She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, also brownwashed all of the characters from the 80s cartoon show, who now commendably represent every shade of the color and sexual orientation spectrum, but kept She-Ra white.

What this is subliminally telling minority audiences is that we can be the side-kick, we can be the love interest, we can even be the silent extra who has the burden of carrying the Atlas-ian weight of tens of millions of women from a highly marginalized group on her shoulders, but we can’t be the hero. The hero has to be White.