x-men: school's out
There's a fun article making the rounds, from E! Online: Magneto and Professor X Had Sex at the Movies This Summer- Did You See It? It's pretty great because it's basically a squeeing fangirl blog post, only it's on E! Online instead of DW, LJ or Tumblr.
What bugs me about it, though, bugs me a lot, and that's the article's contention that the story of X-Men is an analogy for US race relations, and that XMFC shifts that to an analogy for gay rights.
I would really like to see the end of this notion that X-Men works as an analogy for any real life civil rights struggle. Professor X represents Martin Luther King, Jr. and Magneto represents Malcolm X? Hey, you know what, no. Martin Luther King didn't train protesters to shoot lasers out of their eyes in a Danger Room, and Malcolm X never ran away to found his own island nation.
I think comparing that story and those characters to the fight for civil rights and its historic champions is a cheap way to elevate a pulpy comic book yarn. I think it's appropriative and untrue.
Pretending that they're creating an analogy for srs bsns political movements gives the X-Men writers & artists cover to ignore actual -isms: I am looking squarely at XMFC here with its careless overt racism. Likewise, from the inception of the X-Men, the character of Professor X has been rooted in ableism: he's a ludicrously powerful telepath capable of mind control, but in the comics it's just assumed that despite his powers, he can't really do much just because he's in a wheelchair. (This often makes him seem frustratingly passive, directing things from base while sending the X-Men to fight on the front lines; he really, really does not equate to Dr. King.) Men are mostly muscly, sexless Ken dolls while women are mostly busty sex objects. Etc. etc.
To claim that the overarching story of X-Men represents real life civil rights struggles is also to imply that all oppressions are equal, that racism is sexism is gender or sexual minority discrimination is ableism is classism is mutant discrimination, and they all parallel each other and can all be understood in terms of one another. It subtly undermines the idea of intersectionality: making one form of discrimination an analogy for another form creates false equivalencies while downplaying the actual connections that exist between forms of oppression.
And I find it problematic to analogize Magneto's position, which often amounts to "Kill any humans who give mutants a hard time," to real life anti-oppression activism. Magneto's acts are essentially terrorism. I plead ignorance on the realities of anti-oppression terrorism, but my sense is that it's a last resort when all other options are exhausted or unfeasible.
But mutants, and especially Magneto teamed with Professor X as he is throughout XMFC, are able to defend themselves, and could demand justice. At the end of XMFC, Magneto stops hundreds of missiles, then turns them around to destroy the ships that launched them. Even if you agree with Magneto that the men who followed orders and fired those missiles were complicit and deserved their fate, there were hundreds of soldiers aboard the ships who had no involvement in bombing the beach. Meanwhile, standing right next to Magneto is Professor X, who can read minds and can therefore know beyond a doubt who actually bears the responsibility for the decision to fire. If they worked together, they'd be very capable of holding Stryker & company accountable for the war crime of firing on noncombatants, which is what was really happening on that beach.
That doesn't work as an analogy for real oppressed groups. Mutants have innate, material power beyond that of the majority. Plenty of mutants can go closeted, and while coming out reveals a person as a mutant, in the X-Men universe, it usually also reveals a person as possessing potentially destructive superhuman abilities. It's as if every person identifying as a member of a minority group came out of the closet holding a loaded gun.
Mutants also don't work as a representative of oppressed minority groups because they are explicitly without historical context. Real life oppressions have deep roots: the people involved are trying to win rights and recognition that have been denied to them historically and systematically. In almost all X-Men canons, mutants are vanishingly rare and virtually unknown until the mid-twentieth century, when comparatively many of them are born and discover their differences.
There isn't a historical tradition of oppressing mutants. In that light, Professor X's optimism and conciliation make more sense: he seems to believe that if mutants can establish themselves as beneficial and their presence inevitable just as their existence is beginning to emerge, then they can forestall or at least ameliorate some of the hostile and oppressive reactions from the Homo sapiens majority.
Xavier especially makes more sense when you acknowledge that Professor X is not non-violent and never has been. That's just ridiculous. It demonstrates how the purported analogy to race relations doesn't just appropriate real history; the purported analogy also distorts the story and characters of the X-Men.
The X-Men concept was created as a pretext for comic-book adventures. Professor X assembled and trained his team to fight. Originally the main point of the team was to show humans that mutants could use their powers to protect and benefit humanity, in an effort to defuse early anti-mutant sentiment.
Professor X wasn't out to nonviolently protest a la Martin Luther King, Jr. He took a completely different approach, one that was more about politics and perception than direct action.
But there's also always been an undercurrent to Xavier's agenda. At the end of the first X-Men movie, Xavier says, "I feel a great swell of pity for the poor fool who comes to that school looking for trouble."
Whatever he might say he believes, Xavier acts to develop the powers of the mutants who come into his orbit, and he largely develops them to use those powers for combat. He coaches them to use their powers only against "bad guys" but he's still training them to defend themselves and each other.
When you're one of 0.0000001% of people with potentially terrifying superpowers, it's arguably pretty canny to set out to show the other 99.9999999% people in the world that there are lots of reasons why they shouldn't fuck with you and yours. But it's certainly got nothing to do with non-violent resistance or civil disobedience.
XMFC's Xavier is too conciliatory and appeasing toward existing power, but he's also young and idealistic (and incredibly privileged along just about every axis.) And even at this naive extreme, the Xavier of XMFC still isn't touting nonviolence. He's also not a champion of closeting, as the E! Online article makes him out to be. He's out to find more mutants, bring them together, help them develop their potential, and lead them into a very public battle.
Xavier wants to show people that mutants exist, and that they can be beneficial and powerful. And the context for his effort is that otherwise, either the existence of mutants will be revealed when people find out about Shaw and friends-- so that the world's first public revelation of mutants is that a bunch of them with scary powers tried to start a war and killed a lot of people-- or else Shaw will succeed and most people on Earth will be dead.
Xavier tries to work with the government to achieve his goals, and that goes badly, but it's not a ludicrous urge on his part to try to get acceptance and recognition for the very new minority group he finds himself part of, before prejudice has a chance to get a firm grip on the majority.
In fact, I think it could be argued as well that in XMFC, if you look at their actions and not their rhetoric, Xavier is the cynical one and Magneto is the dreamer. Xavier's in there trying to get a seat at the table with the existing power base, while Magneto's alternative is to pit himself against 99.99999% of the world.
For my money, the best line regarding oppression in X-Men: First Class is when Raven says to Xavier, "But no matter how bad the world gets, you don't want to be against it, do you? You want to be a part of it."
I think the reason it's often easier to sympathize with Magneto over Professor X is because Magneto seems to represent the desire to change the world, while Professor X seems to represent the desire to integrate into the world as it exists. Most people can agree that the world could use some changing, even if we disagree about how.
The problem is that X-Men is still a pulpy comic book yarn. Magneto doesn't really work as a representation of the desire to change the world for the better: he's a supervillain with a better-than-average backstory justification for the crazy shit he has to do in order for the comics to have plots with lots of wham-bang-boom. And Professor X doesn't represent peaceful integration: he gives mutants a sanctuary away from the general population and trains them to fight in the hopes of getting mutants some better PR.
Trying to force X-Men to be an analogy for real world events oversimplifies and misrepresents real history and the X-Men stories alike.
http://cesare.dreamwidth.org/126181.html |
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What bugs me about it, though, bugs me a lot, and that's the article's contention that the story of X-Men is an analogy for US race relations, and that XMFC shifts that to an analogy for gay rights.
I would really like to see the end of this notion that X-Men works as an analogy for any real life civil rights struggle. Professor X represents Martin Luther King, Jr. and Magneto represents Malcolm X? Hey, you know what, no. Martin Luther King didn't train protesters to shoot lasers out of their eyes in a Danger Room, and Malcolm X never ran away to found his own island nation.
I think comparing that story and those characters to the fight for civil rights and its historic champions is a cheap way to elevate a pulpy comic book yarn. I think it's appropriative and untrue.
Pretending that they're creating an analogy for srs bsns political movements gives the X-Men writers & artists cover to ignore actual -isms: I am looking squarely at XMFC here with its careless overt racism. Likewise, from the inception of the X-Men, the character of Professor X has been rooted in ableism: he's a ludicrously powerful telepath capable of mind control, but in the comics it's just assumed that despite his powers, he can't really do much just because he's in a wheelchair. (This often makes him seem frustratingly passive, directing things from base while sending the X-Men to fight on the front lines; he really, really does not equate to Dr. King.) Men are mostly muscly, sexless Ken dolls while women are mostly busty sex objects. Etc. etc.
To claim that the overarching story of X-Men represents real life civil rights struggles is also to imply that all oppressions are equal, that racism is sexism is gender or sexual minority discrimination is ableism is classism is mutant discrimination, and they all parallel each other and can all be understood in terms of one another. It subtly undermines the idea of intersectionality: making one form of discrimination an analogy for another form creates false equivalencies while downplaying the actual connections that exist between forms of oppression.
And I find it problematic to analogize Magneto's position, which often amounts to "Kill any humans who give mutants a hard time," to real life anti-oppression activism. Magneto's acts are essentially terrorism. I plead ignorance on the realities of anti-oppression terrorism, but my sense is that it's a last resort when all other options are exhausted or unfeasible.
But mutants, and especially Magneto teamed with Professor X as he is throughout XMFC, are able to defend themselves, and could demand justice. At the end of XMFC, Magneto stops hundreds of missiles, then turns them around to destroy the ships that launched them. Even if you agree with Magneto that the men who followed orders and fired those missiles were complicit and deserved their fate, there were hundreds of soldiers aboard the ships who had no involvement in bombing the beach. Meanwhile, standing right next to Magneto is Professor X, who can read minds and can therefore know beyond a doubt who actually bears the responsibility for the decision to fire. If they worked together, they'd be very capable of holding Stryker & company accountable for the war crime of firing on noncombatants, which is what was really happening on that beach.
That doesn't work as an analogy for real oppressed groups. Mutants have innate, material power beyond that of the majority. Plenty of mutants can go closeted, and while coming out reveals a person as a mutant, in the X-Men universe, it usually also reveals a person as possessing potentially destructive superhuman abilities. It's as if every person identifying as a member of a minority group came out of the closet holding a loaded gun.
Mutants also don't work as a representative of oppressed minority groups because they are explicitly without historical context. Real life oppressions have deep roots: the people involved are trying to win rights and recognition that have been denied to them historically and systematically. In almost all X-Men canons, mutants are vanishingly rare and virtually unknown until the mid-twentieth century, when comparatively many of them are born and discover their differences.
There isn't a historical tradition of oppressing mutants. In that light, Professor X's optimism and conciliation make more sense: he seems to believe that if mutants can establish themselves as beneficial and their presence inevitable just as their existence is beginning to emerge, then they can forestall or at least ameliorate some of the hostile and oppressive reactions from the Homo sapiens majority.
Xavier especially makes more sense when you acknowledge that Professor X is not non-violent and never has been. That's just ridiculous. It demonstrates how the purported analogy to race relations doesn't just appropriate real history; the purported analogy also distorts the story and characters of the X-Men.
The X-Men concept was created as a pretext for comic-book adventures. Professor X assembled and trained his team to fight. Originally the main point of the team was to show humans that mutants could use their powers to protect and benefit humanity, in an effort to defuse early anti-mutant sentiment.
Professor X wasn't out to nonviolently protest a la Martin Luther King, Jr. He took a completely different approach, one that was more about politics and perception than direct action.
But there's also always been an undercurrent to Xavier's agenda. At the end of the first X-Men movie, Xavier says, "I feel a great swell of pity for the poor fool who comes to that school looking for trouble."
Whatever he might say he believes, Xavier acts to develop the powers of the mutants who come into his orbit, and he largely develops them to use those powers for combat. He coaches them to use their powers only against "bad guys" but he's still training them to defend themselves and each other.
When you're one of 0.0000001% of people with potentially terrifying superpowers, it's arguably pretty canny to set out to show the other 99.9999999% people in the world that there are lots of reasons why they shouldn't fuck with you and yours. But it's certainly got nothing to do with non-violent resistance or civil disobedience.
XMFC's Xavier is too conciliatory and appeasing toward existing power, but he's also young and idealistic (and incredibly privileged along just about every axis.) And even at this naive extreme, the Xavier of XMFC still isn't touting nonviolence. He's also not a champion of closeting, as the E! Online article makes him out to be. He's out to find more mutants, bring them together, help them develop their potential, and lead them into a very public battle.
Xavier wants to show people that mutants exist, and that they can be beneficial and powerful. And the context for his effort is that otherwise, either the existence of mutants will be revealed when people find out about Shaw and friends-- so that the world's first public revelation of mutants is that a bunch of them with scary powers tried to start a war and killed a lot of people-- or else Shaw will succeed and most people on Earth will be dead.
Xavier tries to work with the government to achieve his goals, and that goes badly, but it's not a ludicrous urge on his part to try to get acceptance and recognition for the very new minority group he finds himself part of, before prejudice has a chance to get a firm grip on the majority.
In fact, I think it could be argued as well that in XMFC, if you look at their actions and not their rhetoric, Xavier is the cynical one and Magneto is the dreamer. Xavier's in there trying to get a seat at the table with the existing power base, while Magneto's alternative is to pit himself against 99.99999% of the world.
For my money, the best line regarding oppression in X-Men: First Class is when Raven says to Xavier, "But no matter how bad the world gets, you don't want to be against it, do you? You want to be a part of it."
I think the reason it's often easier to sympathize with Magneto over Professor X is because Magneto seems to represent the desire to change the world, while Professor X seems to represent the desire to integrate into the world as it exists. Most people can agree that the world could use some changing, even if we disagree about how.
The problem is that X-Men is still a pulpy comic book yarn. Magneto doesn't really work as a representation of the desire to change the world for the better: he's a supervillain with a better-than-average backstory justification for the crazy shit he has to do in order for the comics to have plots with lots of wham-bang-boom. And Professor X doesn't represent peaceful integration: he gives mutants a sanctuary away from the general population and trains them to fight in the hopes of getting mutants some better PR.
Trying to force X-Men to be an analogy for real world events oversimplifies and misrepresents real history and the X-Men stories alike.
http://cesare.dreamwidth.org/126181.html |
comments | Comment at Dreamwidth