To reply to some of the points both you and the other author made, and to be clear, I'm in complete agreement with you both, here are some of my thoughts while reading.
While X-Men is an allegory to the Civil Rights struggle, there is a massive difference in terms of power dynamics. Even though mutants weren't as powerful back then, mutants were still far more powerful than black militants at their worst. Magneto alone could single-handedly crush a city and humans would be powerless. This opens up a new dynamic because marginalized people typically don't have resources much less the power to strike back at their oppressors on that type of level.
If blacks, women, LGBTQs had the power to topple buildings or conjure cyclones, I think we would be dealing with a whole new ballgame in terms of dealing with institutional oppression: possibly better, possibly worse.
From a narrative standpoint, I can understand (though I still agree with you and the other author) why most of the stories revolve around mutant vs. mutant. Simply put, humans aren't a threat in terms of knock down drag out fights. The only thing they have going for them are the Sentinels and how many times have those robots been crushed. Now if those Sentinels were like say the Borg or the Cylons, then we would have some interesting stories going on.
Sadly the mutant vs. mutant fights are always more exciting and more epic. Again, not disputing your points, because I think they still stand, but just an explanation.
Thoughts, I Have Plenty pt. 2neo_prodigyAugust 31 2010, 03:29:42 UTC
The really fucked up part about all of this is sadly that good minority vs. bad minority dynamic is a necessary evil. It was good cop bad cop.
Dr. King wouldn't have been as successful as he was if there hadn't been the militant black power movement. White folks realized that these issues weren't going away so they would much rather with the "good Negro" who was about peace and love as opposed to the "mean angry one."
I believe King was aware of that the struggle was being fought on multiple fronts which is why he was able to go the nonviolent route. While I doubt the creators intended this, I suspect this dynamic also holds true for X-Men. Xavier plays the role of the good minority because he knows he's the preferable alternative to the mean angry mutants. Good cop bad cop strategy. Maybe that's why Magneto and Xavier have never really tried to murder each other once and for all because deep down they know they still need each other to achieve some semblance of progress.
In fact, in the 4400, Shawn used the same tactic with the center when Jordan took a more militant stance. He knew with the tensions rising between the 4400 and non-4400 somebody had to play the role of the great unifier and he took on that role. He knew that the militant front was covered and Jordan wasn't going to let the humans go unchecked.
Oh and the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, I had this discussion on NoScans once and we suspect that the BEM was named in the same spirit as say the rap group NWA in the "fuck the establishment I'm the scary thing you fear the most, now what?" kinda way.
If my rambling is any indication, it's that these posts were so thought-provoking that the cogs were churning like WHOA!
All of this said, I would love to see a POC or another marginalized group do a reinterpretation of X-Men or another story touching on these themes and getting right where the original creators missed the mark.
Re: Thoughts, I Have Plenty pt. 2lisaquestionsAugust 31 2010, 06:41:01 UTC
I agree on mutant power level, but at the same time many mutants also had rather incomplete power sets as compared to other superheroes, making a significant number more vulnerable to being injured or killed, and even an angry mob could probably take many mutants who didn't yet know how to use their powers down. But yes, point well taken on the high power level.
Oh, and I agree that the way they wrote the comics were a lot more interesting than some of what I was asking about, but I sort of fell into this "Okay, what would happen if this were a lot more like the civil rights movement in the 60s, and less like mutant vs. mutant."
I've actually been thinking about doing this kind of story, and trying to initially set things up with mutants at fairly low power level and have the really powerful ones show up after social disenfranchisement and prejudice have taken a toll. Not sure if I'll ever go there.
Point taken ont he contrast between King and the militant black power movement. That's an interesting element to the strategy that I hadn't considered (although I've always defended militant activism for other reasons).
Also, yeah, I totally saw that in the 4400 when I watched it a year after I wrote this post. I didn't really connect Shawn and Jordan back to Xavier and Magneto, though.
I want to do a reinterpretation that wouldn't precisely be X-Men, but it would be similar. Not sure if I could ever sell it, but I'd like to write it at the very least. I'm not sure how well I could pull it off right now, but yeah, with research.
I'm glad this was thought-provoking, and glad you commented. Your comments are thought-provoking as well, thank you. :D
Sorry it took me awhile to get back to this, I was reading your post too, and I kept getting distracted with everything else.
First of all, thank you for writing this post. Secondly, thank you for linking to the other article. Both were very thought-provoking.
I tackled this issue late last year with some surprising results:
http://neo-prodigy.livejournal.com/738404.html
To reply to some of the points both you and the other author made, and to be clear, I'm in complete agreement with you both, here are some of my thoughts while reading.
While X-Men is an allegory to the Civil Rights struggle, there is a massive difference in terms of power dynamics. Even though mutants weren't as powerful back then, mutants were still far more powerful than black militants at their worst. Magneto alone could single-handedly crush a city and humans would be powerless. This opens up a new dynamic because marginalized people typically don't have resources much less the power to strike back at their oppressors on that type of level.
If blacks, women, LGBTQs had the power to topple buildings or conjure cyclones, I think we would be dealing with a whole new ballgame in terms of dealing with institutional oppression: possibly better, possibly worse.
From a narrative standpoint, I can understand (though I still agree with you and the other author) why most of the stories revolve around mutant vs. mutant. Simply put, humans aren't a threat in terms of knock down drag out fights. The only thing they have going for them are the Sentinels and how many times have those robots been crushed. Now if those Sentinels were like say the Borg or the Cylons, then we would have some interesting stories going on.
Sadly the mutant vs. mutant fights are always more exciting and more epic. Again, not disputing your points, because I think they still stand, but just an explanation.
Reply
Dr. King wouldn't have been as successful as he was if there hadn't been the militant black power movement. White folks realized that these issues weren't going away so they would much rather with the "good Negro" who was about peace and love as opposed to the "mean angry one."
I believe King was aware of that the struggle was being fought on multiple fronts which is why he was able to go the nonviolent route. While I doubt the creators intended this, I suspect this dynamic also holds true for X-Men. Xavier plays the role of the good minority because he knows he's the preferable alternative to the mean angry mutants. Good cop bad cop strategy. Maybe that's why Magneto and Xavier have never really tried to murder each other once and for all because deep down they know they still need each other to achieve some semblance of progress.
In fact, in the 4400, Shawn used the same tactic with the center when Jordan took a more militant stance. He knew with the tensions rising between the 4400 and non-4400 somebody had to play the role of the great unifier and he took on that role. He knew that the militant front was covered and Jordan wasn't going to let the humans go unchecked.
Oh and the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, I had this discussion on NoScans once and we suspect that the BEM was named in the same spirit as say the rap group NWA in the "fuck the establishment I'm the scary thing you fear the most, now what?" kinda way.
If my rambling is any indication, it's that these posts were so thought-provoking that the cogs were churning like WHOA!
All of this said, I would love to see a POC or another marginalized group do a reinterpretation of X-Men or another story touching on these themes and getting right where the original creators missed the mark.
Reply
Oh, and I agree that the way they wrote the comics were a lot more interesting than some of what I was asking about, but I sort of fell into this "Okay, what would happen if this were a lot more like the civil rights movement in the 60s, and less like mutant vs. mutant."
I've actually been thinking about doing this kind of story, and trying to initially set things up with mutants at fairly low power level and have the really powerful ones show up after social disenfranchisement and prejudice have taken a toll. Not sure if I'll ever go there.
Point taken ont he contrast between King and the militant black power movement. That's an interesting element to the strategy that I hadn't considered (although I've always defended militant activism for other reasons).
Also, yeah, I totally saw that in the 4400 when I watched it a year after I wrote this post. I didn't really connect Shawn and Jordan back to Xavier and Magneto, though.
I want to do a reinterpretation that wouldn't precisely be X-Men, but it would be similar. Not sure if I could ever sell it, but I'd like to write it at the very least. I'm not sure how well I could pull it off right now, but yeah, with research.
I'm glad this was thought-provoking, and glad you commented. Your comments are thought-provoking as well, thank you. :D
Sorry it took me awhile to get back to this, I was reading your post too, and I kept getting distracted with everything else.
Reply
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