Why is Prof. Xavier bald? (Iconography of pop culture 1)
This is something I've been thinking (and discussing) for some time. My partner is in theatre work and is involved in Comedia (old style European street theatre) and *types* are very important in Comedia. And its not only in old fashioned work that you find types, or icons, or sterotypes. They're everywhere, of course, part of culture and history.
I find icons, myths and cultural types facinating and spend a ridiculous amount of time puzzling them out.
Types are important because the communicate so much information - almost instantly (to the culture familiar with the type). In places like comics, they're so important because of the text limitations on the format. Types also have years - often centuries of 'baggage' with them that can add layers of richness to a character.
I explore them in comics, mostly.
Professor Xavier is a really interesting place to start - not because he's the easiest to pick apart but because he's so oddly contradictory. For me, he's also a character I don't know particularly well but I thought I'd start at the top anyway.
The professor, often heralded as the most moral and 'good' person in the X-men universe is based partly on the old 'Mastermind' villans. In theatre, baldness, represents age but it also represents intelligence. All sensible but do you remember his weird eyebrows from the early comics - upswept, pointy? Straight from Ming the Merciless. Upswept, pointy eyebrows in theatrical make-up usually represent sinister intelligence.
In general, says my partner, sharp angles of any sort in make-up indicate sinister or evil intent while round features and shapes lean towards good, also honesty, openess. He also thinks that the angled eyebrows (found in early depcitions of the professor, modified for Magneto, also found on Spock - the inhuman, logical and inscrutable alien) may come from European depections of Satan.
The professor's baldness also indicates that his 'power' is the mind, intelligence and his famous psychic powers. One of my friends also thinks that he's supposed to look a bit like the alien 'grays' - then again, they themselves are an icon of alien, sometimes sinister intelligence.
Wealth is also an often ambigous symbol - especially in the US and the fact that he is 'old money' isn't entirely positive either. American culture favors the 'rags to richess' sort of wealth over the 'parasites' who've inherited their money with out working or (its often implied) deserving it.
The wheelchair, of course, has spesific and fairly obvious symbology. Crippled in body but powerful in mind. My partner thinks its also an indicator that Xavier is a manipulator of people - because, after all, someone who's in a wheelchair must learn as a survival skill how to get others to do what they need to help them. If Xavier wants to get something from a tall shelf, he has to get someone *else* to do it. He can ask, he can command, he can wheedle, whine, bribe, mentally control. But he must act through another.
And - of course, the wheelchair as an indicator of physical incapacity has to go whenever Xavier is having a romance. As I understand it, he regularly gets new bodies, miraculously cured or etc when the writers schedule him for a romance. After all, if his legs aren't working, what else might be on the fritz??
Caveats on this post (and it's sequels):
This is an exploration, not an attempt to prove that these characters are one thing or another. I'm certianly not attempting to tell anyone else how to portray these characters.
This is based on European/American iconography and sterotypes. There is a world of types, myths and icons out there but I'm most familar with US, European stuff. I'd be really interested to see what other cultures take on these mostly European descended icons is.
I'm dyslexic so I can't spell very well and the on-line spellchecker freezes my computer. When I compose on-line like this, expect errors.
a
I find icons, myths and cultural types facinating and spend a ridiculous amount of time puzzling them out.
Types are important because the communicate so much information - almost instantly (to the culture familiar with the type). In places like comics, they're so important because of the text limitations on the format. Types also have years - often centuries of 'baggage' with them that can add layers of richness to a character.
I explore them in comics, mostly.
Professor Xavier is a really interesting place to start - not because he's the easiest to pick apart but because he's so oddly contradictory. For me, he's also a character I don't know particularly well but I thought I'd start at the top anyway.
The professor, often heralded as the most moral and 'good' person in the X-men universe is based partly on the old 'Mastermind' villans. In theatre, baldness, represents age but it also represents intelligence. All sensible but do you remember his weird eyebrows from the early comics - upswept, pointy? Straight from Ming the Merciless. Upswept, pointy eyebrows in theatrical make-up usually represent sinister intelligence.
In general, says my partner, sharp angles of any sort in make-up indicate sinister or evil intent while round features and shapes lean towards good, also honesty, openess. He also thinks that the angled eyebrows (found in early depcitions of the professor, modified for Magneto, also found on Spock - the inhuman, logical and inscrutable alien) may come from European depections of Satan.
The professor's baldness also indicates that his 'power' is the mind, intelligence and his famous psychic powers. One of my friends also thinks that he's supposed to look a bit like the alien 'grays' - then again, they themselves are an icon of alien, sometimes sinister intelligence.
Wealth is also an often ambigous symbol - especially in the US and the fact that he is 'old money' isn't entirely positive either. American culture favors the 'rags to richess' sort of wealth over the 'parasites' who've inherited their money with out working or (its often implied) deserving it.
The wheelchair, of course, has spesific and fairly obvious symbology. Crippled in body but powerful in mind. My partner thinks its also an indicator that Xavier is a manipulator of people - because, after all, someone who's in a wheelchair must learn as a survival skill how to get others to do what they need to help them. If Xavier wants to get something from a tall shelf, he has to get someone *else* to do it. He can ask, he can command, he can wheedle, whine, bribe, mentally control. But he must act through another.
And - of course, the wheelchair as an indicator of physical incapacity has to go whenever Xavier is having a romance. As I understand it, he regularly gets new bodies, miraculously cured or etc when the writers schedule him for a romance. After all, if his legs aren't working, what else might be on the fritz??
Caveats on this post (and it's sequels):
This is an exploration, not an attempt to prove that these characters are one thing or another. I'm certianly not attempting to tell anyone else how to portray these characters.
This is based on European/American iconography and sterotypes. There is a world of types, myths and icons out there but I'm most familar with US, European stuff. I'd be really interested to see what other cultures take on these mostly European descended icons is.
I'm dyslexic so I can't spell very well and the on-line spellchecker freezes my computer. When I compose on-line like this, expect errors.
a