A sinister ideology (reprinted from a fanzine of a few years ago)

[fpb]

The seeds of the evolutionist idea were planted in the superhero genre from the beginning;

Comments

[patchworkmind]

The recent X-MEN films have layered the modern American "civil rights struggle" onto the story.

Claremont grants the good intentions of a very few of his Sentinel-minded characters, but they are the good intentions of dangerous fools. As a phenomenon, opposition to mutants is condemned beyond appeal. The very idea of the Mutant Registration Act is presented as inevitably tending to the extermination of mutants, where in actual fact a Government that neglected to keep some sort of control on the holders of potentially lethal powers would be, not liberal, but criminally remiss. The whole concept, in short, is presented with an unpleasant hysteria that reminds one of the worst political propaganda. Claremont has got so caught in his special pleading for his imaginary mutants that he has taken the worst characteristics of real-life special interest groups.I forget which of the films it was, but there was a scene with Professor X, Storm, and some others in a room at the school. Essentially, the message in it was that of the malevolence of

[asakiyume]

Interesting. Eugenics is a pretty horrifying business.

I agree, but---

[johncwright]

There is certainly an unpleasing whiff of eugenics hovering over the X-Men concept, as you point out in your essay, but I suggest that there might be something more innocent going on: the mythic archetype of the hated or despised outcast who fights to save the very people who oppress him is an ancient one, the prince in disguise, the ugly duckling, the Zorro, the youngest son