Nerd Post. Political analogies in "X-men First Class"

[bnmc2005]

I've made list of movie reviews that highlight the political analogies in X-Men first class.  Fair warning up front. This post contains spoilers. If you haven't seen the movie,  Don't read this post. I would recommend the movie for good action-fantasy entertainment alone. But because I'm a nerd that reads way too much into everything   knows that

Comments

[schmiss]

ok I'm about to read this but I just wanna take a moment to LOL at that picture. omg, the homoerotic tension in this movie, you can cut it with a knife. (And I came in thinking "meh, any tiny touch between these guys is gonna be overblown becuase they're both handsome white guys and fangirls love that shit." But no. I was won over by the sheer BOYFRANDSness of it all.)

OKAY NOW TO ACTUALLY READ THE POST

[ahkna]

It was really gay. And I also choose to believe that Darwin was reaching out to his new boyfriend Havok in his last moments. GAY.

[pragmatic_chimp]

See, I was shipping Darwin/Banshee. There's this seen right before Shaw shows up, where Banshee touches Darwin's chest for no reason other than he wanted to.

[ahkna]

I liked that bit too. There was lots of cuteness in this movie.

[schmiss]

I deffo agree with Yglesias's view. Like, obviously the Mutant Pride group was way over the top with their "derpydoo lets subjugate the humans" shit, but I pretty clearly noticed that they were composed of people who were all part of a non majority group. Intentional or not it was curious

[roseofjuly]

I don't know if the writers really considered that. At most, maybe they threw it in as "food for thought" or "historical parallels" or something. I doubt they really sat there and thought it through, you know?

I doubt that they just threw it in. The X-Men franchise (comic books mostly, but sometimes the cartoons and movies) have been known for using mutants as a metaphor for other oppressions and exploring themes of marginalization and oppression with the characters and storylines. I'm pretty sure they DID think about it. Now whether they thought about it really hard, I don't know, lol. Especially since they killed the black guy off first, although I'm not surprised.

[poddleduck]

Can I be honest and say I really dislike the use of mutants with superpowers to represent the struggles of oppressed minority groups? Because there's a big difference between stigmatizing someone over having a different cultural background, physical appearance, etc., and stigmatizing someone over being able to near-effortlessly destroy a city block or fry your brain or assume someone else's appearance.

I know, I know, overthinking it.

[skellington1]

Agreed!

Because in the case of bona-fide super-powers, there IS a concern for the potential 'poor oppressed majority.' they could have buildings dropped on them. This is just not the case in any real -ism situation.

It doesn't make bullying our eventual mutant overlords morally right, but it does make it a really crappy parallel.

[poddleduck]

Yeah, exactly. I'm not saying KILL THE MUTANTS, but I am kind of saying the Mutant Registration Act et al. would honestly be legitimate as hell. This is not true of basically any -ism in the real world, but then gay people or Arabs or whatever cannot literally drop a bridge on you.

[ahkna]

That was the mentality behind the whole Mutant Registration Act resulting in civil war.

[ahkna]

It definitely bothered me that was the only developed mutant to bite it because it was so very "I can't believe they killed the black one" but I did love his desire to destroy the murderous mutants and save Angel.

At first I was bothered that everyone who becomes part of the Brotherhood was a minority but on second thought it makes more sense that they are because they were already outsiders before they were mutants anyway. Add to that that several of them had visible mutations, making them double visible minorities you can see where they got that "us vs them" mentality.

[deansgirl4eva]

Saw it yesterday, I just want to say this: The line where Magneto is like, "bad people are trying to control us, let's break away from the enslavement!" and the camera cuts to a MASSIVE closeup of the one black guy in the group (also the only mutant to die out of the group)made my friend and I laugh just because it was so ridiculous. Like, I think the purpose was that it was supposed to resonate more with the Black guy and he was supposed to take the comment to a ~*deeper*~ level, but really it just looked like "haha, we just mentioned slavery, cut to the one black guy that should know about slavery!"

Kinda ridiculous and I was like, "did they really just do that??!??!" but I was ok until I glanced over at my friend and he was glancing over at me with the same look on his face and we sorta just lost it...though I feel like we were the only ones that had that reaction lol