Lisa Harney (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
lisaquestions) wrote2008-08-27 11:32 pm
lisaquestions) wrote2008-08-27 11:32 pm
X-Men and Civil Rights
So I was thinking, earlier:
The X-Men comic book series started in 1963, featuring Professor Xavier and his five students, trying to show the world that mutants were just like everyone else by training them to be superheroes so they could fight other mutants. Specifically, the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, led by Erik Magnus Lensherr, aka Magneto (although I don't think he got a real name until much later). When humans spotted mutants, as seen in the first issue, they'd almost immediately form a mob and start attacking the mutant with whatever came to hand. I can only imagine how many times Stan Lee imagined that scene playing out and ending with a dead mutant, since most mutants at the time weren't really all that powerful - and most only had one or two powers, otherwise being fairly normal people.
The X-Men debuted the same year that Martin Luther King led a peaceful protest against segregation in Birmingham, Alabama, where he wrote the famous letter from a Birmingham Jail. The next year, three black civil rights workers were murdered by Klansmen in Philadelphia, Mississippi.
So this is the political environment that the X-Men are born in - the black civil rights movement and violence directed at it. As they mature, the gay rights movement and second wave feminism get started.
So: Why, during all this actual activism, do mutants spend so much of their time kicking each other's asses? Why does the militant, violent faction call itself the "Brotherhood of Evil Mutants?" Why does Professor Xavier feel that the best way to win acceptance for mutants is to train them to fight other mutants? Why don't mutants have a Stonewall?
This isn't really intended to be a criticism - comic books weren't really all that great at social relevance at the time. It's more, "what social forces would drive mutants in the midst of being massively persecuted to turn on each other and not take any cues from the civil rights struggles going on around them?"
Yes, I am a geek. I wear that label with pride.
Edit to clarify: I'm not criticizing the comic books or asserting they should have been written differently. I'm just asking: "Look at the history of civil rights. What would it look like to put the X-Men into that context on a political level?"
Also, read this page for an article highly relevant to this post.
The X-Men comic book series started in 1963, featuring Professor Xavier and his five students, trying to show the world that mutants were just like everyone else by training them to be superheroes so they could fight other mutants. Specifically, the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, led by Erik Magnus Lensherr, aka Magneto (although I don't think he got a real name until much later). When humans spotted mutants, as seen in the first issue, they'd almost immediately form a mob and start attacking the mutant with whatever came to hand. I can only imagine how many times Stan Lee imagined that scene playing out and ending with a dead mutant, since most mutants at the time weren't really all that powerful - and most only had one or two powers, otherwise being fairly normal people.
The X-Men debuted the same year that Martin Luther King led a peaceful protest against segregation in Birmingham, Alabama, where he wrote the famous letter from a Birmingham Jail. The next year, three black civil rights workers were murdered by Klansmen in Philadelphia, Mississippi.
So this is the political environment that the X-Men are born in - the black civil rights movement and violence directed at it. As they mature, the gay rights movement and second wave feminism get started.
So: Why, during all this actual activism, do mutants spend so much of their time kicking each other's asses? Why does the militant, violent faction call itself the "Brotherhood of Evil Mutants?" Why does Professor Xavier feel that the best way to win acceptance for mutants is to train them to fight other mutants? Why don't mutants have a Stonewall?
This isn't really intended to be a criticism - comic books weren't really all that great at social relevance at the time. It's more, "what social forces would drive mutants in the midst of being massively persecuted to turn on each other and not take any cues from the civil rights struggles going on around them?"
Yes, I am a geek. I wear that label with pride.
Edit to clarify: I'm not criticizing the comic books or asserting they should have been written differently. I'm just asking: "Look at the history of civil rights. What would it look like to put the X-Men into that context on a political level?"
Also, read this page for an article highly relevant to this post.
Thoughts, I Have Plenty pt. 2
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. 2
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.