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@jake2@kolektiva.social

jakethesequel.tumblr.com

Epekwitk/PEI


Primarily, as a general concept. The general idea of "superpowers as a direct analogy for minority groups." Do you think the metaphor works? Does the "having superpowers" detract from the comparison, or does it benefit by providing a sense of empowerment?

More specifically to the X-Men stories themselves, in what ways do you find they pull off the metaphor well, or fall short? Particularly when it comes to very ideologically-driven characters like Professor X and Magneto, what do you like or dislike about how their conflict is framed?

One thing I personally think is underdiscussed about the central metaphor is the way people take it as analogy to racism (particularly to make the Prof X:Magneto::MLK:Malcolm X comparison), or queerphobia, or ableism, when I think the most textually present metaphor (at least in the Kirby/Lee and Claremont runs) is an analogy with anti-semetism. Of course, that analogy has its own inconsistencies - mutants are usually born to human parents, where Jewish identity is familial; mutants are viewed as a new phenomenon, where Judaism is ancient - but all metaphors mapped on to mutants have some issues, and the Jewish one seems to have the least. I think the inconsistencies are purposeful on Kirby’s part, like how Captain America is a lot like a golem and acts as a hero for Jewish-Americans to fight Nazism, but isn’t textually a golem or even Jewish. It seems like he preferred to keep things indirect when taking inspiration from his Judaism in comics. Even the Thing - one of the most prominent Jewish characters in Kirby’s Marvel creations - wasn’t confirmed in-story to be Jewish until the 2000s after Kirby’s death, though it’s known through some of his unpublished work that he did think of the character as Jewish. (There’s a great little drawing he did of the Thing on a Hanukkah card)


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in reply to @jake2's post:

Without doing any scholarship on the authorial intent, I feel like most superhero narratives work mainly as a toybox of tropes onto which metaphorical frames can be draped. The basic architecture of "special outsiders vs. societal banality" works to tell basically any story because every person knows they they are distinct and individual far better than they know the distinct individuality of others (especially "the establishment"). Almost anyone, and especially anyone young, is capable of believing themselves to be such an outsider regardless of how much wealth and privilege they come from.

So what metaphor the X-Men speaks to is plastic, a moving target. The metaphor of "mutant powers" as (for example) Jewishness has a particular interpretation in postwar America, with its very peculiar mix of quiet antisemitism and crooning "we beat the Nazis"ism. A different metaphor gets draped over them in the 80s, and mutant rights is increasingly used to discuss civil rights (it's no accident that Genosha is introduced during this time, as South African apartheid is a growing global topic of debate). This persisted into the 90s, and what's striking about this era is the degree to which sex and gender are not formally what X-Men comics are "about," with explicit queer themes much more the remit of independent comics and DC's edgier "mature" titles (eventually bundled under the Vertigo banner). Only in recent decades has "X-men as metaphor for queerness" become a mainstream drape over the outsider trope.

Again, I'm not suggesting there wasn't intent or messaging to that effect in the 90s (I'm sure it varies a lot by author). I'm saying that it wasn't what most fans were reading from the text. Circa 1993, the "correct" reading of X-Men among fans (so far as I could tell at the time) was that Racism Is Bad and also that Uncivil Disobedience Is Also Bad (dog help me, how often did I hear "Magneto is Malcolm X if you think about it" come out of the mouth of someone who thought they were the first to have that thought). Hell, I even remember having to deal with some shitheel racists in high school who liked the X-Men because "at least it acknowledges that race is real." Throughout, normies saw no conflict with their love of the property and the absolutely ubiquitous homophobia in which they casually participated.

So, in summary, I don't think X-Men, or any superhero trope, is a metaphor for anything; the analogies are all loose and accommodate too many interpretations. It's not an accident that so many racists, homophobes, and TERFs are also fans of superhero movies: those tropes have been commercially successful for a century because they're just mirrors. Sufficiently strong and clear writing can force a particular metaphor into focus so there's no ideological ambiguity (hello, Frank Miller fans, we're not under any illusions about your beliefs), but fans of the character know that authors come and go and are happy to dismiss authors who "got it wrong." It's not like the characters can object.

Nothing wrong with liking stories, to be clear, or in finding meaning in art. But if mainstream comics have taught us anything, it's that the works themselves, once out of the authors hands, aren't on your side, or anyone's side. Their universal appeal, the corners that have been sanded off over time to keep selling issues, makes them serviceable to almost any ideology. In my opinion this makes them unreliable champions.

a lot of meat in there to dig into i'll have to take some time to reply properly but i will note that there was genuine queer subtext (and text in Northstar's case) in the late 80s/early 90s X-Men that was suppressed by Marvel editorial trying to "protect" the brand that had quickly become the best-selling comics ever. and even despite that, there's things like the Legacy Virus, a pretty clear AIDS analogy

And I agree with all of that - a lot of authors knew what they were doing throughout the 20th century, even if the text had to lampshade these themes (see, for example, the extensive queer subtext in classic TV sitcom Bewitched, written knowingly by its writers, and entirely missed by almost all of its audience). Star Trek was also pretty severely constrained during the 90s, as I recall. What my (needlessly long) ramble was getting at, though, is that superheroes in general are so nonspecific and metaphorical that not only is intended subtext often lost, whole new subtext is also easily fabricated by the reader. Doesn't make it Bad Art, just makes it a muddy medium through which to try to communicate values.

Fair, but I would argue that there's a particular risk that stems from ownership without authorship. Comics don't just run for decades, they do so with no creative center of gravity, changing authorial hands with only a corporate owner as the continuous through-line. In some ways, this lets characters being continuously updated and reinvented: New, authorized texts are always being produced in a way that isn't considered valid in traditional mythological practice, so characters that used to be awful can be made better. But that cuts both ways, characters can also become icons of hate. It's precisely the lack of authorship, the corporate separation of author from owner, that worries me.

Definitely appreciate the conversation, though! Just giving my 2¢, my ruminative worry is very much my own in all this.

I think any trope will fall into that trap of universal applicabilty if you generalize it to that extent. "Special outsiders vs. societal banality" is nothing new, especially in the superhero genre. Arguably, that's every superhero! What I'm trying to get at is the specific interpretation of those tropes that made the X-Men unique at the time. Most notably, that they were a distinct class of outsiders that faced social prejudice due to their abilities. Very different from the Justice League, Teen Titans, Avengers, or Fantastic Four, all of whom were more like celebrities and had no distinct class in common.

I'm trying to analyze here that specific concept of using superpowers as an analogy for oppressed groups -- no matter what group you drape the metaphor over, it's always an oppressed group, never one of privilege -- and whether there's merit in exploring it, or whether it's an ill-formed metaphor at heart best left to the dustbin of history.

It is interesting that a lot of people came away with "uncivil disobedience is bad" from the Claremont era! Magneto had barely been a villain at that point (well, he went back and forth, but more "anti-hero" than the mustache-twirler Lee wrote him as), and the X-Men themselves were hardly civil at that point! The Malcolm X comparison is truly annoying, too, and it's been explicitly shot down by Claremont. (He says his main inspiration was Menachem Begin, which is a whole other can of worms.)

I think any metaphor will get loose as people add to it and complicate it, especially when the stories have been running since 1963. Honestly, I wouldn't say that there are "so many" racists/queerphobes in the superhero genre, it's really no more than any other subculture. But again, I'm not trying to "recuperate" the X-Men or ask "are the X-Men ideologically leftist" or anything like that. There will be good arcs and there will be bad arcs.

I'm just looking at that central core to the story: a group of people discriminated against for their superpowers as a metaphor for real-world oppression. Can that core be used well, or are there inevitable issues with it?

(As an example of what I mean, take the way the MCU was trying to replace mutants with Inhumans for a while there. The Inhumans fundamentally don't work as a metaphor for oppression, because they choose whether to get powers where mutants are born with it. The Inhuman metaphor is ill-formed.)