Mutant Lives Matter: mutation as allegory

[PsychoEFrost]

That's why I would like X-Men --- the writers, at least --- to broaden and sharpen the metaphor, to address how real-world minorities would react to mutants or vice versa. Would they become allies, perceiving a shared experience of oppression, discrimination, and marginalization, or would there be a backlash toward the idea of --- as you put it --- mostly white superhumans "appropriating" the language of oppression and persecution while being more powerful than most actual minorities ever could be? And yes, there would be a need for the writers to seriously address the issue of how mostly white, mostly conventionally attractive, and mostly straight and/or cisgender characters ended up as the face of the mutant struggle, and how that might mess with the message they're trying to send about equal rights.

It's a telling issue, especially considering a lot of inner city African-Americans are strongly against GLBT rights because they're also highly religious.

[wano]

Religious minority? Sexual minority? yes

Racial minority? no. and it's ridiculous. All prominent X-men except Storm are white.

An almost/all white team posing as racial minority really remind me of old hollywood movies that have white actors playing non-white characters.

Well mutant are literally a separate species from humans

[wano]

It's a telling issue, especially considering a lot of inner city African-Americans are strongly against GLBT rights because they're also highly religious.

Or if you wanted to be more specific, the purifiers had members of all races, skin colors and genders , they aren't gonna lose any points for not being inclusive, everyone that wants to fill mutants with lead was welcome, male, female, Christian, muslin, gay, straight, queer, jew, American, Mexican... It's an effort to rally humanity as whole against mutantkind... Actually there's the belief that if there's something that gets to threat humankind as whole (mutants, skrulls, frog man ) all humanity will put aside their differences and fight the threat, hell don't be surprised if the mu starts showing more people of all races rallying against mutants (and Magneto doesn't stop giving them reasons)

[Magnusilver]

Well mutant are literally a separate species from humans

true and the it might be good at some point of time since racial minority have less expression in mass media back then than now. but it feels outdated in contemporary. I started reading X-men comics since 2000s and never quite buy the concept that mutants are minority reflecting racial issues in reality. I always view mutants as a metaphor for religious minority such as Muslims, Judaism, Buddhist and other religious people alike.

[anyajenkins]

Yeah, I see what you mean and I agree. If absolutely nothing else, the X-Men should teach the message of acceptance. If people have been reading these books for any length of time and haven't gotten that one, it's hard to know what to say...

I don't really think it works as anything other than 'broad'. No real life minority group, of any kind, can accidentally lose control of their 'otherness,' and level a city block.

[wano]

true and the it might be good at some point of time since racial minority have less expression in mass media back then than now. but it feels outdated in contemporary. I started reading X-men comics since 2000s and never quite buy the concept that mutants are minority reflecting racial issues in reality. I always view mutants as a metaphor for religious minority such as Muslims, Judaism, Buddhist and other religious people alike.

Still , mutants are a race minority compared to humanity since they're not part of the human race. . . And they literally just suffered mass prosecution from the inhuman supporters and almost got gassed to death by the terrigen mists, if that's not humans and inhumans having issues with the mutant race then I don't know what that is. . . I mean, your average mutant will be chased by murder robots 10 times and gassed to death or chased by the purifiers by the times he turns 20, black, white, blue, scaled or furry mutants. . . I think it means that the mutant metaphor works in a broad margin but side stories could tackle more issues related to contemporary racial issues or religious prosecution, LGBT rights, growing up and feeling inadequate , etc. . . Since we're talking about being inclusive there's no reason to not include stories that tackle all of that, everyone should have a voice

I don't really think it works as anything other than 'broad'. No real life minority group, of any kind, can accidentally lose control of their 'otherness,' and level a city block.

but some members of certain minority groups can use their otherness from others and use it to justify leveling a city block, or bringing down a tower, or two

[anyajenkins]

Not really the same thing. Anyone (of any group) could plan to destroy something, there have been several stories about mutant losing control of their powers and accidentally destroying lots of stuff, without planning or intent/malice.

[PsychoEFrost]

Not really the same thing. Anyone (of any group) could plan to destroy something, there have been several stories about mutant losing control of their powers and accidentally destroying lots of stuff, without planning or intent/malice.

That's why it's just an allegory. There's a level of suspension of disbelief.

[BroHomo]

That's also a problem, I'll admit, but I think making the metaphor as broad as it's been has its own set of issues, namely certain segments of fandom that dissociate from the message the X-Men series/franchise is trying to send and just focus on the cool visuals (costumes and powers). As a result, they end up very unready to engage with the issues of bigotry and prejudice being addressed by the comics. I mean, you have people who used to or still feel persecuted and oppressed for being comic book fans, but at the same time are extremely oblivious if not insensitive to the oppression and persecution experienced by various minority groups in the world, react extremely poorly to being asked to show some empathy or consideration for those groups of people, and yet they're X-Men fans. How to even begin to untangle that?

This is the greatest, truest and saddest post ear

I never really bought into the idea that mutants were a stand-in for minorities when there are actual minorities in the MU as well as the vast majority of X-men and mutants in general were white. I can't accept Cyclops or Emma or Rogue being more discriminated against than say Sam Wilson or Rage or Adam Brashear. Are we suppose to think that in the MU only mutants are subject to bigotry, prejudice and racism.

Well when I first started X-Men It was almost exclusively Generation X and With characters like Chamber, Skin,Penance...it was a more readily available allegory for racial minorities

Are there no mutants who are racist against humans or is the word "flatscan" a term of endearment?

Muse can't be racist against humans

but some members of certain minority groups can use their otherness from others and use it to justify leveling a city block, or bringing down a tower, or two

You know it wasn't cause of racial/religious differences that those terrorists hit America

[U.N. Owen]

I've seen people make an analysis about how mutant powers should shift to a more neurological analogy. You have a massive amount of neurological disorders and conditions, but some of them are inherently problematic like depression. Some people with high functioning autism can easily blend in with normal humans while others will have a hard time being accepted because their disorder affects both their minds and bodies like Down Syndrome. People would look down on them because they're seen as freaks or inferior, or people will despise them and see them as a danger to humanity. After all, the Americans in this fourm know how the media only gives a crap about mental health when it comes to paining them as dangerous psychos who don't need a gun or autism levels rising while ignoring how we expanded the definition of autism.

[Marvelgirl]

In the X-Men cartoon there was a police chief telling one of his officers to fire at Storm who was not committing a crime. They just saw her as a mutant meaning she was a threat without any hard evidence. An allegory for Black Men unfairly seen as a threat for being Black. To all those black men unfairly killed and hurt by the police as a fan of X-Men and Storm, I more than feel your pain.

[BroHomo]

In the X-Men cartoon there was a police chief telling one of his officers to fire at Storm who was not committing a crime. They just saw her as a mutant meaning she was a threat without any hard evidence. An allegory for Black Men unfairly seen as a threat for being Black. To all those black men unfairly killed and hurt by the police as a fan of X-Men and Storm, I more than feel your pain.

There's also3a scene in comics.... same situation Storm is there I think Iceman...Forge and they're in Front of a mob and there's a remark about Storm's race

[Killerbee911]

Religious minority? Sexual minority? yes

Racial minority? no. and it's ridiculous. All prominent X-men except Storm are white.

An almost/all white team posing as racial minority really remind me of old hollywood movies that have white actors playing non-white characters.

No it is not ridiculous,You have to understand in "the fiction" it is the same thing . Just like in some fiction elves are use as stand in for minorities. The cool thing about the X-men is that is more than one thing at the same time and Cyclops, Iceman, Jean grey styled mutants are closer to the LGBTQ community experiance in the fiction whereas Beast, Nightcrawler, Blink, Stacy-X and more Morlock style mutants are closer to racial minority in stories. You aren't going to exact one for one thing because they purpose of the X-men was originally to just be a lazy way to give superhumans powers without think up fancy origins. If the X-men was design from beginning to exact stand in for minorities they would put thing in place to make it closer but that is not need because it is fiction and drawing parallels is enough. I mean Fern Gully and Avatar told story similar to experience of Native Americans. Is it impossible because they are blue to be representing indigenous people? It is fiction

[Ricochet Rita]

More seriously, though, I think the metaphor does work in broad strokes, and can be especially effective thanks to current events heightening fear of the other, the unknown, the stranger . . . or heightening awareness of how people who are different in some way or other are made out to be or to feel like they're inhuman, abnormal, "subhuman," freakish, or otherwise unworthy of the respect and consideration we would "normally" give our fellow human beings. The sad part is that a lot of the fandom doesn't connect too well with that overarching message, that it somehow gets lost amid all the cool costumes and flashy powers, and so when X-Men comics try to make themselves and that message more relevant to contemporary society, we now have people railing against it because, "I don't like being preached at, man!" To me, though, that's a sign the X-Men's message is needed more than ever, especially given how forces within so many nations continually seek to divide and conquer by painting relatively small and comparatively less powerful groups as scapegoats for the problems faced by those nations as a whole, or by the supposed majority within said nations, and how too many fall for that and turn on their neighbors, their coworkers, even their friends and family, or worse, total strangers who have nothing to do with the reasons they're so angry and fearful, but resemble those they've been told to hate and blame and resent.

If anything, I would invite X-Men (writers) to broaden or sharpen that message by also discussing the spectrum of bigotry, that it doesn't have to be torches and pitchforks all the time, or overt violence, state-sponsored or not, against the affected. It can be just as easily legislation that essentially outlaws and criminalizes the existence of certain minority groups, or it can be ordinary people --- maybe even non-mutant superhumans vis-à-vis the mutant plight --- who have the privilege of assuming they don't have to care because it's not something that affects their daily lives and struggles, and so turn a blind eye. Speaking of addressing privilege, X-Men (writers) could also address the issues of mutants who can't pass for regular humans and/or don't have combat-effective mutations and thus feel (rightfully) left behind by the X-Men's attempts at fighting for peaceful coexistence between mutants and humans, not to mention how being a mutant can overlap or intersect with minority groups or other groups that are already stigmatized and marginalized in real life. With how certain minorities are already automatically suspected or judged as criminals and/or terrorists and treated accordingly, would being a mutant necessarily exacerbate that? Then there's the problem of intragroup prejudice --- do mutants have their own internal hierarchies, and if so, who's perceived to be "on top" of that hierarchy and what does that mean for mutants' collective struggle for survival?

That's my take.

*applause* *tears*

If absolutely nothing else, the X-Men should teach the message of acceptance. If people have been reading these books for any length of time and haven't gotten that one, it's hard to know what to say...

It's just so incomprehensible...

I'm old enough to remember when being a fan of superheroes was almost exclusively the territory of nerds. Not the sort of cool or accepted nerds of today, but the unpopular and harassed kind of nerd that isn't as much of a thing now. There weren't a lot of superhero movies and they didn't make a billion dollars. So back then, just being a superhero fan was enough to make you feel as though you belonged to a persecuted group. The rise of geek culture has severely lessened that bond, imo.

True. So true.

All prominent X-men except Storm are white.

That's one of the reasons why I always liked The New Mutants more, but not in a resentful way.

The cool thing about the X-men is that is more than one thing at the same time [...] It is fiction

Hear, hear...

[Ricochet Rita]

Now, answering to the OP.

Mutant as allegory: categorically yes. Sometimes in the most transparent way, sometimes you must read between the lines. And there's an specific meaning for every person, but, as said before, the main word is tolerance. That's what I've got of 30 years with the X-Men, at least.

I'm tremendously lucky to not suffer straight nor strong bigotry, just the temp hostility that any person can face because of his/her personality, principles or acts*. In fact, X-Men attracted me among other comic-books because of its characters and because of its matter. I wasn't a victim of bigotry, BUT I deeply felt that bigotry was wrong, and I deeply believed in solidarity, empathy, understanding and tolerance as basic grounds. I mean, The Punisher didn't attracted me as reading stuff.

My closer position to mutants was as a teenager who was basically a shy nobody nerd against the flow, not precisely the most popular one in the school or in the street. That would be enough to connect with this allegory.

But I believe that the important thing is to make the connection although you're not part of a minority or a discriminated group. I've learned a million things thanks to the X-Men --I've made use of some of them for my own life, some have been useful to understand other people and other situations. I think that's great and I'm so grateful because of it.

*EDIT: Actually, I once suffered some xenophobic attitudes when I was going on holiday in a foreign country, since my appearance and language betrayed me. Still sadder, I've suffered the same in other regions in my own country...