"To the X-men then, who donīt die the old fashioned way and no matter how hard we try, none of us die forever" Uncanny X-Men #270, Jean and Ororo
Magneto: The master of magnetism Appreciation 2022
Polaris: The Mistress of Magnetism Appreciation 2022
House of M Appreciation 2022
your logic won't work here. even if it's not spoken aloud, people rank atrocities.
he wouldn't be the same villain. the only problem with your idea is using Magneto. you could change someone like Moses Magnum or Exodus to fit what you're talking about. but enough of Magneto's backstory has been shown in movies to create an expectation.
it's essential. i grew up around legitimate card carrying white supremacists. people still rep the nazi ideals. the mistake is to think that the war is over. it's not just jewish people on the hit list.
i sure do. the Ten Rings were basically the MCU's answer to that. but they and the Mandarin lacked substance.
it's not about 'should.' i'm not saying that people shouldn't care. i'm saying that people don't care. the media certainly don't care. because it's part of their job to educate people about such things. not comic book movies. the Hyperion vs Nighthawk comic used the Janjaweed as villains. notice the lack of discussion about it. sometimes it's that the readership isn't receptive to the message.
it's not even that. i became a Magneto fan because i could empathize with him. i knew that he was both a villain and an underdog/someone who had been mistreated because of genetics and ethnic background. i, personally, wouldn't be bothered by Magneto being changed. but i know how people would react to it. i know that it would result in the character no longer being seen as high profile. the message will be lost in the backlash to the perceived erasure of his ethnicity. it's an action that will be very hard to defend. and there are other characters to use.
can you think of a time when something like this has happened, been well received, and yielded a better product?
He should be a white guy - were always moaning about how oppressed we are, so obviously it makes sense to have someone with the militant entitlement of Magneto flying around with his arms folded being a total dickhead. I mean, how many school shootings and DEA sieges are even being instigated by minorities?
if they could have kept the Vietnam War, they would have. but the war is only a minor component of Frank's history. it's the murder of his wife and kids by organized crime figures that is essential to the plot. so to bring this back to the Magneto analogy, imagine if Frank's origin was updated to high light the blue lives matter movement. instead of Frank's family dying, it will be several of his cop 'family' members. so his war of crime is now fueled by the deaths of his fellow officers. i'm sure that there's an audience for it. but is it a better story. and is he still the Punisher?
Of course it is but the result of the use of that imagination on mass media still has concrete and real implications.
I would not have a problem with that but I can see how that change could cause the opposite reaction you are seeking.Make him an Ethiopian Jew. Now he is both things need for the story.I am curious if that solves your issue
Last edited by Lucyinthesky; 08-13-2019 at 07:58 AM.
"To the X-men then, who donīt die the old fashioned way and no matter how hard we try, none of us die forever" Uncanny X-Men #270, Jean and Ororo
Magneto: The master of magnetism Appreciation 2022
Polaris: The Mistress of Magnetism Appreciation 2022
House of M Appreciation 2022
Does it have to be genocide? Isn't it enough, say, to have been the kid crumpled beneath the bodies of his parents as they sacrificed themselves to shield him from a racist extremist shooter armed with an AK-47?
The human imagination is infinitely capable of imagining the most horrible, racist, genocidal scenarios but how does that make it okay for a mass media company, for an entertainment company, to dramatize it in a movie, tv show, or comic book except in a responsible way? Erasing a minority character, changing their history and their identity just because it's inconvenient or it bothers you or because you think it's okay to replace this character with another minority, is irresponsible and enacts the very goals of the racists, haters, anti-Semites.
It is not okay to erase, destroy, remove a Jewish character because you think you have a better oppressed minority to take his/her place. That is a kind of racism in and of itself. It's not okay to do this to ANY minority character.
If you want to create another character like Magneto, then go for it! Pick your favorite genocide, make up your favorite atrocity. But taking Magneto, or any minority character, and erasing him to make your own personal political point is pretty much the same reasoning as the perpetrators used when they committed your favorite genocide in the first place.
Chris Claremont gave Magneto his backstory after many years of thought, after talking to survivors of the Holocaust. It wasn't some sudden need to exploit anything, but one of the ways he wanted to tell his X-Men story. This was his X-Men belief-system--the redemption arc. The belief that characters are complicated, that heroes aren't always heroes and villains may have tragic histories and motivations we can understand. This is Marvel's Magneto, in the comics and the movies thus far. This is who the character is, like Storm is African American, and Bobby Drake is gay, and Xavier is of Dutch and Spanish decent (a very cool historical story in that, too, if any Marvel writers would bother to do the research), and Rahne is Scots Presbyterian--essential to her character!
Anyway, I appreciate the OPs attempt to divert the discussion in a more healthy direction, but the people who are obsessed with removing Magneto's Jewish identity won't take you up on the challenge. Make up your own Magneto, but also make up your own name and power-set for him too. Or her. But always think about the impact of such a decision on the audience, on the culture, on the minds of people ignorant of history and susceptible to the lies of racist politicians.
A proto Magneto needs to be a part of a distinct oppressed group, and personally subjected to dehumanization. That SHAPES the character, but it’s not until [he] learns about mutantkind and the potential for his traumatic experiences to repeat that he becomes triggered.