Mutant Metaphor Discussion Thread. The Never-ending quest for Social Justice

[LocoSteve]

I haven't seen a thread where x-fans can gather to discuss the controversial mutant metaphor for minority groups and outcasts. How do you guys feel about the mutant metaphor? Any writers you think did an admirable job applying the metaphor to the writing of x-men storylines?

Here is an article I found that I thought was interesting as well.

http://www.popoptiq.com/us-essay-mar...ocial-justice/

[DDD]

Claremont when he got into it. Peter David had a great story in X-Factor V1 77-78 with an abortion clinic offering mutant abortions. I thought his run post XCS was starting to push the envelope so of course it was cancelled. For the most part, I think it's poorly done fluff. They could do so much more. They need to have mutants interacting more with regular people. Iceman's origin story is good too, it's crazy dramatic.

[somacula]

Social justice?wait a minute... The perfect strategy should be to start calling their detractors racists and genocidal, compare them to Hitler and start calling themselves progressive. Get the liberal media tu support em, pass laws that forbid anti mutant speech and declare themselves victims! Mutants lives matter! I think in the real world mutants would have it easy (in America), plus they got power if all of the above doesn't work

[LocoSteve]

Social justice?wait a minute... The perfect strategy should be to start calling their detractors racists and genocidal, compare them to Hitler and start calling themselves progressive. Get the liberal media tu support em, pass laws that forbid anti mutant speech and declare themselves victims! Mutants lives matter! I think in the real world mutants would have it easy (in America), plus they got power if all of the above doesn't work

I don't know if mutants would have it easy in real-world america. I'd imagine public opinion of mutants would be divisive in the real-world compared to current Marvel where everyone has a 50's hatred for mutants. It would be interesting if current x-men comics did more to reflect real-world social issues ( #mutantlivesmatter was a good example you brought up).

[Baseman]

]I don't know if mutants would have it easy in real-world america. I'd imagine public opinion of mutants would be divisive in the real-world compared to current Marvel where everyone has a 50's hatred for mutants.[/B] It would be interesting if current x-men comics did more to reflect real-world social issues ( #mutantlivesmatter was a good example you brought up).

On the other hand.Mutant detractors probably wouldn't be able to actually do anything about it.Conisidering their dealing with people with abilities rangeing from being able can shoot lasers out of their eyes to changing weather patterns at will.Thats a pretty good reason to keep opinions to themselves

[LocoSteve]

On the other hand.Mutant detractors probably wouldn't be able to actually do anything about it.Conisidering their dealing with people with abilities rangeing from being able can shoot lasers out of their eyes to changing weather patterns at will.Thats a pretty good reason to keep opinions to themselves

Well maybe not much to mutants with inherintley dangerous mutations, but what about the mutants with mutations that just have an affect on their physical appearance. Something that gets overlooked alot in x-men comics is that there is a rather large group of mutants whose mutations don't lend to combat situations or destructive capabilities like:

Looks like a bird (Beak)
two sentient stomachs (Maggot)
transparent skin (Wraith)
extra mouths (Choir)
a nine-foot long neck (Longneck)
the resemblance of a large crayfish (Mudbug)
a very large, extremely runny nose (Snot)
an obese and rubbery body (Bertram)
multiple eyes covering the body ( Eye Boy)

Mutants like these would likely to be easy and safe targets for mutant detractors to antagonize in the real world seeing as how they can't do any real harm than say a person who manipulates metal or can read and control your mind.

[DDD]

They kind of covered that with Decimation and the Purifiers but it was so over the top (Kyost) or dull (Jenkins).

When Mark Waid took over (for 2 issues), it seemed like he was going to have Rogue try and live a "normal" life. I think that was quickly dropped.

It's all kind of been done here and there to various degrees. The Morlocks were established as mostly useless.

[Star_Jammer]

This issue has been discussed multiple times before. In it's own thread(s) and as part of side-stepping in other threads.

The discussion usually dies out.

There's 3 camps, from what I've always noticed: 1) the people who think the metaphor works, and is almost a perfect stand-in for any real world minority 2) the camp that thinks the metaphor works loosely, or could use some "work" in areas (my camp), 3) the ones who go "lol comics".

It never goes anywhere, and nobody ever agrees on anything.

[DDD]

There's also the camp where it only works for MY community too.

[iacobusleo]

I don't know if mutants would have it easy in real-world america. I'd imagine public opinion of mutants would be divisive in the real-world compared to current Marvel where everyone has a 50's hatred for mutants. It would be interesting if current x-men comics did more to reflect real-world social issues ( #mutantlivesmatter was a good example you brought up).

I've been reading Claremont's run for the first time in its entirety recently and it struck me how nuanced the public's opinion of mutants was. Yes there were people who hated them, but there were also people who had mixed opinions about them, and others who kept insisting that mutants were people too. These diverse opinions were in every layer of society, from the street level public to the authorities such as the police and politicians. Not unlike our real world today. Organisations that wanted to outright kill them were few and far in between. As of now in my read through (I'm up to the Fall of the Mutants), the only ones are Stryker's secret paramilitary forces and The Right.

It's only recently in the post Morrison era where the 'mutants are hated and feared' button gets pushed hard. There has been very few sympathetic or neutral humans; every human we see that is not an ally of the X-Men has an irrational hatred and a need to attack any mutants in the vicinity. The ones that do support the X-Men, like Kate Kildare, gets unceremoniously killed off, unlike in the Claremont run where they had quite a large number of human allies for years.

This is surprising me to because I thought we would have made progress in depicting mutant-human relations, not regression. I think X-Men as a whole has become less nuanced overall, and that is extremely troubling.

However, I could be lacking some context since I haven't kept up with Fraction's run.

[LocoSteve]

They kind of covered that with Decimation and the Purifiers but it was so over the top (Kyost) or dull (Jenkins).

The Purifiers seem to work more when the story they are in is more grounded than other x-stories, like in God Loves Man Kills.

[DDD]

I still haven't read that. It's on my read when I am retired list along with: The End, True Friends and Excalibur V3.

[Star_Jammer]

There's also the camp where it only works for MY community too.

Eh, you could lump that in with 1), but for sake of clarity...yeah, 4 camps I guess.

[LocoSteve]

It's only recently in the post Morrison era where the 'mutants are hated and feared' button gets pushed hard. There has been very few sympathetic or neutral humans; every human we see that is not an ally of the X-Men has an irrational hatred and a need to attack any mutants in the vicinity. The ones that do support the X-Men, like Kate Kildare, gets unceremoniously killed off, unlike in the Claremont run where they had quite a large number of human allies for years.

This is surprising me to because I thought we would have made progress in depicting mutant-human relations, not regression. I think X-Men as a whole has become less nuanced overall, and that is extremely troubling.

However, I could be lacking some context since I haven't kept up with Fraction's run.

Yeah, the x-men comics of the past few years have been operating with the idea that few people are sympathetic towards mutants and more and more hate groups want to kill them. Its sad to the regression as well. I kind of wish the x-men would move back to San Francisco. That could open up for new story opportunities and exploration of human-mutant relations now that mutants are back ( or at least it would if the whole terrigen mist nonsense gets resolved).

[LocoSteve]

I still haven't read that. It's on my read when I am retired list along with: The End, True Friends and Excalibur V3.

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=...nXMkUPAiuSoGnQ

Found it for you whenever you feel like reading it.