I've never followed X-Men, so for those of you who are avid fans of the comic book franchise, please address a concern of mine about the series.
The idea of X-Men is interesting: people are born with superpowers, society reacts to them with intolerance and casts them out, viewing them as less than human, and a dialogue comes up between two factions about what the behavior of an oppressed group should be within such a society.
I get that the X-Men are supposed to be metaphors for any oppressed minority within society, in particular Jewish people, black people, and these days, gay people.
The problem I've always had with this, though, is that the central conceit of the comic undermines this metaphor.
To me, the X-Men has always inadvertently played into racist propaganda. The whole message of racial/sexual tolerance is to affirm the fundamental, underlying humanity of every individual, and to recognize that race/sexuality is merely one descriptor of a human being. Written succinctly, the message is, "There's no difference between me or you." On the other hand, racist propaganda casts those of a different race as being not-fully-human, and will portray those of other races as being a threat by nature of their "otherness."
Yet, despite X-Men's attempts to express the former, it seems to follow the racist propaganda:
1. Mutants are not human, but a separate species, or at least a separate subspecies.
2. Mutants do indeed pose an obvious threat to humanity due to their very nature. We would decry a claim that someone is a threat to society because he is black or gay, because there's nothing inherent to someone being black or gay that makes him a threat. However, someone who has the ability to throw fire, shoot lasers out of his eyes, or control the weather is obviously a threat to those around him.
3. It seems to be openly acknowledged that mutants will cause the end of humanity if left unchecked. Mutants are widely regarded as the next stage in evolution. Thus, the implication is that humanity is in its twilight, with mutants ultimately replacing them. Thus, the claim that growing numbers of a minority in society causing the undermining of the world as we know it — a claim which seems so ridiculous when espoused by those who are anti-minority in real life — is a completely legitimate concern with regards to mutants.
The message of X-Men seems to be the old lesson of admonishing those who would, out of ignorance, let their fear of that which they do not understand drive them to hatred, drawing parallels to Antisemitism, segregation, and homophobia.
However, this message falls flat on its face when the same claims made toward mutants are justified by fact.
Now, maybe I'm off-base here. As I've said before, I'm not an X-Men fan, so I'm curious what people who do follow the comic series have to say on the subject.
1. Mutants are not human, but a separate species, or at least a separate subspecies.
I'm not THAT into X-men so I could be wrong, but as far as I know, this is supposed to be a mistake that people are making. Mutants are still supposed to be human and the attempts to differentiate them are akin to past attempts at dividing homo sapiens into caucasoid, negroid, etc. Certainly from a realistic biological stance, they ARE still human.
2. Mutants do indeed pose an obvious threat to humanity due to their very nature. We would decry a claim that someone is a threat to society because he is black or gay, because there's nothing inherent to someone being black or gay that makes him a threat. However, someone who has the ability to throw fire, shoot lasers out of his eyes, or control the weather is obviously a threat to those around him.
This is a good point, but honestly it's what drives the series plot-wise - on a lower level than the "message". That might sound like a cop-out, but yea, it's sort of necessary to the way the stories work. With that said... although I don't read the comics, from the adaptions I've seen in a lot of media I think they could fix this more by having the benevolent mutants help regular people a bit more often. Without a malevolent mutant involved at all. But it's not a main part of the formula. I wouldn't be at all surprised if it happens more often in the comic, seeing as in particular with games and movies that's not really seen as something you tend to have time for.
You could also argue that despite all the danger the good guys win in the end -> mutants are as good as they are bad, this reflects humanity in general, etc etc
2. Mutants do indeed pose an obvious threat to humanity due to their very nature. We would decry a claim that someone is a threat to society because he is black or gay, because there's nothing inherent to someone being black or gay that makes him a threat. However, someone who has the ability to throw fire, shoot lasers out of his eyes, or control the weather is obviously a threat to those around him.
Only if they have a complete lack of control and are missing any sense of morality.
One of the big issues with the anti-mutant factions in X-men is that they do not look at the individual, but tar the entire mutant community with the same brush.
To them the 'mutant race' is just one massive monolithic, homogenise scary mass of people just waiting to tear down society as they know it. Rather than seeing it as a bunch of disparate individuals each with there own identities and driving factors.
Picking up Cyclops as and example yes Cyclops could if he wished wander through most cities in the world and reduce large parts of them to rubble. But due to the training, discipline and education he receives from Xavier he is very unlikely to do that. In contrast to the Juggernaut who is going very likely to do that and enjoy it.
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Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag and start slitting throats.
- H.L Mencken
I Became insane with long Intervals of horrible Sanity
All Religion, my friend is simply evolved out of fraud, fear, greed, imagination and poetry.
- Edgar Allan Poe
The short answer is this: Any metaphor or allegory will break down when sufficiently analyzed. The X-Men aren't real-world Jews or blacks or gays, they're a frequently-apt stand-in for marginalized groups in a fictional setting.
Longer analysis: It's important to remember in circumstanced like this that metaphors are plot devices; they are there to advance the story. If you needed for your metaphorical oppressed minority to behave exactly like their real-life equivalent, they would in essence just be their real-life equivalent. In the case of the original X-Men comics, the mutants would essentially become a marginalized ethnicity with nothing otherwise abnormal about them. But X-Men was not supposed to be a comic about marginalized people, it's a super hero comic about a group of marginalized super heroes. This was done to bring the desired issue (arbitrary marginalization) to the desired audience (people who read super hero comics), and the breakdown of the metaphor was deemed to be either acceptable or irrelevant. This is where analysis (literary/psychological/sociological/etc.) can break a work of fiction. They can, on occasion, attribute more significance to aspects or deficiencies in a metaphor than to the work's true intent, which in many cases is hard to determine in the first place. In the case of the X-Men, however, their creators still have a voice in Stan Lee, who is willing to talk about who the X-Men represent and whether issues like the ones the OP raised were oversights or intentional and why. The general consensus from Stan and Marvel seems to be that any unfortunate implications of the metaphor of the X-Men are there to make the story work in it's own context, not to say anything about the groups that the mutants metaphorically represent.
In fact, as far as I know, the OP's issues do come up in the various X-Men comics, and are dealt with in a manner reasonably appropriate to their fictional context. As for being a different species/subspecies, the emphasis is on personhood, not being biologically human (remember that there are many non-human persons in the Marvel universe like asgardians/aliens/etc.); human or no, mutants are people. There are some mutants that are very dangerous, but many are not. The issue is that non-dangerous mutants (like many of the Morlocks) are often treated as being an equal threat as mutants with incidentally dangerous powers and outright evil mutants. The inevitability of mutant succession to humanity is not necessarily evil, only with characters like Magneto who use it as an excuse to wipe out non-mutants. To most of the X-Men, just because mutants will overtake humans as a matter of biological evolution, that doesn't make humans a lesser people. They seem to regard humans as valuable people that just happen to be part of a dying species, if the inevitable fate of homo sapiens is considered at all.
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A polite player might call my card choices "interesting." At my budget, "interesting" is the only option.
Only if they have a complete lack of control and are missing any sense of morality.
One of the big issues with the anti-mutant factions in X-men is that they do not look at the individual, but tar the entire mutant community with the same brush.
To them the 'mutant race' is just one massive monolithic, homogenise scary mass of people just waiting to tear down society as they know it. Rather than seeing it as a bunch of disparate individuals each with there own identities and driving factors.
Picking up Cyclops as and example yes Cyclops could if he wished wander through most cities in the world and reduce large parts of them to rubble. But due to the training, discipline and education he receives from Xavier he is very unlikely to do that. In contrast to the Juggernaut who is going very likely to do that and enjoy it.
Sounds like the X-Men could be used as a metaphor for the right to bear arms instead. "Mutant powers don't kill people; people kill people."
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Vive, vale. Siquid novisti rectius istis,
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
2. Mutants do indeed pose an obvious threat to humanity due to their very nature. We would decry a claim that someone is a threat to society because he is black or gay, because there's nothing inherent to someone being black or gay that makes him a threat. However, someone who has the ability to throw fire, shoot lasers out of his eyes, or control the weather is obviously a threat to those around him.
To be fair, this exact claim bounds quite a few varieties of racism. Anti-Muslim racism (I call it racist because it's really "anti-people who look like a muslim stereotype" - I know, for example, a Saudi Christian who lived in the US for decades who endured quite a lot of this racism) in the US is at least superficially predicated on the physical danger these people allegedly pose to our society. A lot of racist propaganda going back to the 19th century centered on slave uprisings and the threat of violence against affluent whites, and you see echoes of this in discussion of the LA race riots after the Rodney King issue and in the "Stand your ground" laws becoming so prevalent in parts of the country, with the 'thug' rhetoric.
There's a difference, of course, in that a tiny handful of mutants in the X-Men comics are given powers which make them a massive danger without being armed, without special training and without needing weapons, but the threat of physical violence posed by minorities is a very real piece of the racist puzzle.
3. It seems to be openly acknowledged that mutants will cause the end of humanity if left unchecked. Mutants are widely regarded as the next stage in evolution. Thus, the implication is that humanity is in its twilight, with mutants ultimately replacing them. Thus, the claim that growing numbers of a minority in society causing the undermining of the world as we know it — a claim which seems so ridiculous when espoused by those who are anti-minority in real life — is a completely legitimate concern with regards to mutants.
Again, this exact claim is a part of the real racist agenda and it's ridiculous for exactly the same reasons. It's plausible in X-Men only if you accept that they're somehow inhuman - but a lot of the point is that they're NOT inhuman. They're human and also have an aspect about them which is substantially different from the majority.
Remember that one of the real racist pieces is actually true: political and social acceptance of, say, blacks does lead to more 'mulatto' people. Given a thousand years or so and an end to immigration, our population very likely would end up being a much more uniform blend of ethnic traits (exactly which traits are expressed and to what degree is an open question, of course). The racist's mistake is not in asserting that populations will blend and we'll end up intermediate; the racist's mistake is in asserting that there's something wrong with this.
Yes, it's conceivable that the mutants in X-Men will end up with some of their traits spread over the whole population. So what?
1. Mutants are not human, but a separate species, or at least a separate subspecies.
I'm not THAT into X-men so I could be wrong, but as far as I know, this is supposed to be a mistake that people are making. Mutants are still supposed to be human and the attempts to differentiate them are akin to past attempts at dividing homo sapiens into caucasoid, negroid, etc. Certainly from a realistic biological stance, they ARE still human.
As I understand it, this is incorrect. Mutants are regarded as Homo sapiens superior, and are thus a different subspecies than humans are. Thus, mutants are not human.
Only if they have a complete lack of control and are missing any sense of morality.
A person with a gun in his hands with complete control and a righteous morality remains a person with a gun in his hands and still remains a dangerous person.
Which is completely different from saying that a person is a danger because he's black or because he's gay. Neither of these make a person inherently dangerous, whereas person with superpowers is indeed inherently dangerous.
See also Superman, who does not shy away from the fact that he is incredibly dangerous despite the fact that he is a paragon of moral principles.
To be fair, this exact claim bounds quite a few varieties of racism.
Again, this exact claim is a part of the real racist agenda and it's ridiculous for exactly the same reasons.
I'm confused. Yes, those are arguments that a racist agenda makes. That was my point. The problem is in real life they have no validity, whereas in the X-Men world, they are perfectly valid.
I'm confused. Yes, the are arguments that a racist agenda makes. That was my point. The problem is in real life they have no validity, whereas in the X-Men world, they are perfectly valid.
The first one, maybe slightly. Essentially you have a handful of mutants (most mutations are basically cosmetic) who have a loaded weapon, and there's a little bit of validity to extra attention for those handful of individuals, so we get into a more complicated gun control discussion. But the truth is the will to harm which is attributed to Muslims by their detractors is more dangerous than super powers are anyway, particularly in a universe full of superheroes other than the mutants. Anyone can make a bomb and set it off.
The second one is not even slightly valid. It is exactly analogous to the racist claim.
A person with a gun in his hands with complete control and a righteous morality remains a person with a gun in his hands and still remains a dangerous person.
Which is completely different from saying that a person is a danger because he's black or because he's gay. Neither of these make a person inherently dangerous, whereas person with superpowers is indeed inherently dangerous.
See also Superman, who does not shy away from the fact that he is incredibly dangerous despite the fact that he is a paragon of moral principles.
Yeah, but 1. Not all mutants are dangerous. AND 2. Not all dangerous people are mutants.
The first one, maybe slightly. Essentially you have a handful of mutants (most mutations are basically cosmetic) who have a loaded weapon, and there's a little bit of validity to extra attention for those handful of individuals, so we get into a more complicated gun control discussion. But the truth is the will to harm which is attributed to Muslims by their detractors is more dangerous than super powers are anyway, particularly in a universe full of superheroes other than the mutants. Anyone can make a bomb and set it off.
Wait, what are you even arguing?
Anyone with a bomb is dangerous, and should be treated as such. If you're saying having superpowers is analogous to having a bomb (or being a bomb), then you're only demonstrating my point.
The second one is not even slightly valid. It is exactly analogous to the racist claim.
Except, in the X-Men Universe, the X-Men are not, in fact, human and do, in fact, threaten humanity's extinction. So, it's the opposite of analogous, really.
Correct, it depends on the "superpower". Not all of them are of the "building leveling" variety. Cypher's mutant power is to translate and understand languages, is that inherently dangerous? Is an enhanced sense of smell inherently dangerous? How about Ventriloquism?
The first one, maybe slightly. Essentially you have a handful of mutants (most mutations are basically cosmetic) who have a loaded weapon, and there's a little bit of validity to extra attention for those handful of individuals, so we get into a more complicated gun control discussion. But the truth is the will to harm which is attributed to Muslims by their detractors is more dangerous than super powers are anyway, particularly in a universe full of superheroes other than the mutants. Anyone can make a bomb and set it off.
Wait, what are you even arguing?
Anyone with a bomb is dangerous, and should be treated as such. If you're saying having superpowers is analogous to having a bomb (or being a bomb), then you're only demonstrating my point.
I'm saying not nearly as dangerous as having the will to build and use a bomb, which is the specific claim made against Muslims, not directly analogous to it. As I've already admitted (and you conveniently ignored), there's a little complexity to the tiny handful of mutants possessing WMD-like capabilities.
That's about it, though. The vast majority of mutants? Government has no legitimate interest in them beyond their actual actions. Wolverine can chop up a few people. ANYONE can chop up a few people, with the level of martial training that guy has (he's not exactly Joe Normal plus super powers, remember). He's a tougher foe than a non-mutant warrior would be, but a Navy Seal goes rogue and starts killing, well, we've seen that kind of scenario play out (beltway sniper wasn't even trained near that level!). Doesn't mean we go around keeping close tabs on every ex-soldier. And don't forget that the Marvel universe is a universe positively crawling with people with powers that easily surpass that of Colossus or Iceman, even setting mutants aside, so it's not like they're on a tier above everyone else in combat power.
The analogous accusation against mutants would be that they possess the ability to turn their mutations on normal humans and the desire to do so, inherently. That's what Muslims stand unfairly accused of: the desire to blow up all us god-fearin' righteous folk.
I don't think it's disanalogous with racist claims in the way that you claim it is. I think it's actually a pretty fair analogy, minus the tiny handful of mutants who could accidentally level a city block (e.g. Cyclops). They are accused of having the power to commit serious acts of violence against 'us' - that's true in both cases. They are accused of having the desire to commit serious acts of violence against 'us' - that's sometimes true, sometimes false in both cases, because people are damned complex and painting with a broad brush is a serious mistake.
The second one is not even slightly valid. It is exactly analogous to the racist claim.
Except, in the X-Men Universe, the X-Men are not, in fact, human and do, in fact, threaten humanity's extinction. So, it's the opposite of analogous, really.
Except they can breed with humans, which makes them human by the definition of a species, and aside from a few outcasts, they don't threaten humanity's extinction by violence at all, so what you just said is the opposite of true.
(By the way, the level of detail in this question is a bit lacking: in one X-Men origin story, they're all created by a government weapons project and not natural mutations, which has rather a serious bearing on the discussion. Another point: Marvel is trying to classify them as not human - because Marvel pays lower taxes in real life on action figures if they can classify them as non-human, which is not exactly an intellectually honest evaluation of the question)
Maybe the issue is larger than racism. How would we treat other sapient beings if confronted with them, beings who have the power to undermine how our society functions, possibly inadvertently? Would we attempt to tolerate their awesome powers (and the lesser ones that have little to impact on our day-to-day lives) in order to come to equitable terms or would we magnify the gap between our humanity and their otherness to stir up sentiment against them? Not all of the sentiment towards the mutants in the Marvel universe is careful understanding by the fully human parties.
So maybe the metaphor for racism doesn't hold up, but I think it still does a good job of telling us that we should be careful how we identify ourselves and how we identify others who are not like ourselves. Plus, who knows, maybe one day finding a common ground in humanity will just be too limiting. ; )
1. Mutants are not human, but a separate species, or at least a separate subspecies.
Mutants and humans are like humans and neanderthals. Close enough to have offspring and exist together. Unlike the latter, there is no biological difference other than the "X-factor" and so there are generally no distinguishing characteristics to make true segregation possible.
2. Mutants do indeed pose an obvious threat to humanity due to their very nature. We would decry a claim that someone is a threat to society because he is black or gay, because there's nothing inherent to someone being black or gay that makes him a threat. However, someone who has the ability to throw fire, shoot lasers out of his eyes, or control the weather is obviously a threat to those around him.
Not all mutants are dangerous but the X-Factor makes predicting what mutation(if any e.g. Grayden Creed) your child will have impossible. Also, there aren't enough mutants to be a threat. The population was about .5% of the entire world prior to M-Day! Now there are merely a handful, some 300 or so out of 7 billion people.
3. It seems to be openly acknowledged that mutants will cause the end of humanity if left unchecked. Mutants are widely regarded as the next stage in evolution. Thus, the implication is that humanity is in its twilight, with mutants ultimately replacing them. Thus, the claim that growing numbers of a minority in society causing the undermining of the world as we know it — a claim which seems so ridiculous when espoused by those who are anti-minority in real life — is a completely legitimate concern with regards to mutants.
As stated above, this is no longer a big concern. Prior to the 20th century there were hardly any human mutants. As far as I know Wolverine, Mystique, Sabertooth, and Apocalypse were the only mutants born before 1900. Some event caused more and more mutants to be born and then M-Day happened and the huge number was brought down to a very reasonable size. My personal theory is that the increased mutants population was a response from higher powers to the increasing threat of Apocalypse and perhaps the events that preceded and followed M-Day. Of course when they increased the numbers they chanced mutants like Jean Grey, Professor Xavier(and his sick twin Cassandra Nova), and Magneto being born.
X-Men definitely had a strong message in inception and it was an obvious analogue to the racial troubles of the 20th century. Now that the civil rights movements have essentially ended Marvel has turned to more traditional comic book storytelling for X-Men. Mess things up so you can reboot the series and no one even cares. >.<
Correct, it depends on the "superpower". Not all of them are of the "building leveling" variety. Cypher's mutant power is to translate and understand languages, is that inherently dangerous? Is an enhanced sense of smell inherently dangerous? How about Ventriloquism?
Fair point, but the reaction to those who have superpowers has justification.
It's why X-Men rubs me the wrong way. We have a paramilitary organization filled with mutants with the cool abilities running around telling everyone there's nothing to fear from mutants. There's all sorts of problems there for me.
I relate far more to the attitudes of many characters of the DC Universe, who openly acknowledge that their superpowers are a threat, and actively discuss the ramifications of power, as opposed to the X-Men who I feel we're expected to give a pass on just because they're oppressed.
I'm saying not nearly as dangerous as having the will to build and use a bomb,
I disagree. Many of these mutants ARE bombs, or much, much worse.
Doesn't mean we go around keeping close tabs on every ex-soldier.
We do, however, keep tabs on weapon ownership, which is a more relevant concern. A person with a weapon is a significant threat beyond a person without one.
I don't think it's disanalogous with racist claims in the way that you claim it is. I think it's actually a pretty fair analogy, minus the tiny handful of mutants who could accidentally level a city block (e.g. Cyclops).
But that just demonstrates the flaw here. There exist mutants who are dangerous inherently by virtue of being mutants.
That messes up the analogy. One is not dangerous inherently by virtue of being black. There's nothing about being black itself that makes one more dangerous than a person who is of any other race. One is, however, dangerous inherently by virtue of being a mutant of power level whatever or greater, or whatever the in-universe tier ranking system is called.
So you can't say something's analogous to an irrational fear if it has rational justification.
Except they can breed with humans, which makes them human by the definition of a species,
It makes them a subspecies of homo sapiens, as the Neanderthals were and we are. This does not make them human.
and aside from a few outcasts, they don't threaten humanity's extinction by violence at all, so what you just said is the opposite of true.
Violence is not the only threat the mutants pose to humanity. They also pose a threat by overpopulation and eventual replacement, which is, incidentally, a common racist fear.
The X-Men are, after all, regarded as "the next step in human evolution," with a comparison to the Neanderthals. Look at what happened to the Neanderthals.
Mutants and humans are like humans and neanderthals.
Which are two different subspecies.
Unlike the latter, there is no biological difference other than the "X-factor"
Which is apparently enough to make them a different subspecies.
Not all mutants are dangerous but the X-Factor makes predicting what mutation(if any e.g. Grayden Creed) your child will have impossible. Also, there aren't enough mutants to be a threat.
Anyone with a superpower is a threat.
As stated above, this is no longer a big concern.
X-Men definitely had a strong message in inception and it was an obvious analogue to the racial troubles of the 20th century. Now that the civil rights movements have essentially ended Marvel has turned to more traditional comic book storytelling for X-Men. Mess things up so you can reboot the series and no one even cares. >.<
Interesting.
Again, never followed it, so it's useful to bounce these ideas off of people who have.
Correct, it depends on the "superpower". Not all of them are of the "building leveling" variety. Cypher's mutant power is to translate and understand languages, is that inherently dangerous? Is an enhanced sense of smell inherently dangerous? How about Ventriloquism?
Fair point, but the reaction to those who have superpowers has justification.
It's why X-Men rubs me the wrong way. We have a paramilitary organization filled with mutants with the cool abilities running around telling everyone there's nothing to fear from mutants. There's all sorts of problems there for me.
I relate far more to the attitudes of many characters of the DC Universe, who openly acknowledge that their superpowers are a threat, and actively discuss the ramifications of power, as opposed to the X-Men who I feel we're expected to give a pass on just because they're oppressed.
I'm saying not nearly as dangerous as having the will to build and use a bomb,
I disagree. Many of these mutants ARE bombs, or much, much worse.
Doesn't mean we go around keeping close tabs on every ex-soldier.
We do, however, keep tabs on weapon ownership, which is a more relevant concern. A person with a weapon is a significant threat beyond a person without one.
I don't think it's disanalogous with racist claims in the way that you claim it is. I think it's actually a pretty fair analogy, minus the tiny handful of mutants who could accidentally level a city block (e.g. Cyclops).
But that just demonstrates the flaw here. There exist mutants who are dangerous inherently by virtue of being mutants.
And there exist other people (ie Superman or the Hulk) who are dangerous and are not mutants.
It's not being a mutant that makes you dangerous, it's having superpowers of a certain magnitude. Just like it's not being a soldier that makes you dangerous, it's owning a gun. If people have a justifiable reason to be afraid of Cyclops then they have just as much reason to be afraid of Thor or the Hulk. Except neither of them are mutants. So the whole "mutants are dangerous and therefore anti-mutant actions are justifiable" argument is a complete red herring.
In that sense, the analogy for racism works just fine.
Right, in this same universe we have Iron Man flying around, the Hulk going on the occasional rampage, the Fantastic Four, Thor and Loki, and an enormous number of other such individuals. A handful of mutants DO bear watching, but the vast majority of mutants have no particularly exceptional combat abilities to speak of.
And there exist other people (ie Superman or the Hulk) who are dangerous and are not mutants.
Did you miss the part where I said I like Superman because he openly admits he's dangerous and people should fear him?
It's not being a mutant that makes you dangerous, it's having superpowers of a certain magnitude.
... Which a significant population of mutants are characterized as having, and which the X gene pretty much exists as a Macguffin for allowing the existence of people with dangerous superpowers.
Just like it's not being a soldier that makes you dangerous, it's owning a gun. If people have a justifiable reason to be afraid of Cyclops then they have just as much reason to be afraid of Thor or the Hulk. Except neither of them are mutants. So the whole "mutants are dangerous and therefore anti-mutant actions are justifiable" argument is a complete red herring.
You are attacking a strawman.
I'm arguing ANYONE with superpowers is inherently dangerous. The fact that you're saying, "Well there are people who have superpowers and are dangerous even though they aren't mutants" does absolutely nothing to contradict my point.
The reason I have a problem with X-Men is because they have turned "having superpowers" into a race, and are trying to make an analogy between the public's reaction to the X-Men, and the discrimination levied against those who are black, Jewish, gay, or whatever. The problem with this is that, as you say, anyone with superpowers is inherently more dangerous than a person without them, thereby making the public's reaction have at least some rational basis, whereas claims of minorities being dangerous are baseless. As such, the use of mutants as a metaphor for black, Jewish, gay, and other discriminated peoples has an inherent problem.
Should note two things that are pretty important in this discussion and seems to be being neglected:
First, there are a bunch of mutants who literally don't have super powers - they either have basically cosmetic mutations or mutations that slightly alter (usually don't improve) their capabilities, e.g. clumsy flight at the expense of also being clumsy on the ground. They're different, but calling them super powered is a tremendous stretch.
Which leaves you arguing for blanket controls over a population containing many individuals who are literally not superpowered - they just have blue skin or funky hair. Others have some very, very minor 'super' powers that aren't combat relevant. You've generalized from "super powered people are dangerous" to "mutants are dangerous", when the correlation is at best statistical. Some mutants are dangerous, not all - and the ones who are dangerous are dangerous by virtue of having super powers. Which is exactly the point, of course - if controls are desirable, they're desirable for all super powered individuals, not all mutants. When they're advocated in the stories, they're advocated the other way around. Hulk doesn't have to register; Beak does.
Second, the impetus for mutant registration is given surface plausibility by the super powered mutants, but is driven by hate groups, in the fiction. Regulating super powered beings alone would not be enough to drive this legislation in the fictional world being presented.
First, there are a bunch of mutants who literally don't have super powers - they either have basically cosmetic mutations or mutations that slightly alter (usually don't improve) their capabilities, e.g. clumsy flight at the expense of also being clumsy on the ground. They're different, but calling them super powered is a tremendous stretch.
Irrelevant. The point stands that:
A. There are indeed mutants with superpowers that are truly terrifying, which messes up the metaphor, and
B. The existence of mutantkind itself constitutes a risk of extinction (or certainty of extinction, depending on continuity) for the human race, which also messes up the metaphor.
The metaphor doesn't work because mutants are indeed a threat to humanity. Saying, "Well there are other threats to humanity besides mutants" doesn't make mutants any less of a threat to humanity.
Thus, by portraying mutants as actually a credible threat to humanity, X-Men actually ends up unintentionally backing discrimination against minorities (which portrays groups as being threats to society).
"super powered people are dangerous" to "mutants are dangerous", when the correlation is at best statistical.
See point B. All mutants possess the X gene, and therefore all mutants are indeed a threat to humanity.
Second, the impetus for mutant registration is given surface plausibility by the super powered mutants, but is driven by hate groups,
And? What does that have anything to do with this topic?
First, there are a bunch of mutants who literally don't have super powers - they either have basically cosmetic mutations or mutations that slightly alter (usually don't improve) their capabilities, e.g. clumsy flight at the expense of also being clumsy on the ground. They're different, but calling them super powered is a tremendous stretch.
Irrelevant. The point stands that:
A. There are indeed mutants with superpowers that are truly terrifying, which messes up the metaphor, and
B. The existence of mutantkind itself constitutes a risk of extinction (or certainty of extinction, depending on continuity) on the part of the human race, which also messes up the metaphor.
"super powered people are dangerous" to "mutants are dangerous", when the correlation is at best statistical.
See point B. All mutants possess the X gene, and therefore all mutants are indeed a threat to humanity.
Many mutants express the X gene in a benign way. And many non-mutants are super powered. This is not only not irrelevant, this is the central point being made in story arcs like mutant registration. If it was about super powers, it would be 'super power registration' - Beak would not have to sign up, Mr. Fantastic (who is a mutate, not a mutant) would.
(Incidentally, there are also superpower registration act storylines; don't let that get in the way, those stories are about something different, not racial metaphor).
You seem to have this notion that simple possession of the X-Gene, even if it grants you no powers at all (and it supposedly goes unexpressed for fair-sized chunks of the population who live as normal humans), represents an existential threat to humanity. I'm afraid I don't see it, and you're going to have to explain it explicitly (and I sure hope it's not just a mongrelization/miscegenation argument...).
Second, the impetus for mutant registration is given surface plausibility by the super powered mutants, but is driven by hate groups,
And? What does that have anything to do with this topic?
The topic is on whether Marvel's mutants work as a vehicle for discussion of racism, right? I'd say the fact that in the universe being discussed, there's not enough political pressure to actually discriminate against them without out-and-out fearmongering and hatemongering is, again, directly on point.
To be as explicit as possible about it: Marvel's mutants are not merely carefully watched by a neutral set of observers making sure they don't go around leveling cities, they're actively discriminated against and harassed by Jim Crow-esque mobs.
It doesn't bear on whether they're potential doomsday weapons with legs, but it certainly bears on whether and how well they serve as a metaphor for racial discrimination, which is the question you posed in the OP (maybe you didn't mean to be so broad, I don't know). In this way, they do.
Yeah I never received the X-men as having to do with race and hate crime. I saw it as a discussion on trust and freedom. I guess that's like the right to bear arms. Do we only trust Humankind in aggregate because we have a slave morality and believe in everyone's weakness, or can we really respect freedom on ideology alone?
It seems civilization presently is against freedom, because the Mutant Registration Act never looks like evil in bill form.
Still, if Highroller's supposition is only that X-men allows a racist to sneak in points for his racist agenda, I guess that stands.
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It's why X-Men rubs me the wrong way. We have a paramilitary organization filled with mutants with the cool abilities running around telling everyone there's nothing to fear from mutants. There's all sorts of problems there for me.
The much better argument they could make is "There are creatures that want to eat our solar system, everyone without superpowers strong enough to migrate to another solar system is going to die anyway." In fact, if we're going to take Doom's (Quite informed.) opinion on it, there are very few scenarios that lead to humanity surviving in the long-term, and these all involve a completely totalitarian society where the weak and those unwilling to cooperate get killed without any afterthought.
Mutants threatening the extinction of humans isn't a problem if extinction of humans is inevitable. Likewise:
A number of characters have powers that make humanity completely unable to stop them, if they decide to screw everything. Franklin Richards, for example, who might arguably be immortal due to the ability to create infinite amounts of pocket dimensions, and as such infinite amounts of himself. Mad Jim Jaspers from Earth-238 was lower in power level, but still required a termination of entire universe and the timeline of it just to stop him from spreading his influence. It is heavily implied that his Earth-616 version is unstoppable, has exponential growth in power, and will eventually take over the omniverse as a chaotic, insane, all-powerful god. (Assuming eternity doesn't give a damn. And that guy, for the record, *is* all of reality.)
Even "lower-powered" characters, such as Scarlet Witch, have been shown to re-write the entire timelines of their own universes.
The metaphor doesn't work because mutants are indeed a threat to humanity. Saying, "Well there are other threats to humanity besides mutants" doesn't make mutants any less of a threat to humanity.
Barring mutants and other superpowered characters, there's be no humanity. In this universal rocket-tag, humanity is completely and utterly reliant on superpowered entities to help them.
But yeah, that makes for a bad metaphor for racism, too.
and aside from a few outcasts, they don't threaten humanity's extinction by violence at all, so what you just said is the opposite of true.
Violence is not the only threat the mutants pose to humanity. They also pose a threat by overpopulation and eventual replacement, which is, incidentally, a common racist fear.
But is it wrong to have more able and fit offspring?
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The Sage is occupied with the unspoken
and acts without effort.
Teaching without verbosity,
producing without possessing,
creating without regard to result,
claiming nothing,
the Sage has nothing to lose.
Barring mutants and other superpowered characters, there's be no humanity. In this universal rocket-tag, humanity is completely and utterly reliant on superpowered entities to help them.
But yeah, that makes for a bad metaphor for racism, too.
What'd I tell ya? It's totally the right to bear arms. "The only thing that can stop a bad guy with mutant powers is a good guy with mutant powers."
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1. No one questions Tolkien's elves being "people," but they certainly aren't "human." Are they moral actors? If yes, they're people reguardless of DNA or being orcs or whatever.
2. I'm in shape and I'm pretty good at hitting people, therefore I am a threat to those around me. Certainly have laws with stricter punishments for the use of superhuman abilities in crime, but having the potential to be a danger is no reason to attack someone. By that logic North America, Europe, and Asia would all be uninhabitable radioactive wastes by now.
3. Again, still people, they can just fly or shoot sparks out their eyebrows or whatever.
The fact that it's a dominate gene and will in fact replace humanity eventually does have interesting implications for the metaphor.
Know what? New thread about it in a literary sense because I've always wanted to have that conversation and my friends just look at me funny.
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The idea of X-Men is interesting: people are born with superpowers, society reacts to them with intolerance and casts them out, viewing them as less than human, and a dialogue comes up between two factions about what the behavior of an oppressed group should be within such a society.
I get that the X-Men are supposed to be metaphors for any oppressed minority within society, in particular Jewish people, black people, and these days, gay people.
The problem I've always had with this, though, is that the central conceit of the comic undermines this metaphor.
To me, the X-Men has always inadvertently played into racist propaganda. The whole message of racial/sexual tolerance is to affirm the fundamental, underlying humanity of every individual, and to recognize that race/sexuality is merely one descriptor of a human being. Written succinctly, the message is, "There's no difference between me or you." On the other hand, racist propaganda casts those of a different race as being not-fully-human, and will portray those of other races as being a threat by nature of their "otherness."
Yet, despite X-Men's attempts to express the former, it seems to follow the racist propaganda:
1. Mutants are not human, but a separate species, or at least a separate subspecies.
2. Mutants do indeed pose an obvious threat to humanity due to their very nature. We would decry a claim that someone is a threat to society because he is black or gay, because there's nothing inherent to someone being black or gay that makes him a threat. However, someone who has the ability to throw fire, shoot lasers out of his eyes, or control the weather is obviously a threat to those around him.
3. It seems to be openly acknowledged that mutants will cause the end of humanity if left unchecked. Mutants are widely regarded as the next stage in evolution. Thus, the implication is that humanity is in its twilight, with mutants ultimately replacing them. Thus, the claim that growing numbers of a minority in society causing the undermining of the world as we know it — a claim which seems so ridiculous when espoused by those who are anti-minority in real life — is a completely legitimate concern with regards to mutants.
The message of X-Men seems to be the old lesson of admonishing those who would, out of ignorance, let their fear of that which they do not understand drive them to hatred, drawing parallels to Antisemitism, segregation, and homophobia.
However, this message falls flat on its face when the same claims made toward mutants are justified by fact.
Now, maybe I'm off-base here. As I've said before, I'm not an X-Men fan, so I'm curious what people who do follow the comic series have to say on the subject.
You could also argue that despite all the danger the good guys win in the end -> mutants are as good as they are bad, this reflects humanity in general, etc etc
Only if they have a complete lack of control and are missing any sense of morality.
One of the big issues with the anti-mutant factions in X-men is that they do not look at the individual, but tar the entire mutant community with the same brush.
To them the 'mutant race' is just one massive monolithic, homogenise scary mass of people just waiting to tear down society as they know it. Rather than seeing it as a bunch of disparate individuals each with there own identities and driving factors.
Picking up Cyclops as and example yes Cyclops could if he wished wander through most cities in the world and reduce large parts of them to rubble. But due to the training, discipline and education he receives from Xavier he is very unlikely to do that. In contrast to the Juggernaut who is going very likely to do that and enjoy it.
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Longer analysis: It's important to remember in circumstanced like this that metaphors are plot devices; they are there to advance the story. If you needed for your metaphorical oppressed minority to behave exactly like their real-life equivalent, they would in essence just be their real-life equivalent. In the case of the original X-Men comics, the mutants would essentially become a marginalized ethnicity with nothing otherwise abnormal about them. But X-Men was not supposed to be a comic about marginalized people, it's a super hero comic about a group of marginalized super heroes. This was done to bring the desired issue (arbitrary marginalization) to the desired audience (people who read super hero comics), and the breakdown of the metaphor was deemed to be either acceptable or irrelevant. This is where analysis (literary/psychological/sociological/etc.) can break a work of fiction. They can, on occasion, attribute more significance to aspects or deficiencies in a metaphor than to the work's true intent, which in many cases is hard to determine in the first place. In the case of the X-Men, however, their creators still have a voice in Stan Lee, who is willing to talk about who the X-Men represent and whether issues like the ones the OP raised were oversights or intentional and why. The general consensus from Stan and Marvel seems to be that any unfortunate implications of the metaphor of the X-Men are there to make the story work in it's own context, not to say anything about the groups that the mutants metaphorically represent.
In fact, as far as I know, the OP's issues do come up in the various X-Men comics, and are dealt with in a manner reasonably appropriate to their fictional context. As for being a different species/subspecies, the emphasis is on personhood, not being biologically human (remember that there are many non-human persons in the Marvel universe like asgardians/aliens/etc.); human or no, mutants are people. There are some mutants that are very dangerous, but many are not. The issue is that non-dangerous mutants (like many of the Morlocks) are often treated as being an equal threat as mutants with incidentally dangerous powers and outright evil mutants. The inevitability of mutant succession to humanity is not necessarily evil, only with characters like Magneto who use it as an excuse to wipe out non-mutants. To most of the X-Men, just because mutants will overtake humans as a matter of biological evolution, that doesn't make humans a lesser people. They seem to regard humans as valuable people that just happen to be part of a dying species, if the inevitable fate of homo sapiens is considered at all.
Sounds like the X-Men could be used as a metaphor for the right to bear arms instead. "Mutant powers don't kill people; people kill people."
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To be fair, this exact claim bounds quite a few varieties of racism. Anti-Muslim racism (I call it racist because it's really "anti-people who look like a muslim stereotype" - I know, for example, a Saudi Christian who lived in the US for decades who endured quite a lot of this racism) in the US is at least superficially predicated on the physical danger these people allegedly pose to our society. A lot of racist propaganda going back to the 19th century centered on slave uprisings and the threat of violence against affluent whites, and you see echoes of this in discussion of the LA race riots after the Rodney King issue and in the "Stand your ground" laws becoming so prevalent in parts of the country, with the 'thug' rhetoric.
There's a difference, of course, in that a tiny handful of mutants in the X-Men comics are given powers which make them a massive danger without being armed, without special training and without needing weapons, but the threat of physical violence posed by minorities is a very real piece of the racist puzzle.
Again, this exact claim is a part of the real racist agenda and it's ridiculous for exactly the same reasons. It's plausible in X-Men only if you accept that they're somehow inhuman - but a lot of the point is that they're NOT inhuman. They're human and also have an aspect about them which is substantially different from the majority.
Remember that one of the real racist pieces is actually true: political and social acceptance of, say, blacks does lead to more 'mulatto' people. Given a thousand years or so and an end to immigration, our population very likely would end up being a much more uniform blend of ethnic traits (exactly which traits are expressed and to what degree is an open question, of course). The racist's mistake is not in asserting that populations will blend and we'll end up intermediate; the racist's mistake is in asserting that there's something wrong with this.
Yes, it's conceivable that the mutants in X-Men will end up with some of their traits spread over the whole population. So what?
As I understand it, this is incorrect. Mutants are regarded as Homo sapiens superior, and are thus a different subspecies than humans are. Thus, mutants are not human.
A person with a gun in his hands with complete control and a righteous morality remains a person with a gun in his hands and still remains a dangerous person.
Which is completely different from saying that a person is a danger because he's black or because he's gay. Neither of these make a person inherently dangerous, whereas person with superpowers is indeed inherently dangerous.
See also Superman, who does not shy away from the fact that he is incredibly dangerous despite the fact that he is a paragon of moral principles.
It would certainly work better than the idea of mutants as a metaphor for minorities.
Though the problem would remain that somehow we're supposed to be anti-mutant registration, when in reality you'd have to be insane not to have it.
I'm confused. Yes, those are arguments that a racist agenda makes. That was my point. The problem is in real life they have no validity, whereas in the X-Men world, they are perfectly valid.
The first one, maybe slightly. Essentially you have a handful of mutants (most mutations are basically cosmetic) who have a loaded weapon, and there's a little bit of validity to extra attention for those handful of individuals, so we get into a more complicated gun control discussion. But the truth is the will to harm which is attributed to Muslims by their detractors is more dangerous than super powers are anyway, particularly in a universe full of superheroes other than the mutants. Anyone can make a bomb and set it off.
The second one is not even slightly valid. It is exactly analogous to the racist claim.
Yeah, but 1. Not all mutants are dangerous. AND 2. Not all dangerous people are mutants.
Wait, what are you even arguing?
Anyone with a bomb is dangerous, and should be treated as such. If you're saying having superpowers is analogous to having a bomb (or being a bomb), then you're only demonstrating my point.
Except, in the X-Men Universe, the X-Men are not, in fact, human and do, in fact, threaten humanity's extinction. So, it's the opposite of analogous, really.
People with superpowers aren't dangerous?
Correct, it depends on the "superpower". Not all of them are of the "building leveling" variety. Cypher's mutant power is to translate and understand languages, is that inherently dangerous? Is an enhanced sense of smell inherently dangerous? How about Ventriloquism?
I'm saying not nearly as dangerous as having the will to build and use a bomb, which is the specific claim made against Muslims, not directly analogous to it. As I've already admitted (and you conveniently ignored), there's a little complexity to the tiny handful of mutants possessing WMD-like capabilities.
That's about it, though. The vast majority of mutants? Government has no legitimate interest in them beyond their actual actions. Wolverine can chop up a few people. ANYONE can chop up a few people, with the level of martial training that guy has (he's not exactly Joe Normal plus super powers, remember). He's a tougher foe than a non-mutant warrior would be, but a Navy Seal goes rogue and starts killing, well, we've seen that kind of scenario play out (beltway sniper wasn't even trained near that level!). Doesn't mean we go around keeping close tabs on every ex-soldier. And don't forget that the Marvel universe is a universe positively crawling with people with powers that easily surpass that of Colossus or Iceman, even setting mutants aside, so it's not like they're on a tier above everyone else in combat power.
The analogous accusation against mutants would be that they possess the ability to turn their mutations on normal humans and the desire to do so, inherently. That's what Muslims stand unfairly accused of: the desire to blow up all us god-fearin' righteous folk.
I don't think it's disanalogous with racist claims in the way that you claim it is. I think it's actually a pretty fair analogy, minus the tiny handful of mutants who could accidentally level a city block (e.g. Cyclops). They are accused of having the power to commit serious acts of violence against 'us' - that's true in both cases. They are accused of having the desire to commit serious acts of violence against 'us' - that's sometimes true, sometimes false in both cases, because people are damned complex and painting with a broad brush is a serious mistake.
Except they can breed with humans, which makes them human by the definition of a species, and aside from a few outcasts, they don't threaten humanity's extinction by violence at all, so what you just said is the opposite of true.
(By the way, the level of detail in this question is a bit lacking: in one X-Men origin story, they're all created by a government weapons project and not natural mutations, which has rather a serious bearing on the discussion. Another point: Marvel is trying to classify them as not human - because Marvel pays lower taxes in real life on action figures if they can classify them as non-human, which is not exactly an intellectually honest evaluation of the question)
So maybe the metaphor for racism doesn't hold up, but I think it still does a good job of telling us that we should be careful how we identify ourselves and how we identify others who are not like ourselves. Plus, who knows, maybe one day finding a common ground in humanity will just be too limiting. ; )
Mutants and humans are like humans and neanderthals. Close enough to have offspring and exist together. Unlike the latter, there is no biological difference other than the "X-factor" and so there are generally no distinguishing characteristics to make true segregation possible.
Not all mutants are dangerous but the X-Factor makes predicting what mutation(if any e.g. Grayden Creed) your child will have impossible. Also, there aren't enough mutants to be a threat. The population was about .5% of the entire world prior to M-Day! Now there are merely a handful, some 300 or so out of 7 billion people.
As stated above, this is no longer a big concern. Prior to the 20th century there were hardly any human mutants. As far as I know Wolverine, Mystique, Sabertooth, and Apocalypse were the only mutants born before 1900. Some event caused more and more mutants to be born and then M-Day happened and the huge number was brought down to a very reasonable size. My personal theory is that the increased mutants population was a response from higher powers to the increasing threat of Apocalypse and perhaps the events that preceded and followed M-Day. Of course when they increased the numbers they chanced mutants like Jean Grey, Professor Xavier(and his sick twin Cassandra Nova), and Magneto being born.
X-Men definitely had a strong message in inception and it was an obvious analogue to the racial troubles of the 20th century. Now that the civil rights movements have essentially ended Marvel has turned to more traditional comic book storytelling for X-Men. Mess things up so you can reboot the series and no one even cares. >.<
Fair point, but the reaction to those who have superpowers has justification.
It's why X-Men rubs me the wrong way. We have a paramilitary organization filled with mutants with the cool abilities running around telling everyone there's nothing to fear from mutants. There's all sorts of problems there for me.
I relate far more to the attitudes of many characters of the DC Universe, who openly acknowledge that their superpowers are a threat, and actively discuss the ramifications of power, as opposed to the X-Men who I feel we're expected to give a pass on just because they're oppressed.
I disagree. Many of these mutants ARE bombs, or much, much worse.
We do, however, keep tabs on weapon ownership, which is a more relevant concern. A person with a weapon is a significant threat beyond a person without one.
But that just demonstrates the flaw here. There exist mutants who are dangerous inherently by virtue of being mutants.
That messes up the analogy. One is not dangerous inherently by virtue of being black. There's nothing about being black itself that makes one more dangerous than a person who is of any other race. One is, however, dangerous inherently by virtue of being a mutant of power level whatever or greater, or whatever the in-universe tier ranking system is called.
So you can't say something's analogous to an irrational fear if it has rational justification.
It makes them a subspecies of homo sapiens, as the Neanderthals were and we are. This does not make them human.
Violence is not the only threat the mutants pose to humanity. They also pose a threat by overpopulation and eventual replacement, which is, incidentally, a common racist fear.
The X-Men are, after all, regarded as "the next step in human evolution," with a comparison to the Neanderthals. Look at what happened to the Neanderthals.
Which are two different subspecies.
Which is apparently enough to make them a different subspecies.
Anyone with a superpower is a threat.
Interesting.
Again, never followed it, so it's useful to bounce these ideas off of people who have.
And there exist other people (ie Superman or the Hulk) who are dangerous and are not mutants.
It's not being a mutant that makes you dangerous, it's having superpowers of a certain magnitude. Just like it's not being a soldier that makes you dangerous, it's owning a gun. If people have a justifiable reason to be afraid of Cyclops then they have just as much reason to be afraid of Thor or the Hulk. Except neither of them are mutants. So the whole "mutants are dangerous and therefore anti-mutant actions are justifiable" argument is a complete red herring.
In that sense, the analogy for racism works just fine.
Did you miss the part where I said I like Superman because he openly admits he's dangerous and people should fear him?
... Which a significant population of mutants are characterized as having, and which the X gene pretty much exists as a Macguffin for allowing the existence of people with dangerous superpowers.
You are attacking a strawman.
I'm arguing ANYONE with superpowers is inherently dangerous. The fact that you're saying, "Well there are people who have superpowers and are dangerous even though they aren't mutants" does absolutely nothing to contradict my point.
The reason I have a problem with X-Men is because they have turned "having superpowers" into a race, and are trying to make an analogy between the public's reaction to the X-Men, and the discrimination levied against those who are black, Jewish, gay, or whatever. The problem with this is that, as you say, anyone with superpowers is inherently more dangerous than a person without them, thereby making the public's reaction have at least some rational basis, whereas claims of minorities being dangerous are baseless. As such, the use of mutants as a metaphor for black, Jewish, gay, and other discriminated peoples has an inherent problem.
First, there are a bunch of mutants who literally don't have super powers - they either have basically cosmetic mutations or mutations that slightly alter (usually don't improve) their capabilities, e.g. clumsy flight at the expense of also being clumsy on the ground. They're different, but calling them super powered is a tremendous stretch.
Which leaves you arguing for blanket controls over a population containing many individuals who are literally not superpowered - they just have blue skin or funky hair. Others have some very, very minor 'super' powers that aren't combat relevant. You've generalized from "super powered people are dangerous" to "mutants are dangerous", when the correlation is at best statistical. Some mutants are dangerous, not all - and the ones who are dangerous are dangerous by virtue of having super powers. Which is exactly the point, of course - if controls are desirable, they're desirable for all super powered individuals, not all mutants. When they're advocated in the stories, they're advocated the other way around. Hulk doesn't have to register; Beak does.
Second, the impetus for mutant registration is given surface plausibility by the super powered mutants, but is driven by hate groups, in the fiction. Regulating super powered beings alone would not be enough to drive this legislation in the fictional world being presented.
Irrelevant. The point stands that:
A. There are indeed mutants with superpowers that are truly terrifying, which messes up the metaphor, and
B. The existence of mutantkind itself constitutes a risk of extinction (or certainty of extinction, depending on continuity) for the human race, which also messes up the metaphor.
The metaphor doesn't work because mutants are indeed a threat to humanity. Saying, "Well there are other threats to humanity besides mutants" doesn't make mutants any less of a threat to humanity.
Thus, by portraying mutants as actually a credible threat to humanity, X-Men actually ends up unintentionally backing discrimination against minorities (which portrays groups as being threats to society).
See point B. All mutants possess the X gene, and therefore all mutants are indeed a threat to humanity.
And? What does that have anything to do with this topic?
Many mutants express the X gene in a benign way. And many non-mutants are super powered. This is not only not irrelevant, this is the central point being made in story arcs like mutant registration. If it was about super powers, it would be 'super power registration' - Beak would not have to sign up, Mr. Fantastic (who is a mutate, not a mutant) would.
(Incidentally, there are also superpower registration act storylines; don't let that get in the way, those stories are about something different, not racial metaphor).
You seem to have this notion that simple possession of the X-Gene, even if it grants you no powers at all (and it supposedly goes unexpressed for fair-sized chunks of the population who live as normal humans), represents an existential threat to humanity. I'm afraid I don't see it, and you're going to have to explain it explicitly (and I sure hope it's not just a mongrelization/miscegenation argument...).
The topic is on whether Marvel's mutants work as a vehicle for discussion of racism, right? I'd say the fact that in the universe being discussed, there's not enough political pressure to actually discriminate against them without out-and-out fearmongering and hatemongering is, again, directly on point.
To be as explicit as possible about it: Marvel's mutants are not merely carefully watched by a neutral set of observers making sure they don't go around leveling cities, they're actively discriminated against and harassed by Jim Crow-esque mobs.
It doesn't bear on whether they're potential doomsday weapons with legs, but it certainly bears on whether and how well they serve as a metaphor for racial discrimination, which is the question you posed in the OP (maybe you didn't mean to be so broad, I don't know). In this way, they do.
It seems civilization presently is against freedom, because the Mutant Registration Act never looks like evil in bill form.
Still, if Highroller's supposition is only that X-men allows a racist to sneak in points for his racist agenda, I guess that stands.
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The much better argument they could make is "There are creatures that want to eat our solar system, everyone without superpowers strong enough to migrate to another solar system is going to die anyway." In fact, if we're going to take Doom's (Quite informed.) opinion on it, there are very few scenarios that lead to humanity surviving in the long-term, and these all involve a completely totalitarian society where the weak and those unwilling to cooperate get killed without any afterthought.
Mutants threatening the extinction of humans isn't a problem if extinction of humans is inevitable. Likewise:
A number of characters have powers that make humanity completely unable to stop them, if they decide to screw everything. Franklin Richards, for example, who might arguably be immortal due to the ability to create infinite amounts of pocket dimensions, and as such infinite amounts of himself. Mad Jim Jaspers from Earth-238 was lower in power level, but still required a termination of entire universe and the timeline of it just to stop him from spreading his influence. It is heavily implied that his Earth-616 version is unstoppable, has exponential growth in power, and will eventually take over the omniverse as a chaotic, insane, all-powerful god. (Assuming eternity doesn't give a damn. And that guy, for the record, *is* all of reality.)
Even "lower-powered" characters, such as Scarlet Witch, have been shown to re-write the entire timelines of their own universes.
Barring mutants and other superpowered characters, there's be no humanity. In this universal rocket-tag, humanity is completely and utterly reliant on superpowered entities to help them.
But yeah, that makes for a bad metaphor for racism, too.
But is it wrong to have more able and fit offspring?
and acts without effort.
Teaching without verbosity,
producing without possessing,
creating without regard to result,
claiming nothing,
the Sage has nothing to lose.
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
2. I'm in shape and I'm pretty good at hitting people, therefore I am a threat to those around me. Certainly have laws with stricter punishments for the use of superhuman abilities in crime, but having the potential to be a danger is no reason to attack someone. By that logic North America, Europe, and Asia would all be uninhabitable radioactive wastes by now.
3. Again, still people, they can just fly or shoot sparks out their eyebrows or whatever.
The fact that it's a dominate gene and will in fact replace humanity eventually does have interesting implications for the metaphor.
Know what? New thread about it in a literary sense because I've always wanted to have that conversation and my friends just look at me funny.